There are a bunch of ways to evaluate whether a startup at the idea(ish) stage will be successful, but one of my favorites is how founders answer this question: **If you had to speak with 20 customers this weekend, how would you do it?**Your progress as an entrepreneur will look like this:

1. Observe: Notice a thing (usually a problem)
2. Engage: Get the thing you noticed in front of the people you think will be most excited that you noticed it (note- this doesn’t mean build a product, it means speak with people about the thing you noticed)
3. Learn: Realize these people aren’t as excited (or in as much pain) with respect to the thing you noticed as you’d hoped they’d be, but get deeper insight into how it impacts them, how they feel about it, and where the incentives lie
4. Adopt + Adapt: Update your thinking around the thing you noticed and the people you think will be excited about it
5. Repeat steps 2-4

To be successful, you’ll need to turn over steps 2-4 quickly. You're like a restaurant turning over two-tops - it’s a volume play. Speak with lots of customers and get lots of stuff in front of them and you’ll have deeper insight than anyone else and be in great shape. Get stuck at step two and only turn the process over once before you sink your savings into a dev shop and you’ll be in a world of pain.

Step two is always the bottleneck.

The founders that can “brute force” step two - find 20 customers, whenever they’d like - have a massive advantage. Even if this brute forcing isn’t scalable or cost / time effective long-term, the only thing that matters early is turning over these steps, so you can afford to “overpay” for it, in time or money.

So, what’s this look like?

Here are some examples:

Thing you notice:

Buying a house is a massive pain in the ass, and you’ve got a theory that people would be willing to pay a lot of money if you took parts of it off their plate.

Brute Force Customer Acquisition:

Show up at a few open houses every sat/sun and speak with people. Hand out cards with your problem statement on them. For overbooked listings, maybe you sit out front with lemonade and brownies and give them away for free if people answer a few questions.

Thing you notice:

Most sit-down restaurants have no loyalty programs, and you think they’d get more business if they did.

Brute Force Customer Acquisition:

Show up to their restaurant during off-times and chat. Go to the farmers or fish market every morning to talk to them while they’re in line. Stake out Restaurant Depot and hand out cards.