When you test your customer factory blueprint against your minimum success criteria goal, it is fairly common to hit invalidation. This is because we often underestimate the number of customers needed at the outset.

If the model doesn't have a chance of working on paper, it's not going to work in the real world either.

  1. Invalidate your model in 5 minutes with this kind of back-of-the-envelope estimation rather than spending 5 months pursuing a flawed model

  2. Understand why the model failed and specifically what levers you can pull to fix the model

  3. These levers form the basis of your key, and often, riskiest assumptions into the model that you can and should test almost immediately.

    Oftentimes, pricing is your most powerful and often under-utilised lever. Test it in days or weeks vs. months or years. If your customers are still willing to pay for your product/service at a higher price, maybe this can fix your model.

    Can you double your pricing and not lose more than half of your customers? It’s generally better to target fewer higher lifetime value customers than many low lifetime value customers.