You think you know your customers. You don’t. You think you know what problem you’re solving. You don’t. You think your business model makes sense. It doesn’t.Startups (and corporate innovation teams) die because they cling to assumptions that are fundamentally wrong. And instead of killing them, they keep throwing good money, time, and effort at a fantasy. The worst part? Even when reality slaps them in the face, they refuse to let go.Most startups don’t fail because of bad products; they fail because they persist in bad assumptions.
If you think you’re in love with your product, but customers aren’t—your love is wasted.
The brutal truth: Your hypotheses are probably wrong
When you launch a new business model, you’re not executing a plan—you’re running a series of experiments. Your ideas about customer segments, pricing, value propositions, and go-to-market strategies are just guesses. Some are decent. Most are garbage.
And that’s fine—if you admit it early enough. The problem? Most founders and innovation teams are too emotionally invested in their initial vision. They love their idea more than they love the truth. So instead of testing their assumptions, they build. And build. And build. Until they crash.
Pivoting is firing your assumptions—So fire fast
A pivot isn’t just tweaking a feature or changing your marketing message. A pivot is firing a bad assumption before it kills your company. That means: If your first user cohort isn’t biting—fire your target segment.If your pricing model isn’t working—fire your revenue assumption. If customers don’t care about your “killer feature”—fire your product fantasy. Startups don’t succeed by being right from day one. They succeed by being wrong—fast, cheap, and often—until they find what’s right.
Business Model Innovation is not about your product
Most founders think they are building a product. They’re not. They’re building a business model. And that model is only as good as its weakest assumption. It’s easy to get caught up in features, design, and technology. But none of that matters if you don’t have paying customers who get real value from your solution. The only thing that matters is whether users actually change their behavior because of what you offer. If your product is beautiful but doesn’t solve a critical problem—users won’t care. If you think you’re in love with your product, but customers aren’t—your love is wasted. If your pricing is based on what you think it’s worth rather than what users are willing to pay—you’ll be out of cash before you realize why. Great startups aren’t obsessed with their product. They’re obsessed with the user’s perception of value.
Fire people who can’t fire their assumptions
This one’s uncomfortable, but necessary. If your team—or worse, you as a founder—refuses to kill bad assumptions, they are now the problem. There is no room for ego in business model innovation. If someone is too stubborn, too attached, or too arrogant to accept the data, let them go. Yes, even if it’s the founder. Fire yourself. Companies don’t fail because the market is cruel. They fail because people refuse to see the truth staring them in the face. A founder who won’t pivot is a founder who will run the company into the ground. A corporate innovation team that won’t challenge internal dogma is just burning budget for a glorified science fair.
Your only job: Find the right Business Model before time and money runs out
Your runway is shrinking. Your competitors are moving. Your customers are waiting for something that actually solves their problems. Your only job is to figure out what that is—before you run out of time and money. User-centered business model innovation isn’t about your product. It’s about the value your users get and perceive. If they’re not getting enough, you don’t have a business—you have a hobby. The only way to survive is to test, learn, pivot, and repeat. The faster you fire your bad assumptions, the better your chance of winning. And if you can’t? Someone else will.
So the question is: Are you willing to fire your own ideas before the market fires you?
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