How to land validation interviews with GummySearch
Validate Ideas by Interviewing Target Customers
Most startup founders get that validating an idea before sinking months (or years) into building it is the smart option. Yet, many have no idea how to do it -- or worse, they do it in a way that gives them a certain false confidence.
There are plenty of ways to validate an idea and just as many ways to get it completely wrong. This guide focuses on one of the most reliable methods: talking directly to the people who would be your future customers.
If you do this right, by the time you're ready to launch, you'll already have real users eager to pay for what you've built.
If you haven't yet, check out my full guide on interview-based idea validation. Seriously, go read it. It's 50+ hours of insights compressed into a 7-minute read, packed with templates and real-world examples to make your interviews way more effective.
Now, back to the guide!
The interview-based idea validation guide has six steps:
#1 Define the problem
#2 Determine your biggest risks
#3 Find your target audience
#4 Request for interviews
#5 Do the interview
#6 Assess Feedback
This guide you're reading right now specifically contains the practical steps #3 & #4. This is a very crucial part many folks struggle with. The good news is if your target customers hang out on Reddit, GummySearch, can help you spot them pretty quickly. I'll show you how.
Steps to Validating Your Idea on GummySearch
In this guide, I'm stepping into the shoes of a real estate agent who keeps seeing the same trend. Clients buy homes to list on Airbnb and ask a million questions about the process. Spotting the pattern, I've come up with an idea:
💡 A cohort-based course for first-time homeowners who want to list their property on Airbnb.
Is it a good idea? Let's find out!
- Start by Understanding Your Target Audience
Before jumping into GummySearch, I need to take a second to think through exactly who I'm looking for. A lot of people skip this part, but if I don't have a clear hypothesis about my target audience, I'll waste a lot of time.
For our example of an Airbnb investing course, the initial instinct might be to look for all Airbnb hosts. But not every host is the right fit. Some have been renting properties for years and have their process dialed in. Others might be short-term renters testing the waters.
So let's refine that:
Who am I looking for? First-time Airbnb hosts looking for guidance on property investment.
What signs suggest they need help? They ask beginner-level questions, express confusion about laws, or struggle with pricing their rentals.
Where are they likely to be? They are likely to be in real estate investment subreddits but also general Airbnb host communities.
First, I'm defining these specifics. This means I'm looking for hosts who are seeking education. With this in mind, I can now start researching the right communities.
- Find Communities Full of Your Target Audience
First, I'll track down Reddit communities focused on Airbnb hosts, real estate investors, and anyone in the thick of short-term rentals. I like to think of this as a "prototype" of my ideal audience. They're not my customers (yet), but they think, act, and struggle just like the people I want to reach.
I've written a full guide on finding Subreddits, so I won't cover it in much detail here. However, I found nine relevant Subreddits with 5.3 million people across them. All I did was click the blue Add button and include as many relevant subreddits as I could find.
Here's what the Audience looks like:
I created an audience composed of 9 Subreddits dedicated to real estate & Airbnb.
This should be a good place for me to start since the subreddits I've selected range from large (10k members or more) to massive (over 1M members). This balance will help me find plenty of first-time homeowners looking for advice, as well as seasoned homeowners with plenty of advice to give.
- Research Pain Points and Current Solutions
The Themes feature inside my Audience is a wonderful place to explore the kinds of conversations happening in these communities. You'll find everything from scoring-based themes to AI-driven themes like Solution Requests, which surface specific problems people are looking to solve, depending on your ideation stage and the kind of business you're researching.
The Themes feature is a wonderful place to explore different kinds of conversations.
Since I'm creating an informational product, the Advice Requests will give us clear insights into my case.
The moment I click on this tab, I'll see a meaty (yet compact) description of the most relevant advice people have been requesting when it comes to Airbnb hosting -- particularly regarding things like refund queries, guest cleanliness, and more.
Use the Advice Requests feature to see what people are asking.
Just note that these requests encompass all of the subreddits I've selected for my audience. So, not all of the submissions that pop up will be particularly relevant. One way to discover if I need to further refine our search is to click on the blue Browse All button so I can see the actual questions people are asking.
Use the Advice Requests feature to see what people are asking.
From what I can see, these advice requests aren't directly about first-time homeowners looking to list their property on Airbnb. I want to be extra precise while they can still be valuable for the cohort-based course.
So I go to the extremely helpful Ask ✨ feature and openly ask the following question: What do first-time homeowners looking to list their property on Airbnb struggle with?
Then, in seconds, GummySearch's AI brings up a bunch of Reddit posts that are relevant to my query in the form of a large summary. By the end of each claim, there'll be a source link to the actual Reddit post so you can analyze the information in detail.
Take a look:
Advice Requests can surface heartfelt conversations.
With this much information, I might even have a few ideas start to bubble up. Then, I can validate these ideas during the customer interviews. Ideas like:
Building course content around pricing strategy, guest expectations, and Airbnb policies.
Teaching hosts how to optimize their listing and avoid common pitfalls.
Showcasing these real concerns from first-time hosts makes lessons more relatable.
Noted! But let's not jump ahead. I still have plenty of validation to do.
Quick note: Yes, these summaries are comprehensive and can save hours of reading. Still, be sure to follow through to the comments to find the solutions the community recommends. These will come in handy to add depth to your customer development interviews.
- Keep Track of Relevant Conversations
These communities are buzzing with conversations, but not all of them will be relevant to my validation. The goal here is to zero in on posts where people are asking for courses, books, or classes on real estate investing, as well as those seeking guidance on owning and managing Airbnb properties.
I'll use the Keyword Search feature to search for terms like"courses," "classes," and "learn how to" in the Audience to find questions on educational material. For Airbnb-specific questions, I'll search for "Airbnb property" and "First Airbnb."
Use the Keyword Search feature to search for relevant terms.
Next up: organization. I'll gather the most relevant conversations into lists so I can easily access them later.
Organizing relevant conversations is easy. After I type in my desired search, I'll just click Enter, and GummySearch will fetch every relevant search containing my focus keyword.
I'm seeing a lot of interesting conversations already, so I won't hesitate to Save and Bookmark 🔖 them by clicking on the left-hand icon of any submission I find helpful.
Save conversations to keep track of for easy access.
I can bookmark each conversation I save into a list for later reference.
I can also download and easily share my bookmarks with anyone on my team.
You can download and easily share bookmarks with anyone on your team.
By the way, I can make as many conversation lists as I want, and they'll be available on the Conversations 💬page.
Your bookmarks live inside your Conversations page.
4. Find the Perfect Interview Candidates
Now that I've pulled up promising conversations let's talk about how I choose who to reach out to. Not everyone who posts is an ideal candidate -- some are just casually curious and won't give me their time. Others will happily agree to an interview.
Here's how to tell them apart:
✅ Good interview candidates...
Ask detailed questions.
Engage in replies. Someone who keeps following up in the thread is serious about learning.
They might have posted about this topic more than once, meaning it's a real problem for them.
🚫 Less ideal candidates...
I might post curiosity-driven one-liners with no context (e.g., "Thinking about Airbnb. Any tips?")
Give more advice than they ask for.
Don't reply to comments. If they're not even engaging in their thread, they probably won't respond to an interview request.
Here's a great example of a potentially awesome interview candidate:
A potentially awesome interview candidate
This post is packed with raw emotion. They just launched their first Airbnb, poured years of work and savings into making it perfect, and got hit with a lackluster review with zero explanation. They're not merely curious about guest expectations, but they're actively searching for ways to improve, and they likely have strong opinions about what's missing from the resources available to new hosts.
Someone like this is likely to jump at the chance to voice their concerns and share what would've helped them avoid this frustration in the first place.
You should keep an eye on those types of submissions.
- Request for interviews
Okay, great, I've found a bunch of people asking for resources on purchasing their first property to rent out as an Airbnb. I've read those conversations and mapped out the recommendations that other community members have offered.
Am I done validating? No! I haven't talked to any humans yet!
(Check out the guide to interview-based idea validation for the full scope of what to consider in validation interviews and how to ask questions that validate your idea instead of getting people-pleasers in your DMs.)
Based on the research I've done on current solutions using the Solution Requests tab, it looks like a lot of folks recommend YouTube videos on first-time real estate investing, as well as free online classes and courses. I just followed the same process I did for Advice Requests previously.
Browse existing solutions in the Solution Requests tab.
So, one of the things I'll probably want to dig into in my interviews is:
Which of those free resources have my target customers considered?
What have they found lacking in those resources?
Where could they use some more guided education?
Now, let's get down to brass tacks. There are two ways I can get people from Reddit to answer my validation questions: targeted outreach and community submissions.
Targeted Outreach
Most people go in assuming outreach won't work. But if I approach it the right way, people are surprisingly open to chatting.
I've saved some conversations that will be recent, meaning I'm catching people in the moment as they're searching for solutions. Others will be older, which is just as valuable because I can ask something like, "How did you end up solving this?" (assuming their account is still active).
But how do you reach out without being ignored?
Cold DMs get a bad rep because most of them are pretty bad. Instead of being generic, here's a good general formula for outreach that gets responses:
Be short & specific. Nobody wants to read a wall of text from a stranger. Keep it direct.
Give them a reason to reply. Make it about them, not you. Show genuine interest in their experience.
Make it easy to say yes. A Calendly link or offering 2-3 time slots keeps things frictionless.
Here's a quick mini-template you can personalize so you don't have to start from scratch:
"Hey (username), I saw your post about (their problem) and get where you're coming from. I'm researching this exact topic and would love to hear your perspective. Would you be open to a quick 15-minute chat? No pressure, just want to learn from someone going through this!"
Of course, the best messages don't read like a script. So tweak it, add your voice, and if you have a personal connection to the topic, mention it.
Community Submission
Not everyone on Reddit is a poster -- some people are lurkers. I'll talk to them, too.
The best way to do this is to post a submission of my own describing the problem I'm hoping to solve. Once that's done, I'll ask if anyone who has that same problem is willing to talk to me.
I could ask something along the lines of "Are you nervous/unsure about buying your first property to list on Airbnb? Come talk to me about your questions & concerns."
(As always, please make sure to follow the community guidelines for submitting. If you're new to Reddit, check out my Reddit for Startups guide with plenty of helpful things to watch out for.)
5. Track Important Conversations to Stay In the Loop
Let's say I've sent out my feelers, and some people have agreed to chat with me. Perfect!
The more conversations I have, the more I'll know about my target customer. So, I make sure to track keywords within my Audience to be notified when relevant mentions arise.
I can use the AI Match Criteria feature to describe the kinds of posts I'm looking for freely to be even more precise with my tracking. It's optional but incredibly helpful.
Track keywords to always stay in the loop of new relevant conversations.
All of my tracked keywords live in the Conversations 💬 tab, just like your bookmarked conversations. New matches will trigger a notification for me.
Track keywords to always stay in the loop of new relevant conversations.
Want even more precision? I know I do!
AI-based matching helps me zero in on the best insights. I just go to one of my tracked searches, tap the gear icon (⚙️), and customize the kind of results I want to see. That way, I can shape my results by setting specific preferences while filtering out anything that's not relevant.
Use AI-based matches to refine your results even further.
Validation Is a Continuous (and, Dare I Say, Endless) Process
By now, you've seen how powerful validation can be. Hopefully, you feel confident about finding people to talk to and making sure your idea meets a real need.
Remember, validation isn't something that you do just once! Markets shift, customer needs evolve, and new competitors are born. If you're not consistently talking to your audience, you risk building something that slowly drifts away from what people want.
For pivots, positioning updates, or even new features. Stop building in a bubble!
