Validation Challenge

WHAT’S THE VALIDATION CHALLENGE?

In the earliest stages of a startup, de-risking your idea and learning as rapidly as possible is far more important than arbitrary progress with traditional growth metrics. The Validation Challenge works for a wide variety of ideas, and forces you to make the most impactful progress on your idea in a three-week sprint through rapid hypothesis testing.


Eligibility: All Fellows and Alumni

Business Stage: All business stages, but best suits companies in the idea or market validation stage

Frequency: Two times a year

1. Articulate the hypotheses your idea is based on

It starts from outlining the hypotheses you currently have about your startup idea –  from value proposition and positioning, to target market, to product viability and business model, and more. This will force you to clarify your idea.

HOW IT WORKS

2. Prioritize hypotheses based on risk

Once you’ve outlined your hypotheses, prioritize them based on risk – which are the hypotheses, that if incorrect – would undermine everything else about your idea? Prioritizing the riskiest hypotheses maximizes learning.

3. Design and run lean experiments

Once you’ve prioritized your hypotheses, it’s time to design the most efficient experiment that will allow you to thoroughly test your hypotheses. Some experiments can be run in parallel, and go through multiple cycles during the challenge.

PARTICIPANT TESTIMONIALS

“I really liked the challenge. It did a great job of meeting you where you were in terms of progress. I wish we had been thinking this way for a while.”

— John Wetzel

“There’s little chance that this idea rattling around in my head would have come this far in such a short amount of time without the Validation Challenge.”

— Ben Seidman

CASE STUDY: THERAPIST MATCH

Therapist Match was one of the winners from the Q4 2018 Validation Challenge. Their risky hypotheses were: users will trust a third party to do matching for them; and that they successfully execute these matches with the data provided. In two weeks, they acquired 21 users who provided relevant data and provided three to four therapist matches for each.

While they validated their risky hypotheses, they got feedback from their users about the most relevant criteria for matching, which would require them to source data from therapists that wasn’t currently available online. Stemming from the Validation Challenge, the Therapist Match team had a clear sense of the next hypothesis to test: that they could build a database of more relevant provider data to be the best matchmaker. Check out their presentation.

Q4 VALIDATION CHALLENGE:

  • 9/20 - 10/11 Registration

  • 10/12 - 11/14 Validation Challenge

  • 11/20 Winners Announced