The Business Masterclass Series

Market Validation

First Tuesday, 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., Wachholz Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, Kalispell

Scaling without validation risks wasted time, money, and opportunity. This session shows entrepreneurs how to test demand, refine offerings, and ensure fit before investing in growth.

What the class covers

  • Apply market validation techniques (customer interviews, prototypes, surveys, pilots).
  • Analyze real data to confirm demand.
  • Decide when to pivot, persevere, or pause.

What you will work through

  • Industry analysis and market analysis, and the difference between them
  • Segmentation by sector, geography, feature, price, and channel
  • Jobs To Be Done, and the four forces that move a buyer or hold him still
  • The buyer timeline, from first thought through active looking to purchase
  • Minimum viable product, run as build, measure, learn
  • The research tools a Montana owner can reach: IBISWorld, Statista, PitchBook, Crunchbase

What you take home

  • Customer interview guide.
  • Validation experiment design template.
  • Metrics dashboard for measuring demand.

Who this class is for

Startup founders, product managers, and small business owners preparing to launch or scale new offerings.