He missed to most important way to start testing your hypotheses: go talk to customers
How to evaluate and implement startup ideas using Hypothesis Driven Development
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Re: How to evaluate and implement startup ideas using Hypothesis Driven Development
#12splitting a project in small steps and moving from step to step based on results analysis is something i've suggested even for contracting web projects
Re: How to evaluate and implement startup ideas using Hypothesis Driven Development
#13He missed to most important way to start testing your hypotheses: go talk to customers
I wasn't listing out ways to resolve the hypotheses, just a method for using hypotheses to drive the startup. Talking to potential customers is obviously an essential step in resolving questions like "what features are people willing to pay for?" or "will people be willing to pay anything for this?"
Re: How to evaluate and implement startup ideas using Hypothesis Driven Development
#14Some hypotheses missing from Daniel's list:
o customer problem or need
o symptoms that indicate customer problem or need
o description of benefits that customer will understand
o features to support benefits / solution customer will accept
Asking a friend, "What do you think of my idea?" is almost completely useless.
Asking a friend (or someone else who isn’t as biased as your friend,
"Do you have this problem, and how painful is it?" is a much more useful query.Re: How to evaluate and implement startup ideas using Hypothesis Driven Development
#15Some hypotheses missing from Daniel's list: o customer problem or need o symptoms that indicate customer problem or need o description of benefits that customer will understand o features to support benefits / solution customer will accept See also Ben Yoskovitz's "Useless Feedback" at http://www.instigatorblog.com/useless-feedback/2010/06/14/ which begins: Asking a friend, "What do you think of my idea?" is almost c…
Another useful method of opinion getting I have found to be useful, is to directly beg/ask for criticism.
"Please tell me all the bad things you can think about this idea." "Please tell me all the reasons you think this idea will not gain traction and will fail" "Please tell em why quitting my job to pursue this idea is a bad thing"
Questions that openly invite criticism are useful, since I think people think more imaginatively when they are being critical ... there are only so many ways to say nice things about something, but the insults can come from anywhere.
More than just finding fault with the idea, you will find assumptions you had implicitly made being challenged. So even if the idea is good, it might still be a bad idea to pursue it, lest you end up with a "the operation was a success, but the patient died" scenario.
If you have a cofounder, take it in turns, over two days, to defend/attack the idea. Defend your idea like Fort Knox on day one, and then attack it like it owes you money on day two.