Building in Public: Entrepreneurial Hypothesis Testing aka Who Ya Gonna Call?
Who do you trust — and why do you trust them?
HEAVY, I know.
This was top of mind for me as I was working through the idea of building my own company, namely: “Who can I talk to about this?”
The easy, comforting thing is to ask family. “Great idea! So smart. Handsome too.” Thank you, but unhelpful.
Barring the people who are predisposed to support you, who do you turn to? Your network. (Oh my god, all the articles, LinkedIn posts, and business books were right. 22-year-old me is stunned.)
Having competent, successful people you trust — who challenge your ideas, provide honest feedback, and offer support — is invaluable. Now that I had an idea that had risen to the level of “Could this actually work?” I wanted to test it across different layers of my network and see if it made it through.
The hypothesis that kicked off this whole venture was this: Public media stations, and non-profits in general, are drowning in data but lack the staff and expertise to use it effectively. Many can’t afford a full-time data expert — but maybe, at a fraction of that cost, I could fill the gap.
So how did I go about testing this idea?
What was my actual process? Big LinkedIn post, tagging everyone I knew, asking for opinions in broad daylight? Maybe a mass email, Bcc’ing everyone, and asking for feedback?
No — I had to be more strategic and targeted than that. If nothing else, in case this turned out to be a terrible idea, I wanted some plausible deniability. Tough to do when you’ve asked everyone to weigh in.
At the top of my mind were these key questions I needed to answer:
What are the nuts and bolts of starting a company?
How do you create a consultancy?
Is this a good, valuable, or useful idea?
Who is my target market, and what am I selling them?
Am I filling an actual gap, or a perceived one?
What early mistakes have others made that I can avoid?
Is this a feasible path forward?
I then identified who could best answer these questions — and who might raise others I hadn’t considered. I built a mini-CRM in Notion to track everything: who I was talking to, when, an associated page for each contact to take detailed notes, a top-level sheet to aggregate key insights, and a structured list of 20 questions. These questions helped guide the conversations and allowed me to compare responses across different people to identify commonalities and differences.
I reached out to people individually and asked, more or less: “I’ve got this idea I’m thinking about, and I’d love to get your take on it. Do you have some time to talk in the next few weeks?”
One mistake I made? Not having a scheduling app ready. The back-and-forth of setting up calls was a headache. Do yourself a favor and set up an appointment schedule in Google Calendar — it’s free.
The Four Layers of Validation
As I mapped out my network, it naturally sorted into four layers:
The Consultants & Entrepreneurs — The people who have already done this/are currently doing this.
Public Media & Non-Profit Consultants — Those who have successfully consulted within this space.
PBS HQ Staff — The bird’s-eye view. Is there a gap worth filling?
PBS Local Station Staff — The people who would hire me. Would they pay for this?
The thinking was that I would start with the consultants and entrepreneurs I knew, then progress through the rest of the layers in order. If my idea ran into serious pushback at any level, I could step back to re-evaluate and try again — or just pull the plug.
First Layer: The Consultants & Entrepreneurs
These are the experts in the field that I’m lucky enough to know — successful in a multitude of ways. These are people whose opinions I trust and value. So it was important to get a temperature check on my idea from this group first; if I was met with a “Wow… sounds great, Joe 😐.” then I knew this was likely a pipe dream.
What I heard from those conversations was encouraging: there was a therethere — but at the same time, a word of caution that this isn’t necessarily the easiest path forward. That it can be rewarding but often lonely.
I walked away with a clearer picture of what it meant to actually run a consultancy: the freedom, the instability, the constant balancing act between getting work and doing work. But the big takeaway? This could work — if I did it right.
Second Layer: The Public Media Consultants
So my idea was not routinely panned — but the people I spoke to in that first round were in different aspects of this industry than I was planning to work in. Non-profits, and public media specifically, are unique institutions and present their own challenges.
So, I spoke to people who had done it. The ones who had carved out successful consulting careers inside public media. This layer helped me refine my pitch. If I wanted ELK Strategies to work, I had to sell the outcome— not just the analytics.
Third Layer: Inside the Building (PBS HQ)
Now that I’d successfully passed through the first two layers, I was ready to tackle the third — HQ.
The goal here was twofold:
Reality check — Validate my idea with people who live and breathe this ecosystem.
Seeding the idea — Start planting the seed that I would soon be available.
I spoke with a handful of former colleagues who have a bird’s-eye view of the ecosystem. Besides the benefit of reconnecting (which is always great), I wanted their perspective on three key questions:
In your opinion, as someone deeply connected in this space, is there room for me?
Is this something that stations may actually need?
What specific gaps do you see where I could provide value?
The feedback was promising and reinforced my initial hypothesis: there was a gap. Many stations had data but weren’t using it effectively. Others had important questions but lacked the time, staff, or expertise to dig into the answers.
The biggest insight? A clear confirmation — there was room for an independent consultant to step in and provide additional support in data strategy and analytics.
Fourth Layer: The Stations
Step four: Would anyone pay for this?
It didn’t matter if I thought this was a great idea. It didn’t matter if the consultants, the public media veterans, or even PBS HQ thought it was viable. If stations — the people who would hire me — didn’t see value, this whole thing was a fantasy.
So, I talked to station folks I trusted. The ones who would give me real answers.
The key question: If I started this business, would you hire me?
And I got something better than a polite “That sounds interesting.”
I got real interest:
“We’ve needed something like this for years.”
“We don’t have the budget for a full-time data person, but we could use this kind of help.”
“When are you starting?”
This was the last, crucial validation. If I was going to take the leap, I needed to be sure I wasn’t jumping into an empty void.
What About You?
If you’re testing an idea, who are your trusted layers of validation? I’d love to hear your thoughts — reach out to me at hello@elkstrategies.co and let’s continue the conversation.
If you’re struggling with data strategy or analytics, let’s talk. Whether you need help making sense of your data, building a reporting framework, or figuring out where to start, I can help. Schedule a call today.
