If you are going from [[-1 to 0]] and want to build a venture-scale startup, this is a framework on how to proceed. 1. Pick a north star Some domain, insight or value you are increasingly passionate about. Ideally you have experience and some unfair advantage. You can always it change later. 2. Find problems that are reachable today (or in the near-future) within your north star These are proxy markets to your north star market. They allow you to start learning and build a business. You should spend a full day coming up with ideas. [[Quantity produces quality]]. Do the math. If you can't find a plausible near-future market where your idea could become a billion dollar company, the best outcome is probably a cash flow business. 3. Develop hypotheses If you're going for a venture-scale idea, you need to be a worldbuilder. A worldbuilder imagines a future world and puts in the work that gets us there. Imagining a future world means having hypotheses - having opinions on how the world works and testing those opinions. The validation stage is about validating hypotheses. Trying to validate your startup idea without clear hypotheses is a great way to waste time. Good hypotheses don't fall from trees, they usually emerge from real work: Prototyping, writing, experiments. 4. Test your hypotheses There are two ways to test hypotheses for startup ideas: the demo and the memo. The demo is a bottom-up approach, creating user-facing content to test with real people. A demo can be a landing page, product video/images, working MVP or a [[Painted door test]] The memo is a top-down written argument about the market and strategy. Doing the research and writing it down makes it easy to spot muddled ideas. [[Writing clarifies thinking]]. Technical founders often find the memo unnatural. Making it an intentional exercise can help. Being a worldbuilder means validating through both demo and memo. 5. Find community Figuring out what do next can be overwhelming and isolating. A community can make the process more enjoyable and efficient - especially if it contains other curious, intense and opinionated people. Great examples are [South Park Commons](https://www.southparkcommons.com/) and [Nine Three Quarters](https://www.ninethreequarters.com/). ![[Pasted image 20251208171619.png]] [^1] [^1]: South Park Commons. 2024. “How to Go from -1 to 0.” January 31. [https://blog.southparkcommons.com/how-to-go-from-minus-1-to-0/](https://blog.southparkcommons.com/how-to-go-from-minus-1-to-0/). [[HowGo12024|Annotations]]