We begin by sharing our ideas (or starter ideas). This is not a time to do a lot of market analysis or to statistically identify the best business. It’s instead a chance to listen to what’s pulling you forward. I believe that you’ll be most successful building something you want to see in the world, and so that’s the driver.

Also this month, we’ll discuss what’s holding us back. Every one of us (myself included) will have things that are keeping us from moving forward with ease. Let’s get those surfaced so we can design for them.

This, my friends, is the oft-forgotten step that never fails to deliver. This month, we’ll take the time to really get clear on why we want to build any business, and why this business. It’s this that will serve as a foundation and a pillar of support as you go through the inevitable highs and lows of building a business.

Here’s where we start to get really tangible. I’ll introduce the experimenter’s mindset and the tools that go along with it. You may have experimented in the past, but probably not with the structure I’m going to recommend. Depending on where you are in building your business and how quickly you want to gain insight that moves you forward, from here you can kick off your first business experiment. Or you may choose to make your first experiment not about your business, just to begin building your experimentation muscle.

In subsequent months, I’ll be introducing new concepts building on this. But this is the month we lay the groundwork for market-driven experimentation, so you can get data that helps you move forward.

This month, we’ll begin to uncover assumptions. What assumptions is your business built on? Getting honest with yourself here can yield a great set of questions on which to experiment.

You may continue to run last month’s experiment, start a new one, or some combination.

As you begin to get information from experiments, you’ll start to make new decisions about your business. This month, we deep dive on sense-making. There’s an art to gathering feedback from experiments. The most useful insights aren’t always the most obvious things that pop up as you experiment. So, we’ll use your real life experiments to talk about the different kinds of insights and what they can offer.

As with previous months, you may be also launching a new experiment or iterating a previous one.

None of us are under any illusions that you’ll have your startup done and dusted after 6 months. But my goal is to provide tools that help you as you go. In this final month, I want to share about the stages of intentional venture design. This is a framework I’ve used with many client companies (and my own) and which will help you consider what approaches are warranted when.

As with all previous months, you may be also launching a new experiment or iterating a previous one.