Explorer
You do not need an idea to start. You need to start noticing.
Stage intro
You want to build something. You just do not know what yet. Good. Most people wait for a perfect idea to arrive before they feel allowed to start. It rarely arrives, and the waiting is where the itch dies.
This stage turns you into the kind of person who notices problems and moves on them. That is where real ideas come from, so we start there. Two short chapters. The first takes the pressure off by making failure the goal, not the risk. The second gets you collecting real problems from the world around you instead of forcing one shiny idea.
You leave this stage with one real problem in hand, held by a person you could name, that someone would pay to make go away.
Chapter 1
Fail Twenty-Five Times
Take the pressure off starting by making cheap, fast failure the goal of your first year, not the thing to avoid.
Chapter 2
Find a Real Problem
Before you fall in love with a product, find a problem close to you that a real person would pay to make go away.
Tailored review
Get the playbook tailored to your business.
Tell us what you run and what you want to fix. Alistair will read it personally and send you a tailored version of the playbook for your specific situation. Free, no commitment, 48-hour turnaround.
Finished this part?
Continue to Idea and Validation.
Apply what you learned: Draft your first SOP · Run the Stress Test