Intuition

Phase 3 has one job: hunt a validated business model. You enter with a validated problem (from Phase 2). You leave with a model that's been put in front of real customers and survived. Two intellectual parents: Steve Blank (Customer Development) and Eric Ries (Lean Startup / Build-Measure-Learn). Replace the linear *concept → product → launch* pipeline with a loop that searches first and executes only after Product-Market Fit. Three operational tools — the Detective Phase (four past-behaviour questions, never pitch your solution), the Validation Board (track up to 4 pivots like a scientist), and the BML loop (cheap MVP → measure → learn → persevere or pivot). Find your first customers at the apex of the Earlyvangelist Pyramid (people who already have budget to solve this problem).

Explanation

The Old Map vs The New Compass. Traditional Product Development was a linear pipeline: *Concept / Business Plan → Product Development → Alpha/Beta Test → Launch / 1st Ship*. It assumes you already know the customer's problem and what they need. Verdict: high risk of building something nobody wants. Customer Development is a loop: *Customer Discovery ↔ Customer Validation → Customer Creation → Company Building*, with a Pivot arrow that can throw you backward from Validation to Discovery at any time. It *searches* for a business model through validated learning. Exam synthesis: the Old Map executes a plan; the New Compass discovers a model.

Steve Blank's four stages of Customer Development. Memorise the table because every question about Problem-Solution Fit vs Product-Market Fit, or about pivot timing, draws on it.

| Stage | Question | Fit Achieved |

|---|---|---|

| Customer Discovery | Are my assumptions about the customer's problem correct? | Problem-Solution Fit |

| Customer Validation | Have I built something people will actually use and pay for? | Product-Market Fit (PMF) |

| Customer Creation | Can I scale my user base and create end-user demand? | Scale Execution |

| Company Building | Can I transition from a startup to a stable, functional company? | Scale Organisation & Operations |

Problem-Solution Fit ≠ Product-Market Fit. Discovery's deliverable is *Problem-Solution Fit* — you've validated that the problem is real and your hypothesised solution addresses it. Validation's deliverable is *Product-Market Fit* — real customers will actually use and pay for the product you built. They are sequential, not synonyms. Many founders claim PMF when they have, at best, Problem-Solution Fit. The exam catches this.

Search, then Execute — and the pivot point that separates them. The first two stages (Discovery + Validation) are Search — pivots are expected; the goal is finding a repeatable, scalable model by testing hypotheses. The second two stages (Creation + Building) are Execution — the model is validated; the goal is to scale it efficiently. The pivot point between Search and Execute is Product-Market Fit. Before PMF you pivot; after PMF you scale. *Confusing the two — trying to scale before PMF — is the most common cause of startup capital incineration.*

The Steve Blank quote to drop into any Phase 3 answer. *No business plan survives first contact with customers.* Compact, memorable, signals familiarity with the deck.

Business model — formal vs simple definition. *Formal*: a business model diagrams how a company creates, delivers, and captures value. *Simple*: in plain English — *how a company makes money*. Building blocks that feed into a model: Product (device, software, IP, services) + Resources (networks, technology, partners, data, employees) flow into Design → Manufacturing → Sales & Distribution which delivers value to Users. Phase 4 expands this skeleton into the nine BMC blocks.

The six hypothesis types — what you must test. Customer Development isn't vibes; it's hypothesis testing. Before talking to anyone, write out hypotheses in six categories: (1) Product Hypothesis — features, form factor. (2) Customer & Problem Hypothesis — who has the pain, what's the pain. (3) Distribution & Pricing Hypothesis — how you reach them, what they pay. (4) Demand Creation Hypothesis — how you make them want it. (5) Market Type Hypothesis — new market, existing market, resegmented market, or clone market. (6) Competitive Hypothesis — who else fights for this customer.

Testing sequence (don't memorise every box; know the shape). State the six → Test Problem Hypothesis (First Contacts → Problem Presentation → Customer Understanding → Market Knowledge) → Test Product Hypothesis (First Reality Check → Product Presentation → More Customer Visits → Second Reality Check) → Verify (Verify the Product → Verify the Problem → Verify the Business Model → Iterate or Exit). Shape: state hypotheses → test in two waves (problem first, product second) → verify the model → iterate or quit.

The Hypothesis Formula — your one-sentence test. $\boxed{\text{My idea solves [problem] by [solution].}}$ Professor's contrast. Vague: *'My idea solves people's need to do laundry by offering a laundry delivery service.'* (Problem doesn't match solution — 'need to do laundry' is too abstract.) Good: *'My idea solves the inconvenience and large time commitment of maintaining clean laundry by offering a 24-hour convenient laundry delivery service.'* Exam-ready insight: a good hypothesis names the emotional / functional pain explicitly — not just the activity. 'The inconvenience' and 'large time commitment' do work that 'need to do laundry' doesn't. Narrow + specific + emotional.

The Detective Phase — the rule that runs counter to founder instinct. Professor's slide title: *Uncovering Customer Needs*. The rule in capitals: $\boxed{\text{Your goal is NOT to seek people’s thoughts on your idea. It is to find and validate their needs WITHOUT mentioning your solution.}}$ The natural founder instinct — *let me tell you about my brilliant idea — what do you think?* — gets the wrong data. People (especially friends and family) tell you what you want to hear. Customer interviews are not market research about your product; they are anthropological field work about their problem.

The Detective's Mindset (slide bullets). Don't rush to sell. Start LISTENING. You are a detective searching for clues about the problem. Let your customers build the product for you with their insights.

The Detective's Toolkit — four question templates. All four ask about current behaviour, not hypothetical futures. Memorise verbatim. (1) *Tell me how you currently do __________.* (2) *How is that process working for you?* (3) *What's the hardest part about __________?* (4) *If you could do anything to improve your experience with __________, what would it be?* If asked to design a customer interview script for [scenario], reproduce these four and adapt the blanks.

The Validation Board — tracking pivots like a scientist. Operational tool converting the Detective Phase into structured learning. Four zones on one sheet. Top-left — Track Pivots: rows (Customer Hypothesis, Problem Hypothesis, Solution Hypothesis) × columns (Start, 1st Pivot, 2nd Pivot, 3rd Pivot, 4th Pivot). Log each hypothesis at Start; as data forces revisions, log the new version under the relevant pivot column. Up to four pivots before you've earned the right to quit. Bottom-left — Design Experiments: Core Assumptions (all the leaps of faith); Riskiest Assumption (which leap could kill the business fastest if wrong?); Method (how to test it cheaply); Minimum Success Criterion (the bar the test must clear to validate). Right zone — Results: two columns (Invalidated / Validated), rows 1-6, one row per experiment. Across the whole thing: Steve Blank's stamp — GET OUT OF THE BUILDING. Not decoration; the mantra. *You cannot fill this board from inside your office.*

A pivot is not a failure. *A pivot is a structured response to invalidated learning.* That single sentence wins points whenever the exam touches on pivots, failures, or course corrections.

Build-Measure-Learn (Eric Ries). The Engine of Discovery. A loop: IDEA → BUILD → MEASURE → LEARN → (Persevere or Pivot) → IDEA … Five elements, each with exam-worthy precision.

IDEA. Your current hypothesis about what creates value.

BUILD — and what an MVP actually is. Build a product, prototype, or service. The crucial annotation: (MVP) Minimum Viable Product. The M is *minimum* — the smallest build that can test the riskiest assumption. The V is *viable* — it has to actually work enough for customers to interact meaningfully. The P is *product* — which can be a landing page, a mock-up, a Wizard-of-Oz prototype, or working software. An MVP is the cheapest version of the experiment, not a half-finished version of the final product. Exam favourite distinction.

MEASURE. Measure how customers respond. Gather real-world data, not opinion.

LEARN. Analyse the data; learn from feedback. The crucial output is a binary decision: PERSEVERE (data supports the hypothesis; refine and continue) or PIVOT (data invalidates a key hypothesis; change a major assumption — customer, problem, solution, channel, pricing, market type — and rerun).

The closing rule of the loop. *This loop is designed to minimise wasted time and effort by testing your core assumptions as quickly and cheaply as possible.* Quotable.

Validation Board ↔ BML loop relationship. Validation Board is the scoreboard; BML loop is the game. Each BML cycle produces one experiment row on the Board (validated or invalidated). The Board's Riskiest Assumption is what each BML loop targets.

Earlyvangelists — locating your first paying customers. Five-tier pyramid, base broad, apex narrow. Each tier = customer's level of awareness and commitment to the problem. Tier 1 (base) — You Know They Have A Problem (your hypothesis identifies them; they may not know yet). Tier 2 — They Know They Have A Problem (recognised the pain themselves). Tier 3 — Actively Looking For A Solution (searching). Tier 4 — Put Together A Solution Out of Piece Parts (have hacked a workaround — huge signal of intensity). Tier 5 (apex) — Budget (have money allocated to solve this problem).

Earlyvangelist exam takeaway. $\boxed{\text{Your earlyvangelists sit at the apex. They are actively trying to solve the problem and have a budget to do so. Find them.}}$ Term is Steve Blank's coinage — early adopters who are *also evangelists* for the product. They matter disproportionately because (a) they tolerate your buggy MVP (pain acute enough to accept rough edges) and (b) they recruit new customers for free (evangelism is genuine). When asked 'who is your first customer?', the answer is not 'everyone with this problem' — it is 'the earlyvangelists at the apex of this pyramid.'

The End of the Search — what Phase 3 Part 1 produces. Start state: founder team with unvalidated assumptions. Middle: cycles of Discovery ↔ Validation, each running the inner *Customer Development Insight Cycle* — (1) Assumptions/Hypothesis → (2) Design Experiment → (3) Test in Front of Customers → (4) Insight → return to (1). End state: founder team that can defensibly claim *we know what our customers need* and *our business model is profitable, repeatable, scalable*. Exam-quotable deliverable triplet: a proven customer acquisition model, initial orders, and deep understanding of the sales cycle. This triplet is what you walk into Phase 3 Part 2 with.

Phase 3 Part 1 pipeline. Validated problem (from Phase 2) → New Compass shift (replace linear with loop) → Write six hypothesis types → Hypothesis Formula one-liner → Detective Phase customer interviews (4 questions, no pitching) → Validation Board tracking pivots → BML loops (cheapest MVP per Riskiest Assumption) → Find earlyvangelists at the pyramid apex → exit with validated business model + initial orders + acquisition understanding.

What the exam tests on Unit 3. (a) Contrast Old Map vs New Compass. (b) Recite Steve Blank's four stages with question + fit-achieved per stage. (c) Distinguish Problem-Solution Fit from Product-Market Fit. (d) Explain why Search precedes Execute (and what happens when founders confuse them). (e) Apply the Hypothesis Formula to a scenario. (f) Reproduce the four Detective Phase questions; rewrite a bad founder-led question into a Detective one. (g) Draw the Validation Board's four zones; populate Riskiest Assumption for a scenario. (h) Draw the BML loop and define MVP. (i) Locate the apex of the Earlyvangelist Pyramid for a scenario.

Definitions

• Customer Development — Steve Blank's four-stage framework for searching for a business model: Discovery → Validation → Creation → Building.
• Old Map vs New Compass — Linear product-dev pipeline (Old) vs Customer Development loop with pivots (New). Old executes a plan; New discovers a model.
• Customer Discovery — Stage 1. Question: are my assumptions about the customer's problem correct? Deliverable: Problem-Solution Fit.
• Customer Validation — Stage 2. Question: have I built something people will actually use and pay for? Deliverable: Product-Market Fit.
• Customer Creation — Stage 3. Question: can I scale my user base and create demand? Deliverable: scale execution.
• Company Building — Stage 4. Question: can I transition from startup to stable functional company? Deliverable: scale organisation & operations.
• Problem-Solution Fit (PSF) — Validated that the hypothesised problem is real AND the hypothesised solution addresses it. Customer Discovery's deliverable.
• Product-Market Fit (PMF) — Real customers use AND pay for the product. Customer Validation's deliverable. The pivot point between Search and Execute.
• Search vs Execute — Stages 1-2 = Search (pivots expected). Stages 3-4 = Execute (scale a validated model). PMF is the dividing line.
• Six Hypothesis Types — Product, Customer/Problem, Distribution/Pricing, Demand Creation, Market Type, Competitive. Stated upfront; tested via BML.
• Hypothesis Formula — 'My idea solves [problem] by [solution].' Good versions name the emotional/functional pain explicitly. Narrow > broad.
• Detective Phase — Customer-interview discipline. Find and validate needs WITHOUT mentioning your solution. Detective, not salesperson.
• Detective's Four Questions — Current behaviour: (1) Tell me how you currently do X. (2) How is that working? (3) Hardest part? (4) If you could improve anything?
• Validation Board — Tracking tool with four zones: Pivot Track (up to 4 pivots), Experiment Design (Riskiest Assumption + Method + Success Criterion), Results (Invalidated/Validated). Banner: GET OUT OF THE BUILDING.
• Riskiest Assumption — The hypothesis whose failure would kill the business fastest. Each BML loop targets one.
• Pivot — A structured response to invalidated learning — change a major assumption (customer / problem / solution / channel / pricing / market type). Not a failure.
• Persevere — BML output when data supports the hypothesis. Refine and continue.
• Build-Measure-Learn (BML) — Eric Ries's experimentation loop. Idea → Build (MVP) → Measure → Learn → Persevere or Pivot. The game whose scoreboard is the Validation Board.
• MVP (Minimum Viable Product) — The cheapest artefact that tests the Riskiest Assumption while still letting customers interact meaningfully. Can be a landing page, a mock-up, a Wizard-of-Oz process, or working software.
• Wizard-of-Oz MVP — An MVP where humans manually perform what will later be automated, so customer experience is real even though the back-end isn't.
• Earlyvangelist — Steve Blank's term — early adopter who is also an evangelist. Tolerates buggy MVPs (acute pain), recruits peers (genuine enthusiasm). Lives at the apex of the pyramid (has budget).
• Earlyvangelist Pyramid — Five tiers of customer awareness/commitment: (1) You know they have a problem (2) They know (3) Actively looking (4) Hacked a workaround (5) Have budget. Apex = first customers.
• Customer Development Insight Cycle — Four-step inner loop inside each stage: Assumptions → Design Experiment → Test → Insight → return to Assumptions.
• Phase 3.1 Deliverable Triplet — What exits Customer Development: proven customer acquisition model, initial orders, deep sales-cycle understanding.

Formulas

• $$\text{Hypothesis Formula: My idea solves [problem] by [solution].}$$
• $$\text{Old Map: Concept}\to \text{Product}\to \text{Test}\to \text{Launch (linear)}$$
• $$\text{New Compass: Discovery}\leftrightarrow \text{Validation}\to \text{Creation}\to \text{Building (loop with pivots)}$$
• $$\text{Problem-Solution Fit (Discovery)}\to \text{Product-Market Fit (Validation)}\to \text{Scale (Creation, Building)}$$
• $$\text{BML Loop: Idea}\to \text{Build (MVP)}\to \text{Measure}\to \text{Learn}\to (\text{Persevere or Pivot})\to \text{Idea}$$
• $$\text{MVP = Minimum (smallest)}+\text{Viable (works enough)}+\text{Product (any artefact)}$$
• $$\text{Earlyvangelist Pyramid Apex: those with }\text{budget}\text{ allocated to solve this problem}$$
• $$\text{Phase 3.1 Deliverable Triplet: acquisition model + initial orders + sales-cycle understanding}$$

Derivations

Why Search must precede Execute (and what happens otherwise). Suppose a startup attempts to scale (Customer Creation / Company Building) before achieving PMF. The scaling spends capital on customer acquisition, infrastructure, and headcount under the assumption that retention, expansion revenue, and unit economics will improve as the funnel widens. If PMF is real, scaling is rewarded. If PMF is *not* real, the larger funnel surfaces the same drop-off rate at every scale — but the operational fixed cost is now ten or a hundred times larger. The startup runs out of cash trying to fix a Discovery-stage problem with Execution-stage tools. Capital incinerates faster than learning accumulates. This is why Steve Blank's two-part framework is sequential, not parallel: Search exists precisely to determine whether Execute is *justified*. PMF is the gate.

Why MVPs must be Minimum, Viable, AND Product (all three). Drop Minimum → the build is large; the experiment is expensive; few experiments per unit time → learning slow. Drop Viable → the build doesn't actually function for customers; the test produces no real-world signal, only theoretical input. Drop Product → there's nothing for customers to interact with; you're collecting opinions not behaviours, which the Detective Phase already forbids. Only the joint M ∩ V ∩ P keeps the learning rate high (cheap), the signal honest (real behaviour), and the data actionable (collected from interaction). Dropping any of the three breaks the BML loop.

Why the Earlyvangelist apex matters disproportionately. Customer acquisition cost scales with how much friction the buyer has. At Tier 1 (you know they have a problem but they don't), you spend on awareness + education + persuasion + sale. At Tier 5 (they have budget allocated), the buyer is hunting for *you*. The acquisition cost asymmetry can be 10-100×. More importantly, Tier-5 customers tolerate rough MVPs (pain is acute), give specific actionable feedback (they've thought about the problem), and recruit peers (evangelism is genuine). Therefore selling to Tier 5 first compounds learning, capital efficiency, and growth — three benefits simultaneously. Selling at the base trades all three.

Examples

• Old Map vs New Compass — Webvan. Webvan (1996-2001) ran the Old Map: $400M raised on a business plan, built warehouses, launched in 10 cities, scaled before PMF — bankrupt in 5 years. Instacart (2012-) ran the New Compass: started in one city with no warehouses, MVP was literally an app + shoppers buying from existing stores; iterated through pivots on margin model, product mix, and delivery promise before scaling. Same product category, opposite outcome — because one searched, the other executed prematurely.
• Problem-Solution Fit vs PMF — Slack's pivot. Slack started as a game company (Tiny Speck, game called Glitch). They had Problem-Solution Fit for a chat tool *internally* — their own team used it constantly. They did NOT have PMF for *external* customers until they pivoted the entire company. PSF was the signal that the *problem and solution* were real; PMF only came after they validated that *external customers* would adopt and pay.
• Hypothesis Formula — Arjun's retrofit kit. Vague: 'My idea solves wasteful purifier electricity by adding IoT.' Good: 'My idea solves the ₹2-4k/month avoidable purifier electricity that Indian middle-class families pay because their RO purifier cycles 24/7 — by retrofitting a ₹3k adaptive-cycle module that learns household water-quality patterns and saves 60% of the cycle cost.' Emotional / functional pain explicit. Narrow, specific.
• Detective Phase rewrite. Founder-led ❌: 'I've built a tool that auto-schedules purifier cycles based on water quality. Would you buy it for ₹3,000?' Detective ✅: (1) *Tell me how you currently manage your water purifier.* (2) *How is that working for you?* (3) *What's the hardest part about purifier maintenance and electricity?* (4) *If you could change anything about your purifier experience, what would it be?* Notice — never mentions the solution. The customer reveals pain organically.
• Validation Board for Arjun. Top-left Pivot Track: Customer Hyp (Indian Tier-1 RO owners), Problem Hyp (avoidable ₹2-4k/month electricity from 24/7 cycling), Solution Hyp (retrofit kit). After 25 interviews, learning emerges: most respondents care more about water-safety than electricity. 1st Pivot — re-frame value prop around 'safer water + lower bill' instead of 'lower bill only.' Bottom-left Riskiest Assumption: 'Customers will trust a third-party retrofit module not to compromise water safety.' Method: 5 free trial installs at Bosch warranty-approved homes. Minimum Success Criterion: ≥ 4/5 say 'I would refer this to a friend' after 30 days.
• BML loop on Arjun's riskiest assumption. IDEA — adaptive-cycle retrofit module. BUILD — MVP isn't the final product. Cheapest experiment: a manually-rescheduled purifier (no module installed, but cycles controlled by a person logging onto the smart plug) in 5 homes for 2 weeks. MEASURE — electricity meter readings before/after, customer self-reports, time-to-frustration with manual mode. LEARN — if savings hold (≥ 50%) and customers don't notice water quality differences, persevere on the automated module. If savings fail or quality complaints rise, pivot on cycle algorithm. Cost of MVP: ₹0 hardware. Time: 2 weeks.
• Earlyvangelist Pyramid placement. Arjun looks for Tier-5 customers — households who already have *budget* allocated to solve their purifier-electricity problem. Likely candidates: families who have already installed a basic smart plug to measure purifier usage; subscribers to Bijli Bachao newsletters; Reddit r/india users who have commented complaining about purifier bills with photos of meter readings. These are not 'every household with a purifier' — they're a tiny subset of ~10,000 actively-aware-and-spending households. Sell here first.
• No business plan survives first contact with customers. Arjun's original Phase-1 hypothesis was 'sell direct to households at ₹3k upfront.' After 25 interviews, the dominant feedback is 'I'd rather pay ₹99/month and have someone handle installation and maintenance.' Pivot on the distribution + pricing hypothesis: SaaS model instead of one-time hardware sale. This is exactly the kind of pivot the Validation Board exists to make legible.

Diagrams

• Old Map vs New Compass side-by-side. Left: linear arrow Concept → Product → Test → Launch. Right: loop with Discovery ↔ Validation → Creation → Building, plus a pivot arrow shown looping back to Discovery.
• Steve Blank's four stages as a horizontal flow with the 'Search / Execute' divider drawn between Validation and Creation. The PMF marker is on the divider itself.
• Hypothesis Formula template with [problem] and [solution] as fill-in slots, plus the contrast pair (vague vs good) shown side-by-side.
• Detective Phase interview script: numbered list of four templates with blanks; arrow from script to customer indicating one-directional listening (no pitch).
• Validation Board (the whole sheet): top-left zone — Pivot Track table (3 rows × 5 columns: Start + 4 Pivots). Bottom-left zone — three labelled boxes (Core Assumptions, Riskiest Assumption, Method, Minimum Success Criterion). Right zone — two columns (Invalidated / Validated, rows 1–6). Across the whole sheet a banner: 'GET OUT OF THE BUILDING.'
• BML loop: four-corner cycle. Top — IDEA. Right — BUILD with '(MVP)' annotation. Bottom — MEASURE. Left — LEARN with '(Persevere or Pivot)' on the return arrow.
• MVP three-letter breakdown: M (smallest) + V (works enough) + P (any artefact — landing page / mock / Wizard-of-Oz / working software).
• Earlyvangelist Pyramid: five-tier triangle. Base = 'You know they have a problem.' Top = 'Have budget allocated.' Tier-5 is starred as the founder's first-customer zone.
• Phase 3.1 inner Insight Cycle: four-step loop (Assumptions → Design Experiment → Test in Front of Customers → Insight) sitting *inside* each stage of Customer Development.

Edge cases

• Pivoting more than four times. The Validation Board's columns cap at four pivots. Beyond that, the data is telling you to either narrow further or quit. Don't keep pivoting indefinitely — that's not iteration; it's denial.
• Friends and family customer interviews. They lie to be nice. The data is corrupted. Always include cold customers in the sample; weight cold-customer feedback higher.
• Confirmation bias in BML cycles. Founders find what they want to find. Use the Minimum Success Criterion *pre-defined*; don't move the goalposts after seeing data.
• MVP confused with v0.1 of the final product. Common student error. MVP can be a landing page or a Wizard-of-Oz manual process — anything that tests the riskiest assumption cheaply. The MVP can have nothing in common with the final product beyond the assumption it tests.
• Earlyvangelist apex too narrow to scale to. Yes — Tier 5 is your *first* customer set, not your full TAM. Once you've validated PMF with them, scaling means moving down to Tier 4, Tier 3, etc. progressively. The pyramid's apex is the wedge, not the market.
• Pivoting on multiple dimensions simultaneously. Don't. A pivot should change *one* major assumption. Changing two at once means you can't tell which change moved the data.
• Claiming PMF prematurely. Customers using the product != customers paying for it. Paying customers != customers retained beyond 6 months. PMF is a high bar — net retention, organic referrals, demand that outpaces sales capacity.

Common mistakes

• Pitching the solution in customer interviews. Use the Detective Phase questions instead.
• Confusing Problem-Solution Fit with Product-Market Fit. PSF is Discovery's output; PMF is Validation's.
• Scaling before PMF. Largest cause of capital incineration.
• Treating BML's MVP as v0.1 of the real product. MVP is the cheapest experiment, not a half-built version.
• Filling the Validation Board with vague experiments ('we'll talk to people'). Define Riskiest Assumption + Method + Minimum Success Criterion specifically.
• Selling to the base of the Earlyvangelist Pyramid (those who don't know they have a problem) and complaining that acquisition cost is high.
• Pivoting on more than one dimension at a time — can't isolate the cause of any signal change.
• Calling a pivot a failure. A pivot is a structured response to invalidated learning.
• Stating six hypotheses then ignoring four of them. Test all six categories across the BML cycles; track on the Validation Board.

Shortcuts

• Old Map vs New Compass: linear vs loop. Old executes a plan; New discovers a model.
• Four stages: Discovery (PSF) → Validation (PMF) → Creation → Building. PMF is the gate between Search and Execute.
• Hypothesis Formula: My idea solves [problem] by [solution]. Narrow + emotional pain explicit.
• Detective Phase 4 questions: Tell me how you currently / How is that working / What's the hardest part / If you could improve anything…
• Validation Board: track up to 4 pivots; design experiments around the Riskiest Assumption.
• BML loop: Idea → Build (MVP) → Measure → Learn → Persevere or Pivot.
• MVP = Minimum + Viable + Product. All three. Drop any one and the loop breaks.
• Earlyvangelist apex = those with allocated budget. Sell here first.
• GET OUT OF THE BUILDING.
• No business plan survives first contact with customers.

Proofs / Algorithms

Validation Board as scoreboard, BML as game. Claim: every well-run BML cycle produces exactly one entry on the Validation Board's Results zone (Invalidated or Validated column). Proof sketch. A BML cycle is defined by (a) an Idea (current hypothesis), (b) a Build (MVP targeting the Riskiest Assumption), (c) a Measure step, and (d) a Learn step ending in Persevere or Pivot. The Validation Board's Experiment Design zone names the same Riskiest Assumption + Method + Minimum Success Criterion. The Result column records whether the measured outcome exceeded the criterion (Validated) or didn't (Invalidated). The mapping is therefore one-to-one — BML execution operationalises a Validation Board row. Corollary: a Validation Board with no rows means no BML loops have run; a BML loop with no Board entry means the experiment wasn't pre-specified. Both indicate Detective Phase discipline has failed.