As many of you know by now, I strongly believe in the effectiveness of using the scientific method to validate business ideas.
Earlier this year, I began running a bunch of experiments for my ideas and ventures. But, quickly, my experiments became too much to handle on a white-board with stickies. I switched to a Google Sheet but that didn't have the usability and speed that I loved from using stickies.
So I decided to build a simple experiment tracking system for myself.
## Keeping Track of Ventures, Experiments and Costs
![[lean-experiments-board.png]]
I would say it's pretty basic and covers exactly what I need to keep track of:
- **My Ventures** which are a sequential list of experiments and their Pivot-or-Persevere decision. Ventures can also be aborted if there is no encouraging signal.
- **Experiments**, which comprise of:
- Theory
- Riskiest Assumption
- Method
- Prediction
- Outcome
- Decision
- Cost
- Learnings
- **Cost tracking**
- Per Experiment
- Per Venture
- Overall
### I added software once I maxed out on paper
Note that I built the tracking software only once I had run out of space on my physical [[Experiment Board 2.0|custom-made]] [[Lean Experiment Board]]
![[KDP-Publishing-Experiment-Board.jpg]]
## Types Of Experiments:
![[Screen-Shot-2017-10-01-at-10.58.31-AM.png]]
I templated the main three experiment types that I usually run:
### Market Experiment
- **Market Experiment** – Usually an overview how big the market is, how much traffic there is, how the market has grown so far.
![[Screen-Shot-2017-10-01-at-10.58.41-AM.png]]
### Customer/Problem Experiment
![[Screen-Shot-2017-10-01-at-10.58.50-AM.png]]
- **Customer/Problem Experiment** – If the market is attractive, I ask myself, what problems do these people really have? Depending on my theory and riskiest assumption I might do interviews or keyword research or – something I've fallen in love with – analyze Amazon customer reviews.
### Problem/Solution Experiment
![[Problem-Solution-Experiment.png]]
- **Problem/Solution Experiment** – Knowing the problem, can I come up with a solution that is attractive to the customer segment?
### Sales-Funnel Experiments
Once I have nailed those three, I start running custom experiments for **Acquisition**, **Activation**, **Retention** and **Revenue** (but not earlier.)
If you look at my dashboard below, I've run 43 Experiments for 14 Ventures. As you'll see, based on my learnings I aborted more than 2/3rds of my Ventures and continued on only a few promising ones.
I think that's been a huge value for me. To know and to be sure when to persevere and when _not_.
So far, I'm quiet happy with it. It's rudimentary but works.
And since the Venture Board was, in itself, an experiment for myself (My theory was that I'll consistently use it to track my progress and costs) –
**I'm persevering.**
![[lean-experiments-board.png]]
Let me know if you would like early-bird access to the board. **Simply comment below.**
Thanks for reading!
- [[Lean Experiment Board]]
- [[Lean Experiment Board 2.0.pdf]]