Flipping perspective and doing the opposite can sometime unlock deeper insights.
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Prove that our idea sucks, no one cares and that other products are better than others.
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Most modern post “Lean Startup” wisdom suggests that entrepreneurs should “validate their idea” usually by building an Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This is dangerous advice that I myself have fallen for, costing me tens of thousands of dollars and years of my life.
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![Video preview](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cKUvKE3bQlY/hqdefault.jpg)
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This advice has people looking for evidence that your idea solves a meaningful problem for some people. The prevailing wisdom has us “building pain killers and not vitamins” in a “good market”. We are “talking to our customers” to “achieve product market fit” by “doing things that don’t scale” so that we can “cross the chasm” from early adopters to mainstream success.
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![“It's all a fugazi.” - Wolf of Wall Street](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2F620d0182-e1ed-49e3-a73d-c4e65822de23%2Fwolf-of-wall-street-mm.gif?table=block&id=41fe83c4-5acb-4a3f-8775-1bed5da4ee84&cache=v2)
Rather than searching for feedback that our idea and product are great future unicorns, lets do the opposite:
Prove the market is bad, my product sucks, my business plan is a flawed and that I’m the wrong person to run this business.
If I can’t prove this, then I just may have a good business
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Next Steps:
Compare your company’s progress against our list of reasons your company will fail.
A Checklist for Startup FailureRead more
Disprove the null hypothesis that your company is doing to fail
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