Eric Ries

The more pertinent questions are “Should this product be built?” and “Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?”

I come across many startups that are struggling to answer the following questions: Which customer opinions should we listen to, if any? How should we prioritize across the many features we could build? Which features are essential to the product’s success and which are ancillary? What can be changed safely, and what might anger customers? What might please today’s customers at the expense of tomorrow’s? What should we work on next

begins with a clear hypothesis that makes predictions about what is supposed to happen. It then tests those predictions empirically.

The two most important assumptions entrepreneurs make are what I call the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis

The value hypothesis tests whether a product or service really delivers value to customers once they are using it.

For the growth hypothesis, which tests how new customers will discover a product or service

I try to push my team to first answer four questions:

1. Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve?

2. If there was a solution, would they buy it?

3. Would they buy it from us?

4. Can we build a solution for that problem?”

These two hypotheses represent two of the most important leap-of-faith questions any new startup faces.3

The first challenge for an entrepreneur is to build an organization that can test these assumptions systematically. The second challenge, as in all entrepreneurial situations, is to perform that rigorous testing without losing sight of the company’s overall vision.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with basing strategy on comparisons to other companies and industries. In fact, that approach can help you discover assumptions that are not really leaps of faith