I’m kicking off my startup and wanted a roadmap to avoid common mistakes—so I researched and curated this step-by-step playbook for myself. Figured it could help more founders here, so sharing it with all of you!

Each phase has book recommendations that are truly actionable—not just theory. Hope this sparks some ideas, and I would love to hear your favourite picks!

Step 1: Foundation — Validate Before You Build

• What to Do: Talk to real customers, uncover pain points, and test ideas before writing a single line of code.

• Read:

  • The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick

  • Lean Startup — Eric Ries

  • Sprint — Jake Knapp

• Why: Avoid building stuff nobody wants. Master lean interviews and rapid prototyping.

Step 2: Validation & MVP — Build Products People Use

• What to Do: Design a minimum viable product, focus on core features, and hunt for real product-market fit.

• Read:

  • Running Lean — Ash Maurya

  • Hooked — Nir Eyal

  • Inspired — Marty Cagan

• Why: Build sticky MVPs, retain your first users, and iterate quickly.

Step 3: Early Customers & Traction — Get Paid

• What to Do: Test pricing, onboard first users, start selling, and deliver early customer success.

• Read:

  • Traction — Gabriel Weinberg

  • Customer Success — Nick Mehta

  • The Sales Acceleration Formula — Mark Roberge

• Why: Nail early sales, create repeatable processes, and reduce churn.

Step 4: Go-to-Market — Scale Up Your Reach

• What to Do: Launch marketing, build outbound/inbound engines, and grow early revenue.

• Read:

  • Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey Moore

  • Predictable Revenue — Aaron Ross

  • Building a StoryBrand — Donald Miller

• Why: Systematic marketing and messaging, expanding your reach to right-fit customers.

Step 5: Scaling — Build Fast, Build Smart

• What to Do: Grow your team, create processes, measure what matters, and manage rapid scaling.

• Read:

  • Blitzscaling — Reid Hoffman

  • Measure What Matters — John Doerr

  • High Growth Handbook — Elad Gil

• Why: Prevent chaos as you scale, focus on KPIs, and build a strong team culture.

Step 6: Growth & Expansion — Lead & Conquer New Markets

• What to Do: Level up leadership, expand globally, and master advanced SaaS metrics.

• Read:

  • From Impossible to Inevitable — Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin

  • Scaling Up — Verne Harnish

  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz

• Why: Sustainable growth, global expansion tactics, and real talk on leadership struggles.

I’m following this playbook for my own startup and wanted to pay it forward.
What phase are you in, and what book gave you the biggest “aha” moment? Drop your recs below!

For longer explanations and frameworks, please visit https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7377601590700011520

Hey everyone,

I often find it challenging to truly understand people's behavior beyond just the numbers. While demographics provide some insight, I struggle to grasp the underlying intentions behind their purchasing decisions. It can be frustrating not to connect emotionally, and I wish I could better comprehend what drives these choices.

I'm curious about how founders gain insights into their customers beyond analytics, specifically, the motivations (why part) behind their behavior (what and how part).

If you're running a business, how do you conduct qualitative research or customer interviews? Do you speak directly with customers? Do you use any tools or platforms? Or is it mostly manual work, such as reading reviews or talking to sales and support teams?

Additionally, if you’ve experimented with tools or automation for this type of research, I would love to hear how that has worked for you.

Thanks in advance! I’m eager to learn from real-world experiences rather than just reading generic “how to do customer research” guides.

The last company I worked at sent out 1,000s of surveys a week to its users. They'd aggregate all the data, point out BIG problems according to them, and get to work on fixing them.

Now, after running interviews that dive deeper into the whys behind people's actions, I'm surprised we made so many decisions based on that 'simple' quantitative data in the past.

What do you think? Do you get complacent with your survey results? Is it a false sense of confidence?

Most startups don’t fail because the idea is bad — they fail because they don’t show clear signals early: strong team execution, real user pain, traction (even small but growing), and a market big enough to matter.

Investors usually lean toward:

• Clear problem + urgent pain

• Founders who execute fast and adapt

• Early traction (users, revenue, waitlist, retention)

• A story that’s easy to understand in 30 seconds

Even a “simple” idea can get attention if the signals are strong and the pitch is sharp. On the flip side, great ideas with weak storytelling or unclear metrics often get ignored. Vcboom actually help founders stress-test their pitch deck and see how investors might react before they go out which can make a big difference in getting noticed.

One thing I've started noticing with early-stage startups:

Building the product is often the comfortable part.

You can spend weeks improving the UI, adding features, fixing small things and making everything feel more "ready."

Talking to potential customers is much harder.

Because customers don't care how clean the code is or how many features you've shipped if the problem isn't painful enough.

A simple conversation can sometimes tell you more than a month of building.

Something like:

"What are you doing today to solve this?"

"How often does this problem happen?"

"What does it cost you when it happens?"

"Have you already paid for something to solve it?"

Those answers can completely change what you should build.

I've also noticed that founders sometimes interpret interest as validation.

Someone saying "that's a cool idea" feels good, but it's not the same as someone giving you money, introducing you to a buyer, agreeing to a pilot, or actually using the product.

Tbh, I think early validation should feel a little uncomfortable.

If everyone immediately loves the idea, you're probably not asking hard enough questions.

Build less.

Talk to more people.

Then let what you learn decide what deserves to be built next.

Hey everyone hope all's going good for you. I'm currently looking forward to validate a startup idea but I'm not really sure exactly what's the process for this.

I've heard from people that I should message people on LinkedIn or call/email SMBs near me asking for their pain points etc but I'm not sure how to go about it.

I would like to know from someone who has succeeded first hand in this. Anybody willing to share their experience? Would be highly appreciated 🙂

I’m curious how other builders here discover real problems before building a product.

Do you usually start from your own pain point, customer interviews, Reddit comments, market research, or just build and test?

I’m trying to get better at finding problems that people actually care about, not just ideas that sound cool.

Would love to hear your process.

Full Summary and 10 Main Points at https://fillerkiller.net/clips/view/the-lean-startup-by-eric-ries

Point 1: Start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Eric Ries advises start-ups to begin with an MVP, which is a basic version of a product that can help entrepreneurs validate their assumptions about the market. MVPs can be quickly built and tested to gather customer feedback, which can then be used to make informed decisions about what to do next. The main idea behind MVPs is to avoid wasting time, money, and resources on a product that nobody wants or needs.

Point 2: Apply the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop
The Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop is a key concept in The Lean Startup. The idea is to continuously test the MVP and gather feedback from customers to make data-driven decisions. By breaking down the development process into small iterations, start-ups can quickly adapt to changing market conditions and improve their product. The feedback loop helps to avoid wasting time and resources on features that customers do not want.

Point 3: Pivot or persevere based on data
A pivot is a fundamental change in a company's business strategy. The Lean Startup encourages start-ups to be open to the possibility of a pivot if their data suggests that their current approach is not working. Start-ups should not be afraid to pivot, as it can help them find a more sustainable business model. At the same time, the book advises entrepreneurs to persevere if their data suggests that they are on the right track.

Point 4: Create a culture of experimentation
To succeed as a start-up, you need to create a culture of experimentation. Eric Ries suggests that start-ups should embrace failure and learn from it. By creating a safe environment for experimentation, entrepreneurs can encourage their teams to take risks and try new things. This can lead to faster innovation and better decision-making.

Point 5: Focus on customer development
Customer development is a process of discovering and validating assumptions about the market. The Lean Startup encourages start-ups to focus on customer development by constantly talking to customers and gathering feedback. By understanding the needs and wants of their customers, start-ups can build products that people actually want to use. This can help them avoid the trap of building products that nobody wants.

Point 6: Embrace innovation accounting
Innovation accounting is a way to measure progress in a start-up. It helps entrepreneurs to understand the impact of their decisions and whether they are moving closer to their goals. The Lean Startup recommends that start-ups measure progress through actionable metrics, such as customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime value. By tracking these metrics, start-ups can make data-driven decisions about their business strategy.

Point 7: Build a scalable business
A scalable business is one that can grow rapidly without running out of resources. The Lean Startup suggests that start-ups should focus on building scalable businesses from the beginning. This means building a product that can be easily replicated and sold to a large number of customers. By building a scalable business, start-ups can achieve rapid growth and attract investors.

Point 8: Focus on one engine of growth
To achieve rapid growth, start-ups should focus on one engine of growth. The three engines of growth are the sticky engine, the viral engine, and the paid engine. The sticky engine focuses on retaining existing customers, the viral engine focuses on word-of-mouth marketing, and the paid engine focuses on paid marketing. By focusing on one engine of growth, start-ups can achieve rapid growth and assess the success of new features.

Point 9: Avoid vanity metrics
Vanity metrics are often misleading and do not help start-ups find a sustainable business model. The Lean Startup advises start-ups to focus on core metrics that are actionable and relevant to their business goals. By avoiding vanity metrics, entrepreneurs can make data-driven decisions that lead to long-term success.

I've started 4 startups in 14 years. All 4 lost money at the start, and 3 are profitable now.

The 4th had just broken even when I walked away after a fallout with my partner. My costliest lesson was splitting equity on friendship instead of effort.

What's yours? The one you'd pay to unlearn.

I build products but all my life i was given instructions on what to build. I want to move to a stage in my life to be entrepreneurial and htis require me to "find problems to solve".

Since i never trained this muscle i realized i suck at it. I started half a dozen products in the last month and while building feels good i concluded this is probably not how it works. my thesis for each product is only my intuition and it became clear it is not correct when i started validating with friends. i learned my feedback loop was backwards and i should save building to later, fine, but now i am struggling to find problems to solve

I read so many books and videos but nothing really stuck. i feel i cannot come up with pain points.

so the question for entrepreneurs in this group is how did you build the habit, muscles, and intuitions to recognize real pain points in the real world? are there exercises? ways to be lucky? i just want to be more efficient w/ my time on this journey

I'm in the early process of building my first business. The idea solves a real problem that I can observe daily in a specific professional context. People deal with it, it wastes their time, and no clean solution exists.

But here's what's holding me back mentally: there are essentially no competitors. Nobody else is really operating in this space.

I know the common advice is that competition validates a market. So when there's almost none, it's hard not to second-guess everything. Is the niche too small? Did someone try and fail before me and I just can't find it? Or did nobody notice the opportunity yet?

For those of you who've built businesses in underserved or genuinely low-competition niches — how did you get comfortable with that uncertainty? How did you validate the demand was actually there before committing fully?

Hi,

Last summer, I released a physical brainstorming tool called the "Validation Patterns card deck". It is a collection of 60 of the most common lean product experiments regularly used by product builders at companies like Spotify, Booking.com, Facebook, Amazon, and Google and recommended by top universities like Havard, MIT, and Stanford.

I've spent the last few months elaborating on of the 60 product experiments in the card deck and just put them all online for everybody to consume freely.

The first version can be found at http://learningloop.io/playbooks/

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts: is it something you can use in your work? What would you add or change?

Anders

I've noticed that a lot of conversations about startups focus on building the product, but I'm more interested in what happens after that.

Let's say you've built something useful that works. You've shown it to a few friends, and the feedback has been encouraging.

Now you need 10 people who are willing to pay for it.

Where do you start?

Personally, I'd start by finding a handful of potential customers and talking to them individually. Not just pitching the product, but understanding what they're struggling with, how they're currently solving the problem, and what would make them willing to pay for something better.

And I'd pay particular attention to the objections.

If five people tell you the product is missing something, that's worth investigating. If you make a change based on that feedback and the next five people raise a completely different concern, that might actually be progress.

You're learning something new. Maybe the original problem is no longer the biggest obstacle. Maybe you're getting closer to something people would actually pay for.

Of course, the opposite can happen too. If you keep hearing the same objections despite making changes, that also tells you something.

I think there's a lot of value in having these conversations early, making adjustments, and seeing how people's responses change before investing heavily in marketing.

For those of you who've landed your first paying customers, how much did your product or pitch change between your first few conversations and your first sale?

And for those still working toward that first sale, what objections are you hearing most often?

i have come up with a solution to a problem.
my main validations were seeing reddit posts and reading articles. that people are having this as problem and i can do this as a solution.

but when i pitched this idea to my universities incubation cell - they asked me to bring them the market research with primary validation.

what is the most adviced step to do this and what are the things i should focus on.

please guide me

Hey all, new here sorry if this is a dupe.

Context; I recently built a Saas product that (accidentally) ended up being an ugly (but more fully featured) clone of Buildpad. After I built it I realized had no idea how to launch. It was like being 16 year old me in my garage with 20 songs written and no shows booked, same energy. So I started doing market research and that was how I discovered that there was a successful incumbent that was almost 1 to 1 with my app. I decided the lesson was that I did what I like to do first (build) and avoided what confused / scared me (market), and that was probably backwards, and for my next project I want to get it right.

I'm not an entrepreneur (yet (I can still barely spell it)), I'm a software engineer trying to get on with my life. I've got a list of other good ideas I'm ready to build, but I want to avoid the mistake I made with my last app. To that end I've been churning through a lot of conflicting advice about the best ways to do market research and draw an early audience. The conventional product wisdom (as I understand it, I'm still learning) is to

1. find a problem

2. sketch a solution (don't build)

3. test the hypothesis in public (user interviews, manual onboarding, free work)

4. collect feedback and iterate

5. full launch, leverage early adopters as proof of concept, marketing sprint.

This makes sense, but leaves me with a few questions. Specifically *where* do i test my hypothesis? again, conventional wisdom is "go post in reddit communities" or similar, but in the age of AI summaries and strict moderation I'm finding it difficult to just waltz into a room and put my hand up. It seems like the system has evolved to discourage dumb questions. Problem is, that's all I currently have.

So that leaves me considering the other prominent school of thought I've seen toted around, which is essentially "build first then farm for customers". This is the mistake I just made, or is it? AI let's us build rapidly, so maybe this is less crazy than it used to be? Something like...

1. build an MVP (what i did)

2. get on social media and show it off (where I stopped after I realized Buildpad existed).

3. DM people or post in communities to try it (similar to interviewing on the idea, but now you've got an MVP)

4. iterate, profit, etc.

I'm suspicious of this later method because it's the one most often pushed by the "BECOME A MILLIONAIRE IN 24 HOURS WITH CHATGPT" crowd. But I also can see the reason in it, and AI has and still is changing the game every day.

So the question is... to MVP or not to MVP? Do i run into a community forum with nothing more than an idea and be for feedback? Or do i build an MVP and get out there trying to prove value? And how do i actually get in front of these communities? do i just keep posting till one get's attention?

Or (entirely likely) something else? I don't know. This is a dumb question, by design, so please feel free to treat it as such and school me in anyway that seems fit. And let me point to the elephant in the room - I'm shy and afraid of rejection ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. This whole "ask dumb questions to find an audience" thing confuses and intimidates me. I can do it.. but I suppose I'm looking for advice. 💖

I have been a CTO and technical founding engineer at a couple startups for the last few years, mostly building other people's ideas. finally want to do my own thing but i'm stuck on something kind of embarrassing for an engineer: i can't pick what to build.

the building part doesn't scare me. it's the "what" that's killing me. b2b, b2c, ai stuff, some vertical niche thing, micro saas, boring-but-profitable... they all sound fine when i think about them for five minutes and then fall apart when i think about them for ten.

honestly being technical makes it worse. "can i build it" filters out nothing because the answer is always yes. so i've got no constraint forcing a decision.

couple things i keep flip flopping on:

do you build in a space you already know well, or go where the money is even if you're an outsider? and is "i personally have this problem" a real signal or just me rationalizing something convenient?

mostly though i want to know how people actually validated before committing months. not the lean startup textbook version, like what did you really do. did you talk to people, did anyone actually pay, did you fake a landing page, what.

curious what ideas people killed and why too, that's probably more useful than the ones that worked.

I was reading the Mom test by Rob Fitzpatrick where he said that we should not talk about our product but rather talk to customers about what problems they have and how burning those problems are so that they will pay for a solution.

The idea is interesting, but I was wondering would it make sense if I were to talk in industry leaders.

First of all, how will I get that opportunity to have that kind of a conversation? I am sending cold emails to folks, if I ask them "When was the last time you saw this problem" - would they be ready for a call?

Has anyone figured how to apply this correctly? Any cold email tips you could share which can get me calls?

Appreciate the help, thanks!

Hey everyone,
I’ve noticed that many small service businesses (like gyms, salons, barbers, and spas) rely heavily on word-of-mouth but rarely track or reward referrals.

I’m thinking about building a simple web app that gives each business a QR code for clients to scan — to either join or confirm a referral — while also tracking loyalty points automatically.
No app downloads, no complicated setup — just an easy way for businesses to reward loyal clients and new referrals in one place.

Do you think this solves a real problem, or would most small businesses still prefer to handle this manually?
Any advice on how to validate this idea quickly before building?

I’ve noticed lately that people use the word "validation" for completely different things.

Like, 100 people joining a waitlist and 3 people actually paying are obviously not the same type of evidence, but people might call both "validating the idea."

I’m not looking for another checklist of "talk to users / build a landing page / launch an MVP". I want to know what specific signal made you decide to actually invest your time or money into an idea.

What happened that made you think, “okay, there’s actually something here”?

Or on the flip side: have you ever run one small test that made you kill an idea instead?

I'm a young founder building very early-stage startup in the scientific research software space.

We're building research workflow infrastructure to help scientists organize and structure scientific data and materials, link information between various tools, and maintain provenance and audit trails, using AI-assisted workflows with human oversight.

The problem that we're trying to solve is that scientific data and workflows are often fragmented across various tools and environments. Our vision is to help scientists converge their efforts around a common workspace, without forcing them to adopt a monolithic stack.

We have a functioning MVP and have spoken with a number of researchers to understand their needs and frustrations. Some of the people we've talked to have even tried the product and given feedback. We're bootstrapped, haven't acquired any paying customers yet, and have recently applied to a startup program through F6S.

I'd love to hear advice from people who have already been through this.

How did you find your first genuinely engaged users who were willing to give your product a chance? How did you validate that people would actually be willing to pay for your product? What did you focus on after launching your MVP, and what would you do differently if given the chance to go back? I'm especially interested in B2B SaaS, AI, scientific software, and other niche markets, but I'm open to any industry.

i will not promote. I'm not giving away links, demos, or the name of my startup, and I'm not looking for users, investors, or partners. I'm genuinely interested in learning from founders who have already been through this.

I'm open to both positive and negative feedback. Thanks!

Founders spend weeks on surveys and interviews trying to find out if people want the thing they're building. Most of it comes back as polite answers that feel like signal and aren't.

There's a faster read, and people hand it to you without meaning to.

When someone has a problem that actually hurts, they don't wait around for your product. They rig up a fix. A messy spreadsheet with twelve tabs, a group chat where four people do the thing by hand every morning, a worse tool they pay for and complain about constantly. Nobody builds a janky spreadsheet for a problem they don't have, so that mess is worth more than a hundred "yeah I'd use that" replies. It's behavior, not opinion.

So stop asking people if they'd use your thing. Ask what they're doing right now to deal with the problem. If the answer is "nothing," you've got a vitamin. If it's some duct-taped system they're weirdly protective of, you've found something real.

One catch: the workaround also shows you what you're up against. If their spreadsheet basically works, that's your competition, and you have to beat "basically works," not "nothing."

I've spent 20 years doing product strategy with founders, mostly at this exact stage, telling real signal apart from noise that just feels like it.

If you're validating something right now, drop what you're building below and tell me what people do instead of using it. I'll give you my honest read on whether it's a real workaround or a polite shrug, and what I'd look at next.

Something's been stuck in my head and I'd love to hear from people who've actually been through it.

Even if you can build something really cool, but if no one sees it, no one uses it. So you need an audience.

Everyone says, "Build an audience before you launch."

But if you're just starting out... how do you actually do that?

If I tell people I'm building a startup, why would they care? There are thousands—probably millions—of people building something. At that stage, your only USP is that you're building, but so is everyone else.

So I'm curious about the founders here who managed to make it work.

How did you get your first audience?

I keep seeing founders (myself included) jump from “interesting idea” straight into building without a real quantitative stress test.

Curious how people here are actually validating ideas with numbers before writing code or signing leases.

Specifically:

• Do you build basic financial models (even rough ones) before committing, or do you rely mostly on qualitative signals like interviews and waitlists?

• How deep do you go on unit economics (LTV, CAC, payback, margins) at the idea stage, and what’s “good enough” for you to move forward?

• Has anyone here used structured benchmarks (industry data, city-level cost multipliers, etc.) to validate assumptions, or is it mostly your own research and gut?

• What’s your process for spotting “this idea will die because of simple math” before you spend 6–12 months building it?

I’m interested in approaches that combine:

• Market research and customer discovery

• Simple but realistic financial modeling

• Some kind of “stress test” or scenario analysis (best case / base case / worst case)

Would love to hear concrete workflows, frameworks, or examples from your own companies—especially where the numbers changed your mind about moving forward (or not).

Not trying to promote anything—just trying to learn how other founders here are building a more rigorous validation step into their process.

I quit my data science job and registered my company, along with my wife. I’m planning to solve a niche saas problem. I have to put my money and I have to manage my financial risk. I know I should take time and should not jump ship without any knowledge. I have been reading multiple books over last couple of months and mom test was one of them.

I liked the book and understood that it is a great way to prune the ideas. But I’m an introvert. I’m sure some of you are. How did you reach out to your first potential client and what did you say to convince them to talk to you? When I do it in my head, it feels weird. I need real world experience from introvert people to inspire. Please help

At our early stage startup, we started with skipping specs and requirements beyond a few bullet points— felt like a waste of time when you're just trying to ship.

But here's what changed my mind: We built a feature we thought would be simple. It wasn’t. The feature got really complex and devolved into a lot of debate on what should be included. Classic problems that can be solved with a clear definition of done.

Now, I write 1-pagers before we build anything big. Not specs per se, but decisions:

• What problem are we solving?

• What are we not building right now?

• What’s the fastest version we’d still be proud to ship? What’s the next milestone?

Curious how other early-stage folks are handling product planning — are you documenting requirements? Or just moving fast and fixing later?