Start
Before the first job
You have a hunch and no evidence. Everything from here is earned.
On the board: Base CampHEYNS VENTURES
Jobs
Three core jobs. Twenty-two jobs beneath them. One gate.
Founder-onlyFounder-ledHireableTemptation
The founder is the constraint on every venture between an idea and product-market fit. These are the jobs that constraint has to get done. They are numbered in the order risk should be retired, not the order they show up on a calendar; work overlaps, and evidence from the third core job routinely sends you back into the first.
Founder-only means the judgment cannot be delegated. Founder-led means the work can be delegated, but you must stay inside the learning loop. Hireable means someone else can do the job without you in the room.
1 · Find a market worth serving
On the board: The Unmapped WildsScroll →
1.1Founder-only
Choose your why
A problem worth solving or a future worth building, big enough to hold you for a decade.
On the board: North Star Camp1.2Founder-led
Map the ecosystem
Who plays, how value flows, who does this job today, and which role is empty. You can only take value where you first provide it.
On the board: Ecosystem Basin1.3Founder-led
Define your customer
Precisely enough that you would recognise them in a room. Each side of them, if your model has sides.
On the board: Customer Village1.4Founder-led
Understand their problem
As if it were your own. They will rarely be able to say it cleanly; that becomes your job.
On the board: Problem Ravine1.5Founder-led
List the jobs they need done
Everything they do to run their business, and which of it they would hand to someone else.
On the board: The Jobs Workshop1.6Founder-led
Know the value exchange
What they will give for the jobs they would let go of, how much, how they buy, and who decides.
On the board: Exchange Bridge1.7Founder-only
Choose your beachhead
The smallest market worth winning first: narrow enough to dominate, large enough to matter.
On the board: Beachhead Pass2 · Build and sustain the venture capable of finding the product
On the board: The Venture Marches2.1Founder-only
Stay aligned with your why
Every week offers a good reason to wander. This job is saying no to most of them.
On the board: Compass Watch2.2Hireable
Know your runway
In learning cycles first, then in the money beneath them.
On the board: Runway Depot2.3Founder-led
Decide on capital
If, when, how and why. Start with the fork: exit or yield, sell it or live off it. Then close the capital that fits.
On the board: The Capital Fork2.4Founder-only
Choose your co-founders
The few people the venture cannot succeed without.
On the board: Cofounder Crossing2.5Founder-led
Build and keep the team
Capability, culture, energy and a shared why, for a length nobody can predict.
On the board: Team Camp2.6Hireable
Stand the company up
With counsel: jurisdiction, structure, cap table, and licence where regulated.
On the board: Company Forge2.7Hireable
Fill the seats
What the stage needs, including governance and any mandated roles.
On the board: Seats Citadel3 · Find the product the market comes back for
On the board: The Mountain of PullThe real product is whatever survives repeated cycles of assumption, test and evidence, and can then be delivered, chosen again, and distributed without heroics.
3.1Founder-led
Find your first customers
The ones worth serving, not the ones easiest to reach.
On the board: First-Customer Outpost3.2Founder-led
Name the riskiest assumption
Usually one of 1.2 to 1.7. Then design the cheapest test that could kill it.
On the board: Assumption Cliffs3.3Hireable
Run the test
The prototype, not the product, in the hands of the users it was built for.
On the board: Kill-Test Bridge3.4Founder-only
Face the evidence
Persist, pivot upstream, or kill. Get an independent read when you cannot trust your own.
On the board: Evidence Fork3.5Founder-led
Get paid
Then get paid again, without changing the offer each time.
On the board: Payment Pass3.6Founder-led
Deliver what you sold
Repeatably, and without you carrying every delivery.
On the board: Delivery Foundry3.7Founder-led
Keep your customers
They return because the outcome holds, not because you persuaded them.
On the board: Retention Reservoir3.8Founder-led
Find your channel
The one that keeps bringing the customers you qualified in 1.7.
On the board: Channel BeaconTemptations
Where founders go instead. Each one sits next to a hard job, and each has a road back.
Chasing what is loud
Whatever the market is talking about this quarter.
← back to 1.1On the board: Bandwagon Fair
Listening to the wrong people
Feedback from people who are not the customer.
← back to 1.3On the board: Palace of Mirrors
A market too big to win
Too large to lose, and too large to win anywhere in particular.
← back to 1.7On the board: The Boundless Plain
Busy, not learning
Useful activity that answers nothing.
← back to 2.1On the board: City of Busywork
Raising instead of selling
Capital mistaken for traction.
← back to 2.3On the board: Fundraising Casino
Loyalty over capability
The team you started with, in seats they have outgrown.
← back to 2.5On the board: Hall of Familiars
Structure before customers
Legitimate governance, extended forever.
← back to 2.7On the board: Compliance Cathedral
Outrunning the evidence
A story strong enough that nobody checks.
← back to 3.2On the board: Narrative Castle
Building before testing
The real thing, before you know it should exist.
← back to 3.3On the board: Builder's Mine
Validation theatre
The ceremony of testing, with nothing at risk.
← back to 3.3On the board: Ritual Grounds
Too far in to stop
Too much spent to quit, too little evidence to continue.
← back to 3.4On the board: Sunk-Cost Swamp
Pilots that never convert
Enthusiasm with no budget behind it.
← back to 3.5On the board: Pilot Purgatory
It only works when you do it
Delivery that depends on the founder.
← back to 3.6On the board: Heroics Kitchen
Churn hidden by growth
Customers leaving as fast as they arrive.
← back to 3.7On the board: Leaky Cistern
Numbers that mean nothing
Metrics going up that are not money or retention.
← back to 3.8On the board: Vanity Valley
Scaling too early
The company you want to become, built before the gate.
← back to GateOn the board: Early Scale City
One good quarter
Read as arrival.
← back to GateOn the board: The False SummitThe gateFounder accountable
Prove the pull
Customers buy, receive the value, stay, and the next ones arrive without heroics, on economics that let you keep delivering. Evidence opens the gate; belief does not.
On the board: Product–Market Fit GateBeyond the gate
Beyond the gate
Demand arrives faster than you can serve it, and the problem changes from evidence to capacity. That is a different quest, and a good one to have.
On the board: Product–Market Fit Valley