We're taking part in FAU's Tech Runway Venture Program. To kick things off, they're having the participants go through a program known as I-Corps. It's an education process centered around the Business Model Canvas and conducting a TON of interviews.
We were questioning how much we were going to get out of it considering we started our business by conducting customer interviews with anyone we could get a hold of. We spent months learning and applying those insights to the product we were building. How much more more new information could we find?
Turns out...a lot.
I'm a big fan of this program. It's not about bucketing your ideas on a sheet to get them out of your head. It's more than that. It's about establishing your ideas as guesses and testing them.
It's applying the scientific method to your business idea.
This is an efficient way of determining if you are right or wrong in your assumptions and if you should move in a particular direction.
Aside from organizing your thoughts correctly into the canvas, the basic premise is this...
1. Define your guesses as specifically as you can.
Ex. Our primary end user is a business operations manager at a small to medium size digital marketing agency with a growth mindset and a focus on employee satisfaction. The main value we can offer them is time-savings.
2. Test your guesses by talking to your specific end user over and over again. By asking the right questions (Reference the book Talking to Humans), you'll be able to find your answers.
3. Iterate and move forward. Either confirm or deny your guesses and continue moving forward.
Applying this method over and over again will keep you honest while building your business. Rather than relying on a hunch that you're building a solution to a problem (that people will pay for), you can get the facts.
If you're working on a project, side-hustle, startup, give this method a try. Best-case you'll have improved your prospects of success. Worst-case, you have a better understanding of your customer's problem and if your intended solution fits.