I hate it when a founder says they "talked to customers about a startup idea". If a startup is just an idea, then how can it also have customers? Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking, which drives…
How valuable is your startup idea? Nascent is a measurement strategy for startups with no customers. This episode presents a crucial step in valuing an idea: connecting the emotions revealed in…
Founders want customers, but ironically, the best way to get customers is by seeing the world in reverse. What kind of people are customers BEFORE they buy? Why do people pay money in the first place?…
When founders analyze discovery interviews, they trick themselves. Entrepreneurs today are like medieval bakers judging an oven by feel and then despairing when the bread comes out burnt or raw.…
Advice from legendary entrepreneurs doesn't work for the rest of us because the legends have an innate sense for good startup ideas that they can't explain. We can't mimic their intuition but we can…
When founders run discovery interviews, they don't know what they're searching for, so they don't know if they found it. Here's the most important quality to extract from an interview: Is there any…
Founders WASTE a year on bad startup ideas because they struggle to answer the question "How can I make sense of what interviewees tell me?". Today, founders typically evaluate responses using the…
A key reason that founders WASTE a year on bad startup ideas is that they accept low-quality data that they'd NEVER accept elsewhere. Specifically, founders "capture" data from discovery interviews…
This is a follow-up episode in response to a listener question regarding Episode 022. The listener asked: Isn't searching for People in Pain just marketing? No. Marketing deploys the knowledge a…
