Startups go through these phases
Problem
Most early-stage startups think they lack product-market fit
Most early-stage startups actually lack
Customer-problem fit or problem-solution fit
Business model-fit is easy if you have the two above
Each fit requires different experiments to learn different things
⚠️ Disclaimer: The steps in the playbook suggest a logical order. The startup process is far from sequential and predictable. This is the happy flow, your mileage may vary. Consider this a list of milestones to hit that are most easily explained in this order.
📕 The playbook
1. Find potential customers | Customer-problem fit
🎯 Goal: Validate your super-specific niche to focus on
🧠 Mindset: You are not going to help everyone. Serving one segment is already hard enough
Understand problems & jobs to be done
Select your beachhead market (your super specific niche)
Think about the market sizes (but don’t go overboard)
Can’t pick the right problem to solve? Book a session with me!
2. Land a free pilot | problem-solution fit
🎯 Goal: Validate that your solution works
🧠 Mindset: What does it take to make my customer super happy?
Designing your pilot
Landing your pilot
Observing if your pilot works
Issues with selling your pilot? Book a session with me!
3. Sell a paid pilot | Business model fit
🎯 Goal: Validate that you can capture that value
🧠 Mindset: What is the simplest business model to pull this startup off?
Design your revenue model
Define your to-market strategy
Design and validate the rest of your business model
Create a value system schema of your first business model in this toolkit
Do a sanity check on missing parts by filling in the lean canvas
Issues with getting paid for your pilot? Book a session with me!
4. Scalable sales | Product-market fit
🎯 Goal: Validate marketing channels that you can repeat easily
🧠 Mindset: First do things that don’t scale, then scale them. Grind.
Identify potential marketing channels
Most likely: cold calling, LinkedIn outreach, Social/Google Ads
Likely to avoid: SEO (expensive, long term), Influencer
Create a list of your top 3 best potential channels
Run marketing experiments
Things that might become important here
Raising money (FFF, angel, VC you name it)
Having your financials in order (proper overview and forecasting)
Branding and communications
[to be continued]
Issues with getting to product-market fit? Book a session with me!
Simple is beautiful!
Very well explained. I am an intrapreneur, and am taking precisely this route.
Reading this helped my confidence a lot! Thanks for sharing.