Test the risky stuff

I talked to an entrepreneur recently who is starting a coffee business and was doing a lot of tastings to get feedback from customers on the taste of her coffee.

Her time is a scarce resource, so I wanted to help her think through how to prioritize her testing and focus on the most important stuff. My gut is that if you are making small batch, fresh roasted, organic coffee people are going to like it. Not a huge risk. And when I asked her how confident she felt that people would like her coffee based on the data so far, she said she felt very confident. So, then why keep focusing on taste tests?

I think the riskier assumption was around her distribution model and encouraged her to to focus validating that.

I’ve found it’s common that entrepreneurs are drawn to doing continuous research on assumptions they’ve already validated. Why? Because it feels good! We’d all rather spend time with customers telling us that we’re great and they love our product than leave the cozy world and step into the unknown where customers might hate our product (Or is it us they hate? It can be tough on your confidence!). Your job as an entrepreneur is to bravely step out into the unknown over and over again.

You’ll always be making tons of assumptions about your business and the trick is to prioritize which ones that are most important to validate at any given time. The magic answer: focus on the assumptions that are most critical to the success of your business + the highest risk.