Build In Public University

Entrepreneurship / Lesson 03

Lesson 03 · School of Entrepreneurship

Start from demand

The problem comes before the product

Separate the actors

Name the user, buyer, payer, approver, beneficiary, and person carrying the risk. Assuming they are one person is a common way to build for nobody.

Find the workaround

Existing workarounds are stronger evidence than “that sounds useful”: money spent, time burned, a spreadsheet maintained, a person hired, or a problem tolerated.

Why now

A problem can be real and not urgent. Identify the deadline, cost increase, regulation, transition, or new capability that makes change possible now.

The demand test

State the problem without naming your solution. If the sentence collapses without product vocabulary, you may be describing an idea rather than demand.

Do the work

Write: “When [situation], [person] needs to [job] because [cost]. They currently [workaround]. A credible next step is [bounded action].”

Falsifier: If this lesson makes you feel more certain but does not change the next observable action, it has probably become motivation content instead of an operating tool.

This is a working course document combining first-principles reasoning with observations from BIPU work. It is not a guarantee of business success. Ask what would falsify it.