Meet the Is This a Thing? Method  

STEP 1

Create your Scorecard

There are no good or bad ideas — only ideas that meet your goals and those that don’t. The first step to our process is creating a Yes If Scorecard that prioritizes your goals for the project. Throughout the rest of the process, as you test and iterate on your idea, you’ll grade it against this scorecard.

STEP 2

Sketch your Idea

You can’t evaluate something you don’t understand. The next step is to get your idea out of your head and onto paper so you can organize your thoughts. We call this simple one page summary of your initial assumptions about the idea an Idea Sketch.

STEP 3

Prioritize your Questions

Right now your idea is full of unknowns and that can feel overwhelming to tackle. We’ll create an Assumption Map to turn that mess of uncertainty into a short, prioritized to-do list of questions to answer.

STEP 4

Build Confidence in the Answers

We’ll find answers to the questions you prioritized by designing simple and effective experiments to gather more data. We’re not aiming for certainty, but instead a level of confidence that makes you feel comfortable moving forward.

STEP 5

Celebrate a Decision

The last step is a Yes If Decision. It’s this decision that gets you unstuck — it articulates what would need to be true for you to move forward with the latest version of your idea and the next steps you’re going to take as a result.

Why our method is unique:

  • Nearly every entrepreneur we’ve worked with has rushed to start testing their idea before they’ve done any meaningful planning. They’ve internalized the advice to “move fast” and “get out of the building and talk to users” – we love the spirit, but strongly believe that by spending more time to thoughtfully plan your testing beforehand will ultimately help you move faster and be more successful.

  • Rarely have we seen other methods that talk about the importance of goal setting. We think this is the single most important part of the process and has to be the place that you start. There is no objectively good idea, there is only a good idea for you right now. If you don’t know what your goals are (or your company’s goals, your decision maker’s goals, etc.), it is impossible to be successful.

  • Much has been written about product testing – build a prototype and get it in front of users, stat! – but we’ve seen much less emphasis on testing the holistic business idea, which we think is critical. Far too many businesses have failed by having a great product that no one will pay for, or they can’t afford to market, or they can’t figure out how to produce.

  • If there’s one key to moving fast and smart it’s this – don’t try to test everything, pick the right assumptions to test. Our method puts a lot of emphasis on how to identify and prioritize assumptions to ensure that you pick only the most critical and most risky ones to put your energy into.

  • It’s awesome that so many entrepreneurs now recognize the importance of user interviews - it’s a critical and effective testing tactic, but it’s also not the only one. We believe in aligning the testing tactic specifically to the assumption that you are trying to validate and have a huge tool kit of different ways you might test beyond the user interview.

  • When you test very specific assumptions about your business idea with precision, you'll come out of the process with data on exactly what works about your business idea, what doesn't work, and what would need to change to make it a success. We think a "Yes If" is much more actionable than a simple No (or even a simple Yes).