Lenny's Podcast · Jul 13Rapidly test and validate any startup idea with the 2-day Foundation Sprint
Founded by two ex-Substack growth engineers, it chose a social sales app with the full stack as backup, to beat Shopify and Etsy on being cooperative and helping sellers grow. Its first scorecard was mostly red and by the third weekly sprint every box was green.
Tips
- Write your founding hypothesis as one fill-in-the-blank sentence▶ 1:17:40Latchet's read: help artisans solve online sales growth with a social sales app, backup is the full stack, chosen over Shopify and Etsy because it is cooperative and easy to use.
- Answer the basics first: customer, problem, competition, and your advantages▶ 25:13Teams are often surprised that the problem is less clear than they thought, and that their sheet matches only two of six items they would have written alone.
- Plot your product against competitors on two differentiators and land in the top right▶ 33:50Latchet chose helps you grow and cooperative against Etsy, Shopify and art fairs. Mellow chose mobile first and works out of the box.
- Turn your differentiators into project principles that guide daily decisions▶ 51:40Latchet's principle: help sellers help each other and make them more money.
- List several implementation paths, even if you think you have one▶ 54:30Latchet weighed an app, a newsletter platform, a Shopify plugin, and a full stack build, and chose a social sales app with the full stack as backup.
- Pick your approach by plotting options on magic lenses▶ 55:50A custom conviction lens in the current cohort asks which founder says 'F yeah, that's what I want to build'.
- Run weekly design sprints with a scorecard that tracks each part of the hypothesis▶ 1:20:50Latchet tested three prototypes with four customers in week one and saw lots of red, then mostly red with some yellow in week two, and every box green by week three.
