the-napkin-style sketch to help everyone understand what you’re talking about. Don’t spend more than five minutes on it.

Go for the gorilla Whether you have lots of competitors or just a few, you should pay special attention to the strongest, toughest, biggest alternative—the eight-hundred-pound gorilla that wants to solve your customers’ problem.

So, tell me: Who’s your customer? What problem are you solving for them? These

Here are some techniques to help you drop everything, whether you’re planning a Foundation Sprint or any focused burst of work:

We looked for patterns in the most successful projects we’ve seen firsthand as designers and investors. We realized these patterns could help any kind of big new project—not just startups. So we reverse-engineered those patterns into a new sprint format that we call the Foundation Sprint. We call it the Foundation Sprint because it creates the

Why couldn’t all projects start this way? Why couldn’t every team block distractions and focus on the most valuable core of their work?

7. Seek alternatives to your first idea.

Make a Mini Manifesto Put your project principles and the 2x2 differentiation chart together, and you’ve got what I call the Mini Manifesto.

You can do the same. Start with a Foundation Sprint. Put your customer at the center and define what you can do for them. Test this Founding Hypothesis in Design Sprints until your solution clicks. Then build it, launch it, and solve an important problem for real people.