Hi there -
Here is this week’s “1 principle, 2 strategies, and 3 actionable tactics” for running lean…
1 Universal Principle
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”
The CloudFire story proves this painfully well. After building one zombie product (6Degrees), I thought I’d learned my lesson. But CloudFire’s business model collapsed in under 5 minutes when an investor friend asked me to show how the math worked.
Nine months of development were wasted because I hadn’t stress-tested my business model first.
Here’s the expensive reality:
Most founders don’t realize they’re building a zombie startup until it’s too late, often getting stuck with products that work perfectly but have fundamentally broken business models.
2 Underlying Strategies at Play
I. Define Your Non-Negotiable Mission First
You'll probably remember Steve.
He had a bold vision to build the next metaverse platform, but was executing like a weekend hobby project. Through mission stress-testing, he defined clear minimum success criteria and aligned his validation strategy accordingly.
II. Stress-test Your Business Model Before Building
Steve transformed from having a confusing 47-slide deck and $50/month pricing to a clear one-page Lean Canvas and $5,000/month viable model.
The stress testing process took hours, rather than months, of expensive trial and error.
This is one of the biggest ROI you can realize as a founder.
3 Actionable Tactics
I. Stress Test for Desirability
Focus on clear, specific, and familiar customer problems rather than cool features. Steve shifted from pitching tech features to addressing architects’ daily struggles, resulting in 15 qualified calls in 2 weeks.
II. Validate Pricing Early
Don’t treat pricing as an arbitrary number - it’s one of your riskiest assumptions. Steve increased his price from $50/month to $5,000/month after proper testing and closed 12 out of 15 architects.
III. Build Defensibility From Day One
Plant seeds for unfair advantages early. Steve identified network effects as his moat and immediately began testing it with his first customers, building a valuable user-generated library of 3D assets.
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. Ready to stress-test your startup idea? Take my business model design challenge where I’ll walk you through all 7 stress-test dimensions that determine whether your idea is worth pursuing. It’s the same systematic approach that’s helped thousands of founders avoid building zombie startups.
P.P.S. Check out this week’s video: Don’t Build a Zombie Startup
