Eric Ries

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

There are two ever-present dangers when entrepreneurs conduct market research and talk to customers. Followers of the just-do-it school of entrepreneurship are impatient to get started and don’t want to spend time analyzing their strategy.

Other entrepreneurs can fall victim to analysis paralysis, endlessly refining their plans.

Unfortunately, most of these errors cannot be detected at the whiteboard because they depend on the subtle interactions between products and customers.

we must focus our energies exclusively on producing outcomes that the customer perceives as valuable. Allowing sloppy work into our process inevitably leads to excessive variation

we must focus our energies exclusively on producing outcomes that the customer perceives as valuable. Allowing sloppy work into our process inevitably leads to excessive variation

In a startup, this is a risky assumption to make. Often we are not even sure who the customer is. Thus, for startups, I believe in the following quality principle: