• Target user: Who is going to be the target user and how will they use the product?

  • Target user persona and his/her demographics are defined?

  • Target user pain points and needs are clearly identified?

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• Evidence based narrative building

  • Is there unique data that you can use to quantify the problem? Do you have easy access to this primary data or can you collect it quickly? If not, can you look at the secondary data and derive insights from it?

  • Have you identified journalists and thought leaders in your space?

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• Minimum viable testing

  • Impact model: Do you have your theory for how your intervention can bring about the impact?

  • Have you identified all the assumptions in your impact model?

  • What is the riskiest assumption and how can you test it?

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• Minimum viable product or pilot

  • Do you have a set of users you can pilot your intervention with ? Often this requires partnership with a grassroots non-profit that can help introduce you to the target community.

  • What are the metrics you would track to validate or invalidate your hypothesis?

  • What is the success criteria?

  • How will you collect user feedback? Are you interacting closely with the users? At this stage, you need more depth than quantity.

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• Product: If you are building a tech product:

  • Can you use no-code tools to build an MVP?

  • Do you have basic tooling and analytics installed to gather relevant usage data on your product?

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• Budget for pilot: How much will it cost to run the pilot?

  • What is the cost required to build the MVP including resources, tools, services etc

  • Does the founding team have money or need to raise from friends/family or externally?