Model validation can be part time

Validating a business model can be part-time work.

It doesn’t take seventy hours a week to validate a business model. In Maurya’s example from the writing of his book Running Lean, he tests and confirms the book could produce value in the spare time he had while running another business. It took him seventeen months of scaled effort to validate and create the book his blog readers were asking for. In the process he tested several assumptions that, if proven false, would have saved him countless hours of work writing a book no one would read. The series of positive validations also gave him the encouragement to finish the project that initially was inspired, not by his own interest, but from his business customers (Maurya, pg. 15-19).

One of the riskiest parts of launching a business is the series of unvalidated assumptions in its model. Many would-be entrepreneurs only dream about starting their own business because the risk of leaving their stable job is too high. “After all the hard work and sacrifice, how terrible would it feel if you opened your bakery only to discover that you should have stayed at the law firm?” (Mcginnis, pg. 19) Maurya’s example demonstrates another way that reduces the risk of building an entire business around a flawed idea, and of finding the solution in the relative comfort of a stable job. Not only is this important to me as a reluctant entrepreneur, it also shows a way for an entire community to generate value over time.

Before starting this MBA program I had in my mind that an entrepreneur risked everything they had to discover if their solution could be the next big thing. They either became wildly successful or perished in obscurity after years of fruitless labor. Maurya’s example is encouraging because it doesn’t require this all-or-nothing mentality.

Maurya’s example makes a place for entrepreneurial validation right where I’m at. Although it may take longer to validate a business model in my currently hectic schedule, there’s no reason it could not be done one step at a time. With tools like ‘Lean Canvas’ and examples like Maurya’s, I have a framework to create and test business ideas while working a day job and obtaining an MBA. How cool is that!

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