Template · one-page worksheet

Test Card

Strategyzer (Alexander Osterwalder) · Strategyzer Free Beginner

The Test Card is a one-page worksheet that forces a vague market-size belief into four fields: what we believe, how we will test it, what we will measure, and what result would prove us right. Fill one out for each cofounder's version of the market and the disagreement stops being a debate and becomes two experiments with clear pass or fail bars. It is free, widely used, and takes minutes to complete, so there is no excuse to keep arguing in the abstract.

  • It converts a differing assumption into a hypothesis plus a concrete metric and a success threshold, so you both agree in advance on what would change your mind.
  • Writing each cofounder's belief on a separate card surfaces exactly where the two of you actually diverge.
  • Pair it with the companion Learning Card to record what the test showed, so the decision is documented, not relitigated later.
Open on strategyzer.com ↗

It answers 3 questions

  1. What's the difference between an MVP and just a cheap, half-finished product?
  2. How do I decide the single riskiest assumption my MVP should test instead of trying to prove the whole idea at once?
  3. How do I turn a vague hunch that something is broken into a sharp, testable idea?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The book that gave the world 'MVP', 'build-measure-learn', and 'validated learning'. It reframes a startup as a series of... theleanstartup.com Book · ~330 pages The Lean Startup Eric Ries
  3. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  4. The cleanest distillation of the one framework that turns a customer chat into a relationship instead of a survey. The three... Sachin Rekhi's Blog Article · 10 min read A Primer on Talking to Customers From Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test Sachin Rekhi
  5. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  6. Todd Jackson studied how dozens of now-large companies validated their very first idea. The pattern that repeats: deliver the... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to Validate Your Startup Idea Todd Jackson
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