How you guys validate if your business idea has potential or not?

Hello Ayaz! I pull for rapid prototyping using Sprint framework created by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. The most underestimated thing in product management, imo. https://www.thesprintbook.com/

The potential is based on your capacity to build a product that offers a solution that is being sought out by the public, or if you are more ambitious, could create a trend within a given community. Depending on what industry/field you are on, you will have to be well-informed. You can read journals, forums, and online research (topics, comments on "x" products, issues within the field, etc). If possible, you can contact experts from different offices, and ask them to pinpoint the pains clients/consumers face the most. It really comes down to your involvement, dedication, and passion in the industry you are in. You will end up with a list of data that will lead you to think through what's going wrong for most people, why, and how it could be avoided by offering a platform, and tools that help solve those issues. Then when you got the concept of the product (illustrations, etc.), introduce it back to those experts or the audience that you previously consulted on the different websites. if it has an educative purpose, it could be school, etc. It depends on the nature of the product. If you get enough positive responses, then it's pretty much validated. Just don't lock yourself into the created concept, keep iterating until you get something out of it. There is no magical formula, keep trying!

I do some customer interviews. But that is pretty high in terms of effort and already takes some market research to even find people that fit your customer profile to interview. Mainly, I think of what problem I'm trying to solve and go on twitter or reddit and then type in the problem to see what others are doing to solve it. Usually, if a lot of people are complaining and current solutions either don't exist or are ineffective, then you have a winner. If your product is not extremely labour intensive, you can also do minimal research and build an MVP, and then do testing there.