From Idea to Signal: Validate Your Startup Idea With Real Conversations
Outreach isn't only about booking meetings. It's the fastest way to find out if the business in your head matches the market in the real world. And it should start way earlier than you think, before the website, before the deck, before there's even a company. In this live session, Draper Sturdivant, GTM Lead at Forum Ventures Studio, walks through the exact process he runs with studio founders, from the first validation message to a simple AI system that makes it repeatable.
What you'll learn
How to name the riskiest assumption in your business and design outreach to test it
Why your ICP is a hypothesis, and how to find the person who owns the problem every week
The questions that make buyers talk, and what to listen for
Why you can start outreach with just an idea, and how to reach out when there's nothing to sell yet
How to set up one AI project with four simple docs so it actually knows your business
How to turn manual outreach into saved workflows that find, score, and draft messages in your voice, using free or low-cost tools
Who this is for
Folks with a startup idea that want to validate it before taking the leap to start
Founders who have never run validation outreach and want a clear place to start.
Founders who've tried AI tools but keep getting generic messages and dead ends.
What you'll leave with
A plan to test one assumption with 10 real people this week. After the session, all registrants get the recording and Draper's starter templates.
About Draper
Draper Sturdivant is GTM Lead at Forum Ventures Studio. He has run go-to-market for 20 studio companies and sent thousands of validation messages.
About The Foundry
The Foundry: Forum's Studio Sprint is a five-week program where idea-stage founders validate their startup concept alongside Forum's studio team, with a $250K investment available to strong candidates. Cohort 5 starts November 9th. Apply at https://www.forumvc.com/the-foundry-studio-sprint