You need to know everything you can about those problems and people before you build out those solutions, because building software takes time and money. Thus, it’s a risky endeavor to just begin building a new innovative product based on a hunch. Because what if you are wrong? Or your boss is wrong? Or the client is wrong? Or even the successful movie producer guy is wrong? Or this digital value proposition that we generated in .05 seconds is wrong? The answer is simple. If the person with the big hunch is wrong and your team doesn’t find out until after the money is gone, everyone has failed in making something with a true value proposition. Everyone involved has only succeeded in wasting their resources. And because this is the infancy stage of your product vision, you don’t want to get too attached to any ideas — especially without proper validation that real customers will really want the solution. If you don’t want to live on Fantasy Island... Just follow these five steps, which I will walk you through in detail: Step 1: Define your primary customer segment. Step 2: Identify your customer segment’s (biggest) problem. Step 3: Create provisional personas based on your assumptions. Step 4: Conduct customer discovery to validate or invalidate your solution’s initial value proposition. Step 5: Reassess your value proposition based on what you learned! (Rinse and repeat until you have product/solution fit.) It’s that easy! We just need to be empirical in our process. Step 1: Define your primary customer segment Because you and your team are launching an innovative product, you are starting with zero customers. Therefore, if you think your customer is everybody, think harder. Otherwise, you’re facing an uphill battle in customer acquisition. Which is easier: getting everybody to use your app, or getting people who really need it to sign up? Many hit digital products have done just that. When Facebook launched, it was exclusive to students at Harvard University, not the entire