Product Discovery

The resonance of many profound creative pieces stems from a deep understanding of the human condition; and to get there the creative process necessitates a significant amount of trial and error.

Founders spoke to a median of 30 potential customers to validate their idea before committing.

Most of us have pre-ordered a book before. I’ve sold every single one of my courses before I did all of the course production work. Plenty of products are bought and then made to order (think Dell computers, custom cars, and even Boeing airplanes). Many startups concierge test their ideas before they start building—this means they sell and manually... See more

I noticed four distinct paths to effectively validating a startup idea:

1. The do-it-manually path: Don’t build anything—solve the problem manually first, for a small number of companies


2. The listening path: First talk to tons of potential users, and then start building


3. The prototype path: Start building a prototype and then co-create it with a small n

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Express the opportunity as a customer problem and work backwards. What has to be true for the opportunity to exist? Now take each of those assumptions and ask what are the main assumptions behind them ? Repeat until you’re reached the root assumptions. This is similar to the 5 Whys. Working your way back up from the bottom identify evidence that su... See more

The Best Approach: Ask Customers to Pay Right Now

A Better Approach: Run a Demand Test

We can simulate the buying experience and see if it resonates with people. We can mock up our pricing page including our different packages, what is included with each package, how the pricing will work (e.g. monthly, annual, subscriptions, one-time payments, etc.) and the price for each package. The goal is to ... See more

No matter which path you take, you are looking for two things: pain and pull . Pain tells you there’s an opportunity to solve a problem, and that it’s important. Pull tells you that you’re actually solving the problem.

Here’s what pain and pull look like in practice:

1. People pay you money: Several people start to (or offer to) pay for your early product, ideally people you don’t have a direct connection to.


2. Strong emotion: You’re hearing hatred for the incumbents (i.e. pain) or a deep and strong emotional reaction to your idea (i.e. pull).


3. Cold inbound interest: Y

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