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Comment by MaknMoreGtnLess | Hacker News Reader

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MaknMoreGtnLess

> You need to find the fastest and cheapest way to de-risk your startup idea.

Agreed - but, if I were to break out startup risks into the following, which one is the highest?

- Market

- Product

- Channel

- Business model/unit economics

> "The Lean Startup" book by Eric Ries is already 10-11 y/o, so it's not up-to-date and with lots of gaps.

Can you mention just a few of the gaps?

> Instead you need to build a theory about your potential user's needs, and focus on shipping something first

What's the most effective way to discover:

- who these potential users are?

- what their needs are?

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1. Market, then Business model/unit economics. The latter is less problem for VC-funded startups - they assume it can be optimized/fixed later.

2. In many places it's just hand-wavy. Many case studies, but no formal methodology how to do Build->Measure->Learn feedback loop.

3. The needs and desires at a particular time/situations. Personas don't work. For example the same person may want a luxury meal in one situation and a hotdog in another. See JTBD.

> Market, then Business model/unit economics

Agreed and I recently mentioned it elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318531

> For example the same person may want a luxury meal in one situation and a hotdog in another

Sure - but would it be wrong to say the same person may have different Personas depending on the context?

> In many places it's just hand-wavy

Do you feel there can/should be a better way to discover customers?

> Sure - but would it be wrong to say the same person may have different Personas depending on the context?

Persona is Persona, Job is a Job (as in JTBD).

Products are answering Jobs, and the same Persona/Consumer may have multiple Jobs, depending on the context.

  Consumer->Job->Product

Naive solution is:

  Consumer->Product

but the JTBD method makes implicit—explicit and makes invisible—visible.

Fair. I just define Persona as "a specific way/why the consumer wants to use the Product"

So that strongly aligns with your Consumer->Job->Product

Here, you mention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30319105

> "The Lean Startup" book by Eric Ries is already 10-11 y/o, so it's not up-to-date and with lots of gaps.

Can you mention just a few of the gaps?

Interested to hear your thoughts.

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