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142: Lean Testing Method - Validate Business Ideas with AI Before Ever Building the Product
Get AI-Ready with Kyle’s 5-Day Challenge: https://aiwithkyle.com/join
Kyle’s AI Canon — Curated list of AI learning essentials: https://aiwithkyle.com/ai-canon
Subscribe and turn on notifications to catch the next live stream: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlLglbHDASnoGkbjDeHnQg
This video is from the ‘AI with Kyle Live Stream’
First aired: 13 February 2026
Summary: Friday the 13th and I'm walking through something I've been chatting about loads on my socials lately—how to actually validate a business idea before you waste months building something nobody wants. It's called Lean Testing, borrowed from the Lean Startup methodology, and with AI we can now test ideas ridiculously quickly. The concept is beautifully simple: flip the entire process around. Instead of building in secret for six months, polishing everything to perfection, then launching to crickets, you sell the thing first and build it after you know people actually want it. Sounds backwards, feels backwards, but it works.
I walked through my actual setup from yesterday—the sales pages, the Meta ads, the whole flow—showing how you can test multiple variations of an idea without touching a line of code or building the actual product. The beautiful part is you avoid that soul-crushing moment where you've poured your heart into something and the market just shrugs. I also got into some chat about the current AI coding landscape—Codex 5.3 is genuinely brilliant, first time I've seen something match Claude Code—and Google's Chrome AI assistant which is quietly positioning them rather well in this race. But the core message: talk to your market before you build anything. Revolutionary concept, apparently.
—— Time Stamps ——
0:00 What is Lean Testing? Validate Business Ideas with AI
1:38 The #1 Mistake That Kills First-Time Businesses
3:22 The Inverted Method: Launch Before You Build
4:22 Step 1: Generate Testable Ideas Using AI
6:13 Why Your Idea Doesn't Need to Be Perfect Yet
7:37 Step 2: Build AI Sales Pages Instead of Products
8:03 Live Example: AI-Generated Sales Page Walkthrough
8:47 Creating Multiple Sales Page Variations for A/B Testing
10:17 Live A/B Test Results Using PostHog Analytics
13:01 Best Tools for AI Sales Pages (Codex, Lovable, Claude Code)
15:04 Email Waitlist vs Taking Payment: Which Signal Wins?
16:15 How to Handle Pre-Sale Refunds Ethically
18:06 Step 3: Run Meta Ads to Validate Your Offer
19:44 Why Meta Ads Beat Google and LinkedIn for Testing
20:26 Meta Ad Budget: The £20/Day Validation Strategy
22:17 Live Campaign: 8 Ad Variants Tested in 2 Days
25:05 Building an Audience vs Paid Ads: When to Use Each
25:57 Video Ad Scripts: Let AI Write Them, You Record
28:54 How to Validate a Business Idea in One Day
29:47 Step 4: Setting Success & Failure Metrics Before You Test
30:41 Key Metrics: Cost Per Click, Email, and Purchase
32:20 Scenario A: Test Passes — Now Build Your Product
34:37 Scenario B: Test Fails — Kill It and Move On
35:35 The Lean Startup Mindset & Sony Walkman Story
37:13 Don't Build Products, Test Offers
38:31 Velocity Over Ego: Why Your Ideas Don't Matter
40:31 Test One Business Idea Per Day Using AI
41:58 Q&A: Is Gumroad Worth It for Digital Products?
43:47 Q&A: Why Competition is Good (Blue Ocean is Wrong)
46:14 Q&A: How Meta Collects Demographic Data for Targeting
48:30 Q&A: Ex-OpenAI Employee Says They're Stealing Your Data
49:36 Q&A: Claude Code vs Codex 5.3 — Which Coding Tool Wins?
—— More Useful Resources ——
Find everything else at https://aiwithkyle.com/
View all episodes
By Kyle BalmerGet AI-Ready with Kyle’s 5-Day Challenge: https://aiwithkyle.com/join
Kyle’s AI Canon — Curated list of AI learning essentials: https://aiwithkyle.com/ai-canon
Subscribe and turn on notifications to catch the next live stream: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlLglbHDASnoGkbjDeHnQg
This video is from the ‘AI with Kyle Live Stream’
First aired: 13 February 2026
Summary: Friday the 13th and I'm walking through something I've been chatting about loads on my socials lately—how to actually validate a business idea before you waste months building something nobody wants. It's called Lean Testing, borrowed from the Lean Startup methodology, and with AI we can now test ideas ridiculously quickly. The concept is beautifully simple: flip the entire process around. Instead of building in secret for six months, polishing everything to perfection, then launching to crickets, you sell the thing first and build it after you know people actually want it. Sounds backwards, feels backwards, but it works.
I walked through my actual setup from yesterday—the sales pages, the Meta ads, the whole flow—showing how you can test multiple variations of an idea without touching a line of code or building the actual product. The beautiful part is you avoid that soul-crushing moment where you've poured your heart into something and the market just shrugs. I also got into some chat about the current AI coding landscape—Codex 5.3 is genuinely brilliant, first time I've seen something match Claude Code—and Google's Chrome AI assistant which is quietly positioning them rather well in this race. But the core message: talk to your market before you build anything. Revolutionary concept, apparently.
—— Time Stamps ——
0:00 What is Lean Testing? Validate Business Ideas with AI
1:38 The #1 Mistake That Kills First-Time Businesses
3:22 The Inverted Method: Launch Before You Build
4:22 Step 1: Generate Testable Ideas Using AI
6:13 Why Your Idea Doesn't Need to Be Perfect Yet
7:37 Step 2: Build AI Sales Pages Instead of Products
8:03 Live Example: AI-Generated Sales Page Walkthrough
8:47 Creating Multiple Sales Page Variations for A/B Testing
10:17 Live A/B Test Results Using PostHog Analytics
13:01 Best Tools for AI Sales Pages (Codex, Lovable, Claude Code)
15:04 Email Waitlist vs Taking Payment: Which Signal Wins?
16:15 How to Handle Pre-Sale Refunds Ethically
18:06 Step 3: Run Meta Ads to Validate Your Offer
19:44 Why Meta Ads Beat Google and LinkedIn for Testing
20:26 Meta Ad Budget: The £20/Day Validation Strategy
22:17 Live Campaign: 8 Ad Variants Tested in 2 Days
25:05 Building an Audience vs Paid Ads: When to Use Each
25:57 Video Ad Scripts: Let AI Write Them, You Record
28:54 How to Validate a Business Idea in One Day
29:47 Step 4: Setting Success & Failure Metrics Before You Test
30:41 Key Metrics: Cost Per Click, Email, and Purchase
32:20 Scenario A: Test Passes — Now Build Your Product
34:37 Scenario B: Test Fails — Kill It and Move On
35:35 The Lean Startup Mindset & Sony Walkman Story
37:13 Don't Build Products, Test Offers
38:31 Velocity Over Ego: Why Your Ideas Don't Matter
40:31 Test One Business Idea Per Day Using AI
41:58 Q&A: Is Gumroad Worth It for Digital Products?
43:47 Q&A: Why Competition is Good (Blue Ocean is Wrong)
46:14 Q&A: How Meta Collects Demographic Data for Targeting
48:30 Q&A: Ex-OpenAI Employee Says They're Stealing Your Data
49:36 Q&A: Claude Code vs Codex 5.3 — Which Coding Tool Wins?
—— More Useful Resources ——
Find everything else at https://aiwithkyle.com/