Hi there -
Here is this week’s “1 principle, 2 strategies, and 3 actionable tactics” for running lean…
1 Universal Principle
“You don’t need perfect validation. You need minimum success criteria.”
The secret to making good evidence-based decisions isn't aiming for vague, ambitious goals, but realistic minimum goals.
Not hitting the first leads to disappointment and confusion. But not hitting the second leads to learning and healthy pivots or course corrections.
2 Underlying Strategies at Play
I. Define Your Minimum Success Criteria BEFORE You Start, Not After
At every stage of the journey, ask what’s the smallest (not largest) outcome you need to acquire to deem your project as still-alive. Your outcome needs to be specific, measurable, and tied to the only metric that matters in a startup: traction.
Model out your minimum success criteria at 3 levels: 1. Founder (3-year goal), 2. 90-day cycle, and 3. Experiment (2 weeks or less).
Coincidentally, I'll be sharing how LEANSpark (our AI co-founder) does this tomorrow in my over-the-shoulder product launch series. If you're interested and not already getting this series, you can register here.
II. Use The Customer Factory To Break Down Traction Into Measurable Steps
Before you earn money from a customer, you have to earn their trust, and before you earn their trust, you have to earn their attention.
You earn attention at the acquisition step. You earn trust at the activation step. And you earn revenue at the revenue step. There’s a fourth currency you can earn, too, which is goodwill or referrals.
The sub-metrics help you convert revenue and customers into something more tangible and measurable at every level.
3 Actionable Tactics
I. Avoid The Three Validation Traps
Trap #1: Confusing Learning with Traction - If you can’t convert learning into meaningful and repeatable traction, that’s not the right kind of learning.
Trap #2: Waiting for Statistical Significance - When 10 out of 10 people tell you they don’t want your product, that is not only statistically significant, but if you ask them why, it becomes readily obvious what you need to do next. When you have a limited startup runway, you can’t afford to wait for statistical significance.
Trap #3: Over-Planning - Spending months creating pixel-perfect pitch decks, 5-year financial models, comprehensive competitive analysis, and elaborate business plans. This isn’t “being thorough.” This is analysis paralysis disguised as validation.
II. Start With Founder/Model Fit, Not Product First
A key mistake is asking how big your idea can get, but founder-level minimum success criteria have nothing to do with your idea. It starts with sizing up your personal goal or ambition—independent of your product. Why would you ever work on a project that couldn’t hit your minimum goal?
Most people launch a product, then search for a business model, and many get disappointed when it doesn’t hit their minimum success criteria. This is backward.
Define your founder-level minimum success criteria first, then search for ideas and business models that can hit your goal, and ignore everything else. This is where business model stress-testing comes in—it’s the first step to see if your idea is even worth pursuing in the first place.
If you haven't done this yet with your idea, take the BMD Challenge
III. Visualize Your Minimum Success Criteria As The Water Level
The power of minimum, not maximum success criteria is that these numbers are the floor, not the ceiling.
Is it okay to be underwater? We can hold our breath for some time underwater, but not for too long. Similarly, most experiments start out underperforming our goal, but it’s our job to quickly get them above water before they run out of resources.
The goal here isn’t avoiding failing because that’s impossible to do in a startup, but rather being able to tell as early as possible when something is headed down the wrong path—so you can pivot and course-correct before it’s really too late.
That’s all for today. See you next week.
Ash Author of Running Lean and creator of Lean Canvas
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P.S.
Check out this week's video: [How to Know When You Have Enough Validation (Without Wasting 6 Months)
