Founders, Try Becoming Scientists for a Day

How we discovered Upperstory to help turn ideas into businesses through a scientific method.

The Tyranny of Tasks

“Science isn’t something to believe or not believe. It’s something to do.” Seth Godin

In our work with thousands of entrepreneurs, scientists and business leaders we found a pattern that is perpetuated by software. The main currency of business building is tasks. The more tasks we do, the better the team is performing.

Burn down chart showing how a team has got the quantity of tasks done that it estimated to reach a schedule.

But how do we know we are building/doing the right things?

We were exactly on schedule to deliver something that nobody wanted!

We wanted to make a new kind of tool with discovery being the main currency. That tool is Upperstory. It is early days but you might enjoy having a play.

v1 — People

Our work began inside an incubator, helping entrepreneurs transform ideas into businesses. The first version of delivering the value proposition was simple. Experienced entrepreneurs could help inexperienced entrepreneurs avoid common mistakes.

v2 — People + Tool

Pretty quickly we needed a tool to track our progress, so we knocked one up in Google Spreadsheets.

Here’s a screenshot of what we built with the first few weeks of Lawpath as an example.

We used the lean canvas from Ash Maurya as the core tool

Each week, we tested hypothesis around our business model.

v3 — The First App

Pretty quickly we needed an app to manage the workflow better. We especially wanted to connect experiments with the model behind it in a lean canvas.

The app was still largely used to support coaching with people. The core element was the lean canvas.

Lean Canvas was the primary screen

Experiments and Learnings were attached to each canvas cell so that the model could be tested

We found that this got us closer to our goal of building a habit of discovery over tasks but were were lacking a workflow that was intuitive.

v4 — Back to Paper

We went back to the drawing board and started experimenting with paper during physical workshops. Most of those templates can be found in the Startup Science Toolkit that we open sourced recently.

We listened a lot to how teams worked with experiments and realised that everything they intuitively talked about was around a goal.

Let’s go and figure out who our first customer is.

What sort of brand reflects what we are building here?

How do we attract people to our event?

Which social network converts to customers better?

v5 — Back to Software — Introducing Upperstory

This time we started with goals as a primary frame for our projects. Inside goals experiments are how we track the assumptions that the goal needs to be true.

Screenshot of Upperstory for a new startup testing who the first customer is

“Science is a process. It’s not pretending it has the right answer, it merely has the best process to get closer to that right answer. Science is an ongoing argument, one where you show your work and make a prediction about what’s going to happen next.” Seth Godin

Upperstory is in beta but we hope you will take it for a spin and let us know how you go.

Find out more with our Getting Started Guide.