Studio
How a venture gets from a real problem to its first paying customer, and what we check before each step.
Purpose, Playbook,
Patient Capital
Should it exist?
Nine questions, open source under the MIT License.
Read onCan it be built?
Three stages and nine steps, from a real problem to a first paying customer.
Read onOn whose clock?
Equity in place of a loan, on the problem's clock.
Read onPurpose decides whether the Playbook runs at all. The Playbook decides what the capital is asked to fund. Capital that arrives first sets its own clock, and the venture spends its years keeping to it.
Purpose
Before anything gets built, we write down who is better off, by how much, and how we will know. Then the line this venture will not cross, written while refusing still costs nothing.
We check it against E.I., a set of nine questions with Empathy and Innovation at the center. It is open source under the MIT License.
Playbook
Roughly 80% of what any team builds is common work, and innovation lives in the other 20%. The Playbook moves a team through the common part quickly, so its time goes where the venture is different.
Nine steps sit across three stages. Each one asks a question that has to be answered before the next is worth asking. Zero to one is where ventures burn their money, so the method is built to take risk, cost, drama and waste out of that stretch.
Problem–Market Fit
Start with Why
Why are we here?
Find the Root
Is this a real problem?
Pretotype, Find the Beachhead
Who is the first beneficiary?
Problem–Solution Fit
Shape the Solution
What is the smallest credible solution?
Prototype & Test
Does it move the needle?
Earn the Right
Will they pay, return, or refer?
Product–Market Fit
Productize
Can we deliver it repeatably?
Find the Engine
Which channel brings the next ten?
Prove the Model
Do the unit economics compound?
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Inside each stage the work goes wide, gets judged, then narrows: diverge, evaluate, converge.
Co-authored with Dan McClure and published openly.
Patient Capital
A patient founder stops being patient the day a capital call lands. A patient term sheet does not. So the horizon gets stated before the money arrives, and the instrument is matched to it.
That rules out a set of ventures: anything whose case depends on returning a hundred times over inside a fund’s life. It rules in the venture that pays its way, holds its ground, and is still owned locally in twenty years.
The Freedom Fund
The fund buys part of a small business or a family home, and the money pays off the bank loan. The interest stops. The fund earns its share of profit only when there is profit.
A Rule 506(c) fund run by Caravan Capital, for verified accredited investors. Terms appear only in the offering documents. Nothing here is an offer.
The Freedom Fund