Slides from Day 1 of our IAP class at MIT, 15.S56: (in)Validating Your Startup Ideas. Topics covered include: - Importance of Invalidation vs. validation - Traps: Confirmation bias, narrative fallacy - Testable hypotheses and KPI's

1. welcome

2. 15.S56:
(in)Validating Your
Startup Ideas
IAP 2013

3. What's ahead
● Monday: From bad ideas to good ideas
● Wednesday: Dig deeper
● Friday: Showtime! (short presentations)

4. Who are we?
R. Colin Kennedy Will Whitney
● Randstad ● MIT Course 6
Corporate Services ○ Senior year
○ $250M Corporate
New Venture
● StartLabs
○ Key team member
● Startups
○ Grinnit & Ringtela
● Startups
○ Crashlytics
● Martin Trust Center ○ Bump
○ Helping Founders

5. Now your turn

6. (in)Validating?
What does that mean?

7. Why is this important?

9. Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is a tendency of people to
favor information that confirms their beliefs or
hypotheses. People display this bias when they
gather or remember information selectively, or
when they interpret it in a biased way. For
example, in reading about current political
issues, people usually prefer sources that
affirm their existing attitudes.
They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence
as supporting their existing position.

11. Narrative Fallacy
The narrative fallacy addresses our limited
ability to look at sequences of facts without
weaving an explanation into them, or,
equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of
relationship upon them.
Explanations bind facts together. They make
them all the more easily remembered; they help
them make more sense.
Where this propensity can go wrong is when it
increases our impression of understanding.

13. Failure modes

14. TRY
TO
QUIT

15. Your time is the most
important thing
Highest opportunity cost

16. What have you
wasted time on
that you could have
avoided?

18. Bad Ideas

19. If people don't want it,
it's a bad idea.

22. If people do want it,
it might be a good idea.

24. Know what you're working with.

26. Test it.

28. Key Performance
Indicators (KPI's)

29. Testable Hypotheses

30. Group Work:
what's testable

31. Homework
1. Three ideas not discussed in class that could
have known better, and how
2. For Wednesday's group work
○ Bring three of your own ideas, with three failure
modes
■ Testable hypothesis
○ One simple way to test each one - that you can do
on Thursday
Wednesday
● Light breakfast at 9 AM (optional)
● Class starts at 10 AM sharp