I stopped asking AI for more ideas and started asking it which assumption to test first
I've noticed something while using AI for startup research:
It's very good at giving me more things to think about.
More features.
More customer segments.
More competitors.
More business models.
More growth ideas.
At some point, more ideas stop being useful.
So I've been experimenting with a different prompt:
"Which assumption should I test first?"
That changes the output.
Instead of getting a longer list, I get something closer to a priority:
Assumption
Customers have this problem often enough to care.
Why it matters
If the problem isn't painful, everything built on top of it becomes less important.
What I'd need to learn
How often the problem occurs, what people do today, and whether they have already paid for an alternative.
Smallest useful test
Talk to a few people who currently experience the problem and ask about their existing workaround.
I like this workflow because it creates a stopping point.
You don't keep generating research.
You identify the uncertainty that matters most, then go and learn something about it.
I've been testing this approach while building AI products, and it has made me think differently about AI research:
**The goal isn't to collect the most information.
It's to reduce the most important uncertainty.**
Curious how other founders handle this:
When you have several unknowns around a product idea, how do you decide which assumption deserves to be tested first?
Replies
Solid approach. I add one filter though. I ask which assumption I am most emotionally attached to, since bias usually hides there.
@amybradley That's a really good filter. Emotional attachment is probably one of the easiest biases to miss because we tend to judge the assumption we want to be true differently.
I like combining that with the "what would make me abandon this idea?" test. That makes the first experiment much harder to rationalize away.
i like this a lot. my version is asking which assumption, if false, would make me anandon the idea entirely. That one gets tested first, always.
@albertnelson I like that framing. "Which assumption could kill the idea entirely?" makes the priority much clearer.
It also keeps the validation focused on learning something decisive rather than spending time testing assumptions that wouldn't really change the decision either way.