Reference
Glossary
- Value hypothesis
- Your best guess at who gets meaningful value from your idea and why. One sentence: "[segment] will [action] because [pain] costs them [consequence]." It's the claim every move is trying to break or confirm.
- Beachhead segment
- The narrowest group where you could plausibly win first. It is small enough to be homogenous enough to share a trigger and a workaround. Broad markets come later; you land on a beach, not a continent.
- Disconfirmation
- Evidence that your hypothesis is wrong. Actively seeking it — rather than only collecting agreement — is how you avoid building something no one needs.
- Signal vs. noise
- Signal is behavior: what someone actually did, paid, or built a workaround for. Noise is opinion: "sure, I'd probably use that." Score weights signal much higher.
- Workaround
- How someone solves the problem today, even if imperfectly. A real workaround proves the need for your product. No workaround usually means less need.
- Pivot
- Changing your product, service, or go-to-market strategy based on what you've learned about customers. A well-timed pivot on strong disconfirming evidence scores as well as a validated bet.