Thank you. I cherish learning from such insight. These nuances can only be discovered after you've done something. I appreciate you sharing.
The "validate your ideas" advice is sound, yet throwing up fake landing pages, day in day out, until I hit gold, is just something I can't get excited about. My version of validation has been build a prototype and show it to people or, the much more dangerous, "I know people will want this because [insert something that has changed]." I'm certainly taking more risk by spending more time on each idea to, arguably, get worse data, but at least I'm enjoying doing it. Taking what you've said into account, there is also less of a chance that I end up with a product that I am not passionate about.
The "validate your ideas" advice is sound, yet throwing up fake landing pages, day in day out, until I hit gold, is just something I can't get excited about
Desperately trying out different ideas with fake landing pages is something that MVP/lean movement added later, but it wasn't described by either Steve Blank or Eric Ries in their early texts. As far as I've understood Blank's customer development model, it can be described as below.
Founders have a strong vision of a problem and product, but they don't necessarily know who are their best customers. Basically, they are unsure of their business model and target market. They get some funding and start developing the product (traditional 90s bubble model) but at the same time they start visiting and talking to customers, showing mockups, trying out different price points etc. (Blank's customer development model). There is parallel tech & customer development going on.
Note that under Blank's model pivoting doesn't mean that you start to execute on a totally different product, but that you adjust your product vision when you learn more about customers and possible target markets.
As an example, you start with a vision of cashflow estimation software for small 10-employee consulting companies (founders' vision, a self-identified need), but when you start selling and learning about markets, you noticed that bigger companies (let's say 100 employees or so) have similar problem. But what those bigger companies need from user interface and database integration are quite different than needs of small companies. However, this new target market is more profitable, so you adjust your product vision and business model to serve it instead of the original vision.
This is how I've understood customer development model.
Founders have a vision, start building product and finding a target market and scalable business model for that vision. It doesn't mean desperate random attempts in totally different products.
So it's really targeting people who are already mad keen to execute their exciting vision, and saying: hang on, before committing too much, just test out your assumptions in a low-cost way. It's validation, not search.
I think Ries has a story of three years building a fantastic exciting product that nobody wanted... and wishing to avoid that.
The rapid iteration/pivot approach makes more sense if you start with something you are passionate about. That's the key. Maybe try only testing your assumptions about your market? Try to describe someone who would use your product and then find someone who matches your description. If they are not interested it's only one aspect of your idea. If your passion for this idea wilts after one encounter like this then either you aren't cut out for this gig or you weren't that passionate about it. Probably the latter, because if you have the guts to make a phone call to some random stranger you're already doing something 99% of people won't.
The "validate your ideas" advice is sound, yet throwing up fake landing pages, day in day out, until I hit gold, is just something I can't get excited about. My version of validation has been build a prototype and show it to people or, the much more dangerous, "I know people will want this because [insert something that has changed]." I'm certainly taking more risk by spending more time on each idea to, arguably, get worse data, but at least I'm enjoying doing it. Taking what you've said into account, there is also less of a chance that I end up with a product that I am not passionate about.