Am I delusional about my product?
- strokesandanecdotes
- Feb 17
- 7 min read
By Akanksha Kamalia | The Bejewelled Side by The Solitaire
Every founder in an unusual product category asks this question at some point. Usually alone. Usually at night. Usually after a conversation that went well but left them feeling less certain than before.
The question itself is not the problem. The problem is most founders ask it and then answer it with the wrong evidence.
What founders call validation and what it actually is
The first thing a founder reaches for when the doubt sets in is proof. And the proof they tend to reach for is the proof that is most available: the people who told them the product was good.
A friend who held it and said it was beautiful. A mentor who called it original. A press mention from someone who found the story compelling. An Instagram comment from a stranger who said they needed it in their life.
These feel like validation because they feel like confirmation from the outside world. But they are not market signals. They are social signals. The person who complimented the product had nothing at stake. Their opinion cost them nothing. They were responding to you, to the story, to the craft, to the moment — not committing to an exchange where their money moves and your product enters their life.
Press is more insidious because it carries institutional weight. A journalist or editor is a professional with taste and reach. When they cover something, it feels like the market has spoken. But what they have actually confirmed is that the story is interesting, the timing is resonant, the founder is compelling. None of those questions are the same as: will someone who has never heard of you find this, understand it, and pay for it.
Compliments and press tell you that you are doing something legible. They do not tell you that you are doing something people will buy.
The difference between delusional and untested
There is a distinction worth making clearly, because it changes everything about how a founder should act.
Delusional means the product is solving a problem that does not exist, for a buyer who does not exist, at a price point that cannot be supported. Founders in this position usually have an abundance of theoretical confidence and a complete absence of real signals. They have never put the product in front of someone with no connection to them and watched what happened.
Untested means the product may be exactly right but the founder has not yet found out for certain. They have real conviction and real craft but they have been validating in the wrong rooms, with the wrong people, using the wrong measures. Their signals are incomplete, not absent.
Most founders I encounter are not delusional. They are untested and are misreading the signals they have received, which makes them feel delusional when they are not.
The practical difference matters because the response is entirely different. A delusional founder needs to go back to the problem. An untested founder needs better signal-gathering, not a new product.
What real validation looks like
Real validation has one defining characteristic: the person who gave it had nothing to gain from saying yes.
Not a friend. Not a peer. Not someone who admires the founder. A stranger who encountered the product through normal means, understood what it was, and committed their money without being asked twice.
In rough order of strength, the signals that actually tell you something:
A stranger buying at full price. No relationship, no discount, no obligation. Just the product, the price, and a decision. This is the baseline test and it is harder to achieve than most founders expect. The first time it happens with someone the founder does not know, the information it carries is significant.
A repeat purchase. Someone returning without being prompted. In jewellery and leather, categories that are not inherently high-frequency, this is a particularly powerful signal. A repeat buyer has had time to reflect, has compared the product to everything else they could spend that money on, and has chosen it again. That decision is considered in a way a first purchase is not.
A referral from a buyer who gets nothing in return. Not an affiliate. Not an incentivised review. Someone who told another person about the product because they wanted to, because recommending it reflected something about their own taste and judgment. Word of mouth from a buyer with no stake in the outcome is one of the purest signals available.
Unsolicited specificity. Not "this is beautiful" but "I wear this every day because of this particular thing" or "this is the only bag that works for how I travel." When someone volunteers a specific reason they value the product, without being asked, they are telling you that it has landed somewhere real in their life. It is solving something felt, not just admired.
Behaviour after the transaction. What a buyer does after they receive the product often tells you more than the purchase itself. Did they photograph it. Did they show someone. Did they come back to ask something. Did they tag you without prompting. Post-purchase behaviour reveals whether the product has created desire or just satisfied a moment of interest. Those are very different things.
How to seek real validation before the product launches
The founders who come to market with genuine confidence, rather than performed confidence, have almost always done some version of pre-market signal-gathering. They may not have called it that. But they found ways to test the thing before it was formally for sale.
Sell before you have finished. The most direct test available. Describe the product — not the object but the outcome it delivers — to the specific type of person you believe will buy it. Ask them to commit money to reserve one. Not to express interest. Not to sign a waitlist. Commit money.
This changes the nature of the conversation entirely. The person now has skin in the game. Their response, in either direction, is real in a way that a compliment or an enthusiastic inquiry never is. In jewellery and leather, this has a long and legitimate craft tradition. Commissions, pre-orders, made-to-order. A founder who gets five strangers to put a deposit down before the product exists has more market validation than one who gets five hundred press mentions after launch.
Put it in the room with the actual buyer and stay silent. Not a focus group. Not a structured interview. You place the product in front of the person you believe is the buyer, ideally someone you have no relationship with, and you say nothing. You watch where they look first. What they touch. What question they ask without being prompted. What price they guess before you tell them.
In tactile categories like jewellery and leather, this is particularly revealing. The first instinct a person has when they encounter an object tells you more than any answer to a direct question. Questions create performance. Silence creates observation.
Price it uncomfortably high and see what happens. Most founders test their product at a price they feel safe about. The real test is at a price that makes the founder personally uncomfortable, because the founder's internal price ceiling is almost always lower than the market's. If someone pays the uncomfortable price without negotiating, you have learned something. If several people do, you have learned something significant.
Find the person who would miss it if it disappeared. Ask directly: if this product stopped existing tomorrow, would you notice, and would it matter. This is a different question from whether they like it. You are asking whether it occupies a specific space in their life that nothing else fills. An honest answer to this question, from someone with no reason to flatter you, is one of the most useful signals available before launch.
Show it to someone who has reason to say no. A buyer for a multi-brand retailer. A category editor who covers the space. A concept store curator. Not to get stocked or featured, but to receive a professional assessment from someone with market knowledge and no obligation to be kind.
A specific, reasoned rejection from someone in this position is more useful than ten enthusiastic responses from people with nothing at stake. They will tell you exactly what is not working and why. That information is worth more than most positive signals. And occasionally it turns into a yes, which means something real.
The audit every founder should run
If you already have some sales and some traction and you are still asking yourself whether you are delusional, there is a simple exercise worth doing. It is not complicated but it is uncomfortable.
Go through every sale or serious expression of interest. For each one, ask: would this person have bought this if they did not know me, and if the price were ten percent higher.
Remove every transaction that has a relationship attached to it. Remove every one that involved a discount you offered unprompted. Remove every enquiry that came from a peer, a collaborator, a friend of a friend. What is left is your real validation set.
For most founders in unusual product categories, this set is considerably smaller than they thought. That is not a reason to stop. It is a reason to be precise about where you actually are. A small real signal is more valuable than a large ambiguous one because it tells you something specific about the buyer, the price, and the product's ability to reach strangers. You can build from specificity. You cannot build from noise.
What this means in practice
The founders worth working with in unusual product categories are not the ones who are certain. Certainty at the early stage is usually a sign that the founder has been asking easy questions.
The founders worth working with are the ones who have sought out the hard signals, received something real even if small, and now need a framework for building from that. They are not delusional. They are early and they are informed. Those two things together are enough to begin.
The question is not whether the product is good. The product being good is necessary but not sufficient. The question is whether the founder has found the specific person for whom the product is not just good but necessary, and whether that person exists in large enough numbers to build something lasting.
That question is answerable. It requires the right kind of evidence and the willingness to look at what the evidence actually says rather than what it is convenient to believe.
That is where the real work begins.
Akanksha Kamalia is a brand strategist for jewellery and leather goods businesses. She works with founders and companies to build positioning and strategy that translates craft into competitive advantage. Her studio is The Solitaire.
Comments