Designing Mellow: Navigating Startup Challenges

Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky are the co-creators of the Design Sprint (the famous five-day product innovation process) and authors of the bestselling book Sprint. After decades of working with over 300 startups in the earliest stages, they discovered that most startups fail not because they can’t build, but because they build the wrong thing. The very beginning of a startup is your highest-leverage moment, and most teams waste months or years by skipping a few critical early questions. Jake and John developed the Foundation Sprint to help startups validate ideas and compress months of work into just two days.

What you’ll learn:

1. The step-by-step Foundation Sprint process that compresses three or four months of validation into two days—including templates you can use immediately

2. Why differentiation is the #1 predictor of startup success (with the 2x2 framework that you can use with your team)

3. The three fundamental questions every founder should answer before writing a line of code

4. The “note and vote” technique that eliminates groupthink and gets honest answers from your colleagues

5. The seven “magic lenses” for choosing between multiple product ideas

6. The biggest mistake engineers make when building with AI tools

7. The paradox of speed: why “building nothing first” can get you to product-market fit faster

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Brought to you by:

Brex—The banking solution for startups: https://www.brex.com/product/business-account?ref_code=bmk_dp_brand1H25_ln_new_fs

Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want: https://www.useparagon.com/lenny

Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace: https://coda.io/lenny

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Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-foundation-sprint-jake-knapp-and-john-zeratsky

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My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):

https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/167485876/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation

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Where to find Jake Knapp:

• X: https://twitter.com/jakek

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-knapp/

• Website: https://jakeknapp.com/

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Where to find John Zeratsky:

• X: https://twitter.com/jazer

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnzeratsky/

• Website: https://johnzeratsky.com/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

(04:41) Origins of the Design Sprint

(11:06) The Foundation Sprint process

(14:40) Phase one: The basics

(16:57) Case study: Latchet

(28:50) Phase two: Differentiation

(36:24) The importance of differentiation

(40:15) Thoughts on price differentiation

(43:37) Case study: Mellow

(46:04) Custom differentiators

(49:30) The mini manifesto

(52:02) Phase three: Approach to the project

(54:50) Magic lenses activity

(01:02:39) Prototyping and testing

(01:10:00) Real-world examples and success stories

(01:15:15) Motivation behind The Foundation Sprint

(01:17:15) The outcome of the sprint: The founding hypothesis

(01:19:28) The Design Sprint

(01:28:19) The role of AI in prototyping

(01:36:50) Final thoughts and resources

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Referenced:

• Introducing the Foundation Sprint: From the creators of the Design Sprint: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/introducing-the-foundation-sprint

• Making time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (authors of Sprint and Make Time, co-founders of Character Capital): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-time-for-what-matters-jake

• Eli Blee-Goldman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-blee-goldman/

• Character Capital: https://www.character.vc/

• Character Labs: https://www.character.vc/labs

• Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/

• Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/

• Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/naming-expert-david-placek

• Sonos: https://www.sonos.com/

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/

• April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/april-dunford-on-product-positioning

• Positioning: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/positioning

• 10 things we know to be true: https://about.google/company-info/philosophy/

• Gandalf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandalf

• Frodo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frodo_Baggins

• Mordor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordor

• 35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond | Bob Baxley: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/35-years-of-product-design-wisdom-bob-baxley

• The Primal Mark: How the Beginning Shapes the End in the Development of Creative Ideas: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/primal-mark-how-beginning-shapes-end-development-creative-ideas

• Base44: https://base44.com/

• Solo founder, $80M exit, 6 months: The Base44 bootstrapped startup success story | Maor Shlomo: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-base44-bootstrapped-startup-success-story-maor-shlomo

• Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/

• Blue Bottle Coffee: https://bluebottlecoffee.com

• Reclaim: https://reclaim.ai/

• The official Foundation Sprint + Design Sprint template: https://www.character.vc/miro-template

• Rippling: https://www.rippling.com/

• Latchet: https://latchet.com/

• Mellow: http://getmellow.com/

• AxionOrbital: https://axionorbital.space/

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Recommended books:

• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-audiobook/dp/B019R2DQIY

• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422

• Click: How to Make What People Want: https://www.amazon.com/Click-Make-What-People-Want/dp/1668072114

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.