This document discusses framing value and growth hypotheses for a startup business. It emphasizes that customers use products because of the value they provide, and that startups need an efficient method to acquire more customers to grow into a sustainable business that generates more revenue than expenses. It provides examples of value propositions and explains the difference between value and price. The document instructs readers to draft statements outlining their value hypothesis about why customers will use their product and their growth hypothesis about how they will acquire initial customers.

2. Frame a Value and
Growth Hypothesis
Sanjay Vijayakumar

3. Why?

4. Reason #1: Customers use your
product by paying a price because
of the value that it provides

5. Reason#2: Once you find initial
customers, you will need to an
efficient method to find more of
them to grow into a business.

6. Remember: Every Startup is on
a journey/adventure to become
a sustainable business.

7. Remember: To become a sustainable
business, a startup needs to generate
more money (income) than its expenses.

8. What is Value?
What is Price?

9. Price is what customers pay.
Value is what customers get.

10. Example:Bullet Bike
Value : Riding
Pleasure

11. Example:Bullet Shares
Value : ROI

12. Facebook User: Price is Free
Value: Networking with friends

13. Facebook Stock: Price $$
Value:ROI

14. Food @ Regular Hotel
v/s
Food@ 5 Star Hotel

15. At a 5 Star Hotel - You will get a high quality
Ambience
Service
Restrooms
Quality of Utensils
Quality of Food
And this reflects in the price that you pay for the value
(better quality ambience, service etc..) you get.

16. Tip: Technology is not your business. Its only an
enabler to your business.
Business starts when
a. you provide value through a product to
customers
b. who pays a price for the value and
c. you find a way to grow profitably to repeat a.

17. To Do#1:
Frame your value hypothesis statements

18. Hypothesis: We believe Customers will use
product <Name of your product> because/for <fill
in the blanks with your value/reasons why
customers will use the product>

19. Growth Hypothesis is
assumption how new
users will find your product.

20. To Do#2:
Frame your growth hypothesis statements

21. Statement: We will find our initial
customers by..<fill in the blanks
with how you plan to get new
customers>

22. Tip: These value and growth hypothesis are the
assumptions that your team would be testing in the
coming six months.
Fundamental difference between college and SV.CO is
this crucial step of finding customers.
You can move forward in steps 4-10 only by finding
real customers in real world by providing real value.

23. Time
Steps
1. Idea
2. Prototype
3. Early Customers
4. Efficiently adding customers
5. Scaling Business Operations
6. Being Operational Break-even
7. Generating Business Profits
8. Defending Profits from competition
9. Recovering Business Investments
10. Return on Investment for Shareholders
Teams attempt at-least 4 products to find customers
T= 10 yearsT= 6 months
T= 0

24. Useful Resource:
https://blog.kissmetrics.co
m/dropbox-hacked-
growth/

25. Also write down your insight in your
timeline entry as to what you learnt
by trying to formulate your value
and growth hypothesis.

26. Insight = new learning, action items
or other todo tasks.
All because you
performed this task.

27. Insight pointers: While choosing an idea from the
ideas list, select a market you understand or think
you can learn the best, as it will allow you to go
very deep into that domain/market and become
and expert to find the real customer pain.
Solving for this real customer pain will help you
find the real value and growth hypothesis.

28. Don’t forget to check
the Rubric for pointers.