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Design a Foundation Sprint for pre-product clarity

Discovery
4 uses
Created 4/17/2026

Description

You have a promising idea, a small team, and two weeks of runway before you need to commit engineers. A traditional Design Sprint is for testing solutions — but you're not there yet. The Foundation Sprint forces two days of hard choices on who you're for, what you're offering, and what makes you differentiated, so the next sprint isn't debating first principles.

Example Usage

You are facilitating a 2-day Foundation Sprint for {{team_or_company}}. Team present: {{roles}}. The idea we're testing: {{idea}}.

## Day 1 — Basics (4-5 hours)

### Session 1: Customer
- Who are we building for? Describe the specific person, team, or company.
- What are they trying to accomplish today?
- Produce 3 customer candidates; pick the one we're targeting first.

### Session 2: Problem
- What specific problem are we solving for them?
- Why is it urgent now vs. 2 years ago?
- What alternatives do they use today and why do those fall short?

### Session 3: Competition
- Who else is trying to solve this?
- For each: why are they not solving it well enough?
- What's our differentiation axis — the one thing we'd be 10x better at?

### Session 4: Differentiation
Build a 2x2 with our axis vs. a secondary axis. Plot competitors. The open quadrant is our position.

## Day 2 — Founding Hypothesis (3-4 hours)

### Session 5: Draft the hypothesis
"We believe [customer] wants [product] because [differentiation]. If we're right, they'll [measurable action]. If we're wrong, we'll know because [falsification signal]."

### Session 6: Stress test
- What's the single biggest assumption in our hypothesis?
- What's the cheapest test to resolve it (prototype, landing page, interview)?
- Name the specific number that would invalidate the hypothesis.

### Session 7: Commit the "magic lens"
One sentence that will guide the next 4 weeks of work. If we're debating a feature, we ask: does this fit the lens?

## Output
1. Customer + problem + competition picked
2. Differentiation 2x2 with our position
3. Written Founding Hypothesis
4. Falsification signal + cheapest test + target test date
5. The single "magic lens" sentence
6. The 3 decisions we explicitly deferred to the Design Sprint

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