(Develop hypothesis) Define problem & solution (Refine hypothesis) Market research (understand competitive offerings, survey/interview consumers). Note: you can read about my process refining the hypothesis & testing the sub-assumptions here. (Integrate hypothesis) Build basic prototype. (Test hypothesis) Test prototype with real users. This is where I am at today, I want 100 real users to borrow something using my service, and each time I am learning a lot. (Develop product) Build core product (Brand product) Define value proposition for select market segments & build brand identity (Ship product) Go-to-market (Refine product) Grow, scale, succeed

It was important to think in these terms and remind myself of the huge gap between hypothesis & product.

- A hypothesis goes through numerous iterations of #2-4. At some point, a decision is made on whether or not the idea has proven product/ market fit (e.g., reviewing data across the surveys, interviews, prototype feedback, there should be some clustering of user need for the hypothesized solution).

- A product is built once product/market fit has been defined. It can be an extension of or a pivot away from the prototype.

I have a hypothesis. It doesn’t have a name, and its website is hosted on the Heroku domain. Its prototype is essentially a simple form backed by me the concierge; I process and handle requests manually with the barest minimum of automation (here’s to doing things that don’t scale!). But, it has been cheap.

This is important in two ways.

If I were a super-developer, I could build, in <1 week, a prototype that looked so professional and cool, people would use it simply to use it. But realistically, developing the product means shelling out a significant sum of $$. I can afford to do that once, so I need to be sure I have a product that the market wants.* Branding is even harder. Find a color scheme, a cute word, a catchphrase, a jingle, that succinctly points users to your value proposition in ~one second. With just a hypothesis, I’m not even sure what my value proposition is, so how can I build a brand? I believe the benefit of giving people something easy to remember today, is not worth the potential cost of getting it wrong and confusing users with a brand shift tomorrow (albeit risk for me is lower as I don’t have an established name).

EDIT: As of May 2014, I started to brand a little, now I can say I’m working on www.ProjectBorrow.com. If you’re curious as to why the branding emerged, read this blarticle.