I’m sure you’ve heard the advice: validate your idea before you build. Do market research. Run surveys. Talk to potential customers. Create a business plan. Make sure there’s demand before you invest time and money.
This isn’t bad advice but there is a nuance it misses: the fastest way to validate your idea is to build something real and see what happens.
I recently spent two days using AI to turn a family card game into a fully functional web app. It was a total of about 7 hours. It works on mobile and desktop, and my family is already using it.
But this isn’t a story about AI tools or coding. It’s about how available technology gives entrepreneurs and small businesses the opportunity to test their ideas.
The Old Way Takes Time You Don’t Have
Traditionally, we’ve been told to research ideas thoroughly, plan carefully, and validate extensively before building anything. The logic makes sense: why invest in building something nobody wants?
But here’s the challenge that advice doesn’t account for: as a small business owner, you don’t have time for six months of research. You’re wearing all the hats, managing tight budgets, and every week you spend validating is a week you’re not making progress.
More importantly, research can’t tell you what actually building and using the product will reveal. People say they want things they won’t actually use. They can’t imagine features they’ve never experienced. They don’t know how they’ll really feel until something exists.
The gap between what people say they want and what they actually use is where most “validated” ideas fail.
What Actually Happened During Those Two Days
Here’s what I didn’t do: spend weeks researching whether anyone would want a digital version of this game. I didn’t survey my family. I didn’t create a business plan or do competitive analysis.
I just built it and watched what happened when real people used it.
That’s the insight most entrepreneurs miss. We’ve been taught that research comes before building. But building can be the research.
When you build something real—even something simple—you learn things surveys can never tell you: which features people actually use versus what they say they want, where they get confused or frustrated, what makes them come back, whether they’ll tell others about it.
My family using the actual game taught me more in a couple of days than months of asking “would you use this?” ever could.
A Faster Way to Test Your Ideas
For years, the barrier to testing a business idea was the cost and time of building something. You needed developers, designers, months of work, and tens of thousands of dollars just to create a prototype.
That barrier just dropped, and that’s a great thing for small business owners.
If You Have a Business Idea
You don’t need to spend months researching whether customers want your product. You can build a simple version and let real customer behavior tell you the truth.
A restaurant owner wondering if customers want online ordering? Don’t survey them. Set up a basic ordering system and see if they actually use it.
A consultant thinking about creating a course? Don’t poll your network. Create the first module and see who signs up.
A retail shop considering a loyalty program? Don’t research competitors. Build a simple version and track what happens.
If You’re Already Running a Business
You can test improvements and new offerings without betting the farm. That new service you’ve been considering? Build a landing page and basic version in a few days. See if customers actually want it.
The process improvement you think will save time? Build it and measure the real impact. The product line extension you’re debating? Create a small batch and test with real customers.
Your New Validation Process
Here’s how this works in practice:
- Have an idea based on real experience (not just theory)
- Build the simplest version that’s actually usable (not perfect, usable)
- Put it in front of real people (not friends who’ll be nice, real potential customers)
- Watch what they actually do (not what they say, what they do)
- Learn fast and adjust (or kill it if it’s not working)
The goal isn’t to build perfectly. The goal is to build fast enough that you learn what actually works before you run out of time and money.
What You Actually Need
Here’s what surprised me most about building something real in two days: I didn’t need to write code. I needed to know exactly what I wanted and why it mattered.
Every decision I made came from experience:
- I knew the “Review Current Turn” feature was essential because I’ve lived through those disputes with paper slips
- I knew to check accessibility and mobile experience because I’ve seen products fail without them
- I knew when the UI was good enough to ship because I understand what “production-ready” means
The AI removed the implementation barrier. But my expertise made it something people actually want to use.
AI tools work best for people who already understand their domain. You don’t need to become a developer. You need to deeply understand your business, your customers, and what problems you’re solving.
The Skills That Matter Now
If you want to build to validate, here’s what actually matters:
Know Your Customer’s Problem Not the problem you think they have. The problem you’ve seen them struggle with. The paper slips falling on the floor. The manual process taking too long. The thing that makes them frustrated every time.
Articulate What You Want Precisely “Make it better” doesn’t work. “Add audio controls during tutorial voiceover” does. The clearer you are about what needs to exist, the faster you can build it.
Understand What “Good Enough” Means Perfect is the enemy of shipped. Know the difference between “needs to work” and “would be nice to have.” Ship the first one, add the second one later if people actually use it.
Recognize What’s Missing AI can’t experience your product the way customers will. You need to test it yourself, watch for edge cases, catch the things that don’t feel right.
What This Means For Small Businesses
The constraint isn’t implementation anymore. It’s knowing what to build and why it matters.
If you have deep knowledge of your industry, your customers, and their real problems, you can now test solutions without needing a technical co-founder or a huge budget.
A few years ago, testing my game idea would have required finding and paying a developer, months of back-and-forth, hoping they understood what I actually wanted, and spending money before knowing if anyone would use it.
Instead, I spent two focused days building it myself and my family is already playing it. I knew exactly what needed to exist and could articulate it clearly enough for AI to help me build it.
What Will You Build?
The tools are here. The barrier is gone. The only question left is whether you’ll use your expertise to test the idea you’ve been sitting on—or keep researching until someone else builds it first.
Want to see what I built? Check out playtripletake.com. It’s a family card game that’s now a fully functional web app. Play it on your phone or desktop and see what’s possible when you build to validate instead of researching endlessly.
Ready to start building? The Main Street Rising Tour is coming to a city near you. Learn how to use AI to test your ideas faster, automate the tasks that eat your time, and build systems that actually scale your business. No tech jargon, no overwhelm—just practical tools that work for Main Street. Join the entrepreneurs who are rising. Learn more at mainstreetrisingtour.com.
Kelsey Ruger is Chief Product & Technology Officer at Hello Alice, where he leads engineering, product, design, and programs for a platform serving 1.5 million small business owners. He teaches entrepreneurs how to implement AI effectively and believes everyone has the potential to build something extraordinary.