AKA the X step process to showing that your business idea doesn’t suck

The null hypothesis is that no one will use your product and no one cares about your company.

“70% of upstart tech companies fail — usually around 20 months after first raising financing” (CB Insights) and, in general, 90% of start-ups fail (Forbes)

Top 12 reasons found by CB Insights (and aggregated into three buckets by me)

• 75% Flawed Business Model / Regulatory Challenges / Ran out of cash
• 45% No Market Need or wrong timing
• 47% Bad execution: wrong team, poor product, out competed or burned out
• Further Reading

<aside> 💡 If we can test the Market Need and Business Model, perhaps we can increase the probability of success from 10% to over 50%!

</aside>

If we can test out ideas quickly enough and cheaply enough, then we test several ideas before we find one that works.

How is this different than just following the Lean Startup or building an MVP?

<aside> 💡 Do not try to show you have a GOOD IDEA, you prove that it is NOT A BAD IDEA

</aside>

The biggest issue with most of these approaches is that that all want to VALIDATE your idea. Essentially you have a thing and you talk to users to see if they like the thing.