Ten tenets from Ries-canonical Lean. Where HC stands on each. The single highest-value action per tenet. Built from the deep-dive in vm-03 issue #365.
Both frameworks worship learning under uncertainty. They split on the question they put to a belief.
Confirmation-shaped. We name bets, then we work to make them real. Vision-first, emergence-tolerant. Light on disconfirmation discipline.
Disconfirmation-shaped. Every leap-of-faith assumption gets a test plan and a kill criterion. Vision-first, but each step is a pre-registered experiment.
Rows 1, 2, 5, and 10 of the matrix below all hinge on this flip. Most of the leverage lives here.
Ries' core loop has three arcs. HC is strong on one, weak on one, fragmented on one. The loop doesn't close.
HC's alignment to each Lean tenet at a single eye-pass. Detail and actions follow below.
Bar width = our internal estimate of how much of the tenet HC currently embodies. Not a scorecard; a map of where the leverage sits.
For each tenet: where HC stands now, and the single highest-value action.
Build is strong. Measure is weak — value-realized data is captured nowhere. Learn is fragmented across episodic diary, not aggregated against hypotheses.
Strong in framing ("learning is the product, revenue is proof"), weak in discipline. Validated and anecdotal are not separated. The workshop-as-learning thesis is itself an unfalsified leap of faith.
Workshops are our MVP at the offer layer (axapharm CHF 2.6k transitional). But the upstream is under-MVP'd: the 4-criterion Pre-engagement Assessment is concept, not artifact. ICP discrimination is gut, not surface.
Pipeline tracks CHF won. Quoted-vs-closed delta, conversion rate per ICP slice, time-to-first-paid, source attribution, workshop NPS — all unmeasured.
Strong instinct, no cadence. Soft-pivots happen via brain-dump (workshop-first → CEO-first → frustrated believer → two-track ICP), not scheduled review. Founding-Phase has the only doctrine item with a real exit clause (n=3 + end-2026 hard stop).
Strong on the agent fleet (daily wakes, hourly pushes, multi-deploy/day on PL site). Weak on the commercial surface: Fleco offer v4 took ~2 weeks across email exchanges. The bottleneck is your review, not the artifact.
Practically absent. Failures get logged (Sybille slip, RMEP cancel, Fleco overdue send), but no Five-Whys retrospective applied. Each failure dies as a one-off observation.
Strongest tenet. Mushroom strategy (Step 3 deliberately undefined), three-step path is vision-first, "emergence beats premature planning" explicit. Obligate mutualism is identity, not a milestone.
Strong. Your relationship work is customer development. Workshops observe in the wild. 4 engagements + RMEP cancel + ongoing 1:1s. Thinner: cold-outreach ICP discovery (added to mandate per #381, not yet active).
Named — six Open Bets in strategy.md / 10-risks.md. But no test plan per bet, no falsification timeline. Bets sit as belief, not active experiment. Bet #5 (~100 Swiss SMEs at CHF 10k) is most consequential and least tested.
Rows 1, 2, and 4 are not independent moves. Together they convert the n=3 Founding-Phase graduation criterion from intention into actual measurement infrastructure by end of 2026. Each alone is weak.
The compound, not any single piece, is what turns Founding-Phase from belief into evidence. Each piece without the others is decoration.
If this mapping is going to break, it breaks here. Each is a place where I forced a fit.
The single move with the highest expected information value:
Pick one bet. Design one test. Run it inside Sprint 14. Bet #1 (ignition is a real category) on two next prospects: offer Ignition standalone at full anchor versus bundled. The result either way reshapes the offer architecture under us. We learn more from one clean n=2 than from three months of the current arc.