All tools Step 9 of 12
Identify Assumptions
Find the belief that would end the company
Names the assumptions your business rests on, and ranks them by what breaks if they turn out to be false.
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What Identify Assumptions looks like
The tool as it appears inside the ToolSuite, shown here on an example company.
Identify Assumptions: ShelfSense
Ranked by what breaks if the assumption is false.
Everything downstream needs the sales history. If they will not connect it, there is no product — and nobody has been asked yet.
Willingness to pay clustered above this in the test, but that was a stated number, not a charged one.
The channel assumption. Wrong here means slower growth, not a dead business.
- Independent grocers reset categories on a regular cycle
- POS exports are technically obtainable
Example content, shown on an invented company. Your own analysis uses your idea.
Three things it does
- 01
Load-bearing only
Not every uncertainty — the ones that would break the business, which is a list you will actually act on.
- 02
Ranked by damage
Ordered so the most expensive thing to be wrong about gets tested first.
- 03
Feeds your interviews
These assumptions become the subject of the scripts in the next step.
What it lets you do
- Stop testing the assumption you are most confident about
- Spend finite validation effort where being wrong costs the most
- Answer "what has to be true for this to work" without hesitating
Founders test the assumption they are most confident about, because it is the most comfortable to confirm. The point of naming them is to make that harder.
Where it sits
Each tool uses what the last one established. See all 13 tools in order.
Common questions
What is a leap-of-faith assumption?
A belief the business depends on that has not been verified — that a customer segment will pay, that a channel will reach them, that a behaviour will change. Every startup has several. The work is identifying which one, if wrong, ends the company.
How do I know which assumption to test first?
Test the one that would do the most damage if it were false, not the one you are most confident about. That ranking is the tool’s actual output — the list matters less than the order.
What do I do once I have them?
They become the subject of your customer interviews. The next tool in the sequence drafts interview scripts against these assumptions specifically, so the conversations are aimed at what could break the business.
Find the belief that would end the company
Create a free ToolSuite account and Identify Assumptions is there, along with the other twelve tools.
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