This week I've been sharing 7 visual threads of key takeaways from 7 different sources on the Startup Illustrated Twitter. I've compiled and expanded them further in this week's newsletter of Startup Illustrated.
Here is an excerpt of one of the most popular threads!
Source: The Bootstrapped Founder Podcast by Arvid Kahl - Episode 62: Avoiding the Validation Trap
The hypothesis for your product will naturally be built on a lot of assumptions.
Instead of painting a beautiful picture which people will not say "no" to, find ways which their actions or workflow invalidates the assumptions you hold.
Only then can you come closer to knowing if your product will fit in their lives.
It is the process of taking away everything that does not work.
The solution which you ended up with might be different from what was intended. However, it will be one that is actually useful to the people who need it.
As you talk to more customers, your hypothesis will contain less and less assumptions. However, it will never be able to be assumption free as any enterprise worth undertaking will have you dabbling in creating something new.
Aiming to get rid of uncertainty will result in us conciously or unconciously gravitate towards trying to validate the idea instead of us attempting to invalidate our assumptions.
We should all work towards reducing the amount of uncertainty as much as possible rather than getting rid of it completely.
If you tell them the ideal product where everything is working perfectly, no one will say no to using it. However, that is not helpful in knowing if it will be an actually useful product.
Observe their actions and questions and it will provide you insight into if your product will fit into their lives and processes which is infinitely more useful than a promise that they will use your product if it function perfectly.
If you'd like to read the full piece, you can check it out here: https://www.startupillustrated.com/Archive/42-illustrated-takeaways/
If you have any questions, queries, or comments at all, my DMs are open at my Twitter and the Startup Illustrated Twitter!
This is amazing Bryan! What tool did you use to build these?
Thank you!
I actually hand-drew the illustrations on an old Surface Pro 3.