Who this is for
You have an idea and limited hours. Probably a job, possibly obligations, and the realistic budget is a few evenings a week — which is enough to start something and nowhere near enough to absorb a wrong turn taken in month one.
This template is organised around the cheapest possible order of finding out you are wrong. Most side-business plans are sequenced by what is comfortable: build first, because building is enjoyable and does not involve talking to strangers. That order maximises the cost of the most likely failure.
The branches
Who has this problem, specifically. Not a market. A describable person you could actually find. "Small landlords with two to five properties" is workable; "people who want to be organised" is not, because you cannot go and find one this week.
Evidence they will pay. The uncomfortable branch, deliberately near the front. Not survey responses about whether something sounds useful — people are agreeable in surveys. What are they paying for now, however badly? A worse tool, a spreadsheet, a person, their own time. Existing spend is the only reliable signal available before you have built anything.
The smallest thing that could be sold. Not the product you imagine. The smallest version that someone could pay for — often a service done manually before it is software, or one feature rather than a suite. This branch is where scope creep is fought and usually lost.
Hours that actually exist. Real ones, not aspirational. Count them for a week before designing anything around them. A plan assuming fifteen hours from someone with six is not ambitious; it is a plan to feel behind from day one.
What "worth continuing" looks like. Decide now, while unattached: what result at three months means keep going, and what result means stop. Written in advance, this is the difference between a decision and a slow sunk-cost drift. It is the branch everyone skips and the one that saves the most time.
How the first ones would find me. Distribution, thought about before building rather than after. Where do these people already gather? Who already has their attention? A good product nobody encounters is the most common quiet failure.
What happens if it works. Briefly. If ten customers appeared next month, could you serve them alongside the job? Sometimes the honest answer changes what you should build — this branch occasionally prevents building the wrong shape of business entirely.
How to use it
Import it and mark "evidence they will pay" as Focus. Not the build branch. This inverts the natural order deliberately, and it is the single most valuable thing this template does.
Draw the dependencies: the smallest sellable thing depends on knowing who has the problem; distribution depends on the same. Building depends on all of it, and it is fine for the build branch to sit unfocused for weeks.
Set a real Deadline on the "worth continuing" review. Three months, in the calendar, decided now. Without a fixed date this becomes a thing you are perpetually still doing.
What to add once it is yours
Name the actual people, the actual thing they currently pay for, the actual number of hours. Generic versions of these branches provide no information.
Attach Proof to the evidence branch especially — the conversation, the person who said yes, the first payment. A branch cannot be marked Proven without it, and here that prevents the very common state of believing demand exists on the strength of enthusiasm rather than money.
Signs it is working
- You have talked to people who have the problem
- You know what they currently pay to solve it badly
- The buildable thing is smaller than the original idea
- Your stop condition is written and dated
Signs it is not
- Months in, and the only progress is the product
- The audience is a category, not people you could name
- Validation is compliments rather than payments
- The hours branch was never counted honestly