Founding Hypothesis

A Startup authors one record, the Founding Hypothesis: one sentence with five slots, each graded by outside Evidence. Everything the Startup says, sells and measures compiles from it.

One sentence, five slotsCopy Anchor Link

The sentence has a fixed shape. Each slot is a child Hypothesis with its own Metric and threshold, and each points at a record.

If we help {customer}
solve {problem}
with {approach},
they choose it over {switch}
because {differentiation}.

Agents draft the sentence from a cell on the opportunity map. The Founder edits the draft and commits it, then sets one number beside it: the Minimum Success Criteria.

Grades, not filled fieldsCopy Anchor Link

Each slot shows the strongest grade among its outside Evidence. Behavior beats Commitment, and Opinion weighs the same as no Evidence at all: zero. A compliment moves no slot.

Lifecycle gates read grades, never fields, so typing into a slot passes nothing.

Everything compiles from itCopy Anchor Link

The sentence is the source. The Story, the Offer and its Price, the Site copy, the Personas and the first Plays are compiled from it, never written beside it.

Every output carries its lineage as from: Hypothesis#<slot>@v<version>. A headline traces back through the Story to the slot and to the Evidence behind it. An edit to an output is kept as an override that names its source.

A pivot is a diffCopy Anchor Link

An edit to the sentence is a Change. Its preview shows every output the edit recompiles before it merges. A merged Change adds a version, and every version stays on the record.

A pivot is the diff between two versions, named for the slot that moved. It carries the Evidence that forced it.

Write itCopy Anchor Link

The sentence lives in startup.ts under hypothesis, one key per slot, each a phrase. The approach names its Product Template, and the differentiation names its two axes.

import { Startup } from 'startup-builder'

export default Startup({
  name: 'Platecost',
  domain: 'platecost.app',
  extends: 'solo-saas',
  hypothesis: {
    customer: 'Independent restaurants with one to three locations',
    problem: 'Food-cost drift from changing supplier prices',
    approach: 'A SaaS that recomputes plate costs from every invoice they photograph',
    switch: 'The spreadsheet and the bookkeeper',
    differentiation: 'Margins the same day, as a cost per plate',
  },
})

npm create startups takes the same object as hypothesis in its --json input. On a running Startup, each slot is its own Hypothesis under the root, hypothesis_1, and every Interface writes one with Hypothesis.create:

curl -X POST https://api.sb/platecost.app/hypotheses \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $STARTUP_BUILDER_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"kind":"problem","parent":"hypothesis_1","statement":"Food-cost drift from changing supplier prices"}'

A slot starts at version 1 with the grade None. To edit a slot, change it in startup.ts and run npx startup-builder dev, which previews the Change and every output it recompiles.

To read the grades back, ask for the record:

npx startup-builder show /hypothesis --fields slot,grade,next

platecost.app   Founding Hypothesis v1   state Idea

slot              grade        next
customer          Commitment   met
problem           Commitment   met
approach          None         Smoke page
switch            Commitment   met
differentiation   Opinion      Fake door

pass  Three slots at Commitment   building-slots   3 of 3

next names the cheapest rung on the test ladder that lifts the slot to Commitment. The differentiation slot holds Opinion, so it counts zero and still blocks Live.

ExampleCopy Anchor Link

platecost.app: three compiled outputs, each with its lineage

Reserve page headline  "Stop rebuilding the food-cost sheet every weekend."   from: Hypothesis#problem@v1
Price anchor           $79 a month against a $400 bookkeeper                    from: Hypothesis#switch@v1
Story one-liner        "Margins per plate, updated the morning an invoice lands." from: Hypothesis#differentiation@v1

NextCopy Anchor Link

• Minimum Success Criteria: the number beside the sentence.
• Weekly test: the weakest slot each week, and the one test that grades it.
• Canvases: the lean canvas, the Story and the job, rendered from the slots.