What evidence matters before building?

Look for repeated painful behavior, existing workarounds, willingness to pay, and a reachable group with the same problem.

When should an opportunity be abandoned?

Stop when the critical assumption fails repeatedly and each new test requires a different story to preserve the original conclusion.

Decision playbook

Research for testing whether a problem is real, a market is attractive, and an idea deserves more time or capital.

Replace enthusiasm with evidence by combining customer insight, market structure, base rates, and cheap experiments.

Mental models

Find the beliefs that must be true before the opportunity can work.

People

See how founders recognized demand before the market looked obvious.

Businesses

Inspect businesses that turned a specific unmet need into a category.

Decision tools

Design a falsifiable experiment before making an expensive commitment.

What evidence matters before building?: Look for repeated painful behavior, existing workarounds, willingness to pay, and a reachable group with the same problem.
When should an opportunity be abandoned?: Stop when the critical assumption fails repeatedly and each new test requires a different story to preserve the original conclusion.