Classic Differentiator Scales Jump-Start Strategic Thinking

The Foundation Sprint is a structured two-day process (about 10 hours total) designed to help founders and product teams clarify and test their product ideas before building. Created by Jake Knapp and John Zorotsky based on their experience with hundreds of teams, it emerged as a precursor to the Design Sprint to address foundational questions teams often skip.

The Three Phases of a Foundation Sprint

Phase 1: Establish the Basics (Day 1)

• Use "work alone together" and "note and vote" methods where team members:
  • Silently write their own answers to key questions
  • Share and vote on answers
  • Have a designated "decider" make final calls
• Answer fundamental questions:
  • Who is your most important customer?
  • What problem are you solving for them?
  • Who are your competitors (including workarounds and alternatives)?
  • What advantages do you have (capabilities, insights, motivation)?

Phase 2: Define Your Differentiation (Day 1)

• Start with "classic differentiators" as a baseline:
  • Fast to slow
  • Smart to not so smart
  • Easy to use to hard to use
  • Free to expensive
  • Focused to one-size-fits-all
  • Simple to complicated
  • Integrated to siloed
• Create custom differentiators specific to your market
• Score your product and competitors on these scales
• Select the 2 strongest differentiators where you can win
• Create a "business school 101" two-by-two diagram with your product in the top right
• Develop project principles that will guide decision-making aligned with your differentiation

Phase 3: Choose Your Approach (Day 2)

• Identify multiple possible implementation paths
• Evaluate each approach through "magic lenses":
  • Customer lens: Which approach best solves the customer problem?
  • Pragmatic lens: Which approach is fastest/cheapest to build?
  • Growth lens: Which approach reaches the most customers?
  • Financial lens: Which approach creates the most long-term value?
  • Differentiation lens: Which approach best delivers on your differentiators?
  • Conviction lens: Which approach are you most excited to build?
• Select a primary approach and a backup plan

The Output: Your Founding Hypothesis

• Combine all decisions into a single hypothesis statement:
  • "If we solve [problem] for [customer] with [approach], we think they'll choose it over [competitors] because of [differentiator 1] and [differentiator 2]."
• This hypothesis becomes the foundation for Design Sprints where you'll build and test prototypes

Why This Process Works

• Creates alignment across the entire founding/product team
• Forces clarity on what makes your product unique
• Prevents building generic, undifferentiated products (especially important with AI)
• Helps you avoid wasting months building the wrong thing
• Provides a structured way to test and refine your idea
• Accelerates 3-4 months of work into 3-4 weeks

Key Principles

• Going fast can actually slow you down in the long run
• Differentiation is the core of what makes products successful
• The more AI-generated/assisted products are, the more generic they tend to be
• Wait as long as possible to start sketching or prototyping to avoid anchoring bias
• You don't need to win on every differentiator - focus on 1-2 where you can truly excel
• Price is rarely the most important differentiator for startups
• Every product has a founding hypothesis - making it explicit allows you to test it

Testing Your Hypothesis

After completing the Foundation Sprint, run a series of Design Sprints where you:

• Build prototypes based on your founding hypothesis
• Test with real customers
• Use a scorecard to evaluate if each element of your hypothesis is correct
• Refine your hypothesis based on feedback
• Repeat until your scorecard shows consistent green signals