The New Business Road Test

How large is this segment, and how fast is it growing?

it encourages the customer to tell you things you do not know to ask and that they would not otherwise think to tell you, helping you learn what you don’t know you don’t know.

you need to be clear about your mission, aspirations and risk propensity before you launch a lean start-up, before you write a business plan, and before you approach prospective investors.

Rather than asking first about the customer’s needs, any shortcomings or unmet or poorly met needs in the way they do things now, you’ve jumped right into ‘me’ or ‘my idea’. Doing so too quickly can inhibit your learning about alternative solutions to the customer’s problem, some of which might be slight tweaks of your idea or even something comple

Schultz was happy bringing on ‘people smarter than me’ and letting them do what they’d been hired to do. As Schultz puts it: “There’s a common mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make. They own the idea, and they have the passion to pursue it. But they can’t possibly possess all the skills needed to make the idea actually happen. Reluctant to delegate,

In order to understand your opportunity in micro-market terms and to demonstrate that your customers will really buy, it is essential to become intimately familiar with the needs of the target segment or segments most likely to purchase your product. Embarking on a lean start-up is one way to gain the familiarity you need. Better yet, you’ll want a

There’s no enthusiasm for the drinking yogurt idea here – just an enquiry about the respondent’s between-meal behaviour; In fact, there’s no mention of the idea at all – that will come later, as the second grand tour question; It’s not a leading question, and lets the respondent begin wherever they wish and wander as far afield as they like; The qu

It’s not about you. It’s not about your revolutionary products or services. Successful entrepreneurial ventures are about serving customers and their needs and resolving their pain. Not just any customers. Target customers. It’s about providing differentiated benefits that are so compelling that customers abandon their allegiance to former provider

That’s why many astute entrepreneurs are building customer-funded business models, in which the initial cash the company needs is provided by customers so eager for what the new company offers that they’re willing to pay for it, sometimes in advance, whether on Kickstarter or in other settings. We explore these kinds of models in more detail in Cha