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The Design Sprint earned its reputation by helping teams make progress fast. In five focused days, you define a problem, prototype a solution, and test it with real users. When teams already know what they're solving for, it works well.
The trouble starts when teams run a Design Sprint too early.
A lot of product teams show up to a sprint with energy but no shared point of view. They agree that "something" is worth building, but not on what really matters, who it's for, or why this direction deserves focus over others. The sprint machinery still runs: maps get drawn, ideas get sketched, prototypes get tested. But the results feel thin. The team learns something, just not something decisive.
Before you can test solutions, you need a coherent belief about the problem space you're entering. Without that, sprints risk becoming an expensive way to explore disagreements that should have been resolved earlier.
The Foundation Sprint addresses this gap. It's a two-day structured pause before execution, designed to help teams form a clear, shared hypothesis about what they're building and why that direction is worth testing.
The Foundation Sprint produces one thing: a Founding Hypothesis. Not a product roadmap, feature list, or vision statement—a single testable belief that captures the core idea you think is worth exploring.
A strong Founding Hypothesis follows this structure:
This structure captures not just the problem and user, but also why your solution matters and how it stands out. It's concise, actionable, and testable.
Example:
If we help remote engineering managers at 10-50 person startups solve asynchronous handoff failures with a context-capture tool built into Slack, they will choose it over Notion and Confluence because our solution requires zero extra documentation work.
That single sentence frames everything: the user, the pain point, the solution direction, the competitive landscape, and what makes it different—all while leaving room for testing and iteration.
Why just one hypothesis? Early-stage product teams often spread their energy across too many assumptions. Multiple competing beliefs create confusion, dilute prioritization, and make validation harder. A single, shared hypothesis forces alignment and makes it easier to see where assumptions are strong and where they're weak.
The Founding Hypothesis becomes the benchmark for what follows. When you later sketch features, build prototypes, or plan experiments, you can check: Does this support our hypothesis, or is it a distraction?
By the end of the sprint, you'll have three things:
Team size: 2-6 people
Essential role: The Decider—the person with authority to commit the team to a direction
Space: A comfortable, collaborative working space with whiteboards or wall space
Time commitment: Two full days (For example, 9:30am – 4:30pm each day)
The Decider is important here. Without someone empowered to make the final call, teams often end with a draft that requires "one more meeting" to finalize, which defeats the purpose.
Day one is about gathering what you know and framing the problem space clearly.
Start by mapping the fundamental elements of your product idea. Work through these questions as a team:
The goal is to get specific. Vague answers produce vague hypotheses. If you can't narrow the target audience, you probably need user research before running this sprint.
By lunch, you should have a clearer view of the landscape: who you're helping, what they struggle with, what they use now, and who's already trying to help them.
This is where most teams get stuck. Differentiation isn't about being "better" or "easier to use"—every team claims that. Real differentiation means identifying what makes your approach either:
Ask: If we build this, what would make someone choose it over what they use today? The answer can't just be "it's faster" or "better UX." Those are nice-to-haves. The answer needs to be structural—something about your approach that creates a different category of value.
For the engineering manager example: the differentiation isn't "better documentation tools." It's "zero extra documentation work required." That's a structural difference that changes user behavior.
By end of day, you should have a draft understanding of your Basics and a clear point of view on your Differentiation. This sets up Day 2.
Day two is about stress-testing your thinking and committing to a single hypothesis.
Start by generating multiple strategic approaches—different ways you could solve the problem for your target audience. Each approach represents a different bet about what will work.
For the engineering manager example, approaches might include:
Generate 3-5 approaches. Don't evaluate yet—just get the options on the table.
Then review each approach against your Basics from Day 1. Does it actually solve the problem you identified? Does it fit your target audience's workflow? Is it defensible against competitors?
This is where you evaluate which approach is strongest. Use these two filters—the Magic Lenses:
How compelling is this approach right now? Would the target user immediately understand why it's better than what they use today? Does it solve a painful-enough problem that people will change behavior?
Where does this lead in 12-18 months? Does it open up new opportunities, or is it a dead-end feature? Can it evolve into something bigger, or will you hit a ceiling quickly?
An approach might score high on Strength but low on Potential (solves an immediate pain but goes nowhere). Another might score low on Strength but high on Potential (ambitious vision but unclear immediate value). You're looking for the approach that scores well on both—or the one where the trade-off makes strategic sense for your situation.
The Magic Lenses force honest evaluation. Teams often fall in love with clever ideas that fail one or both tests. This is where the Decider earns their role: choosing which bet to make.
Take the strongest approach and synthesize it into one clear statement using the five-part structure:
If we help [customer] solve [problem] with [approach], they will choose it over [alternatives] because [differentiation].
Every word matters here. If you can't name specific alternatives, you don't understand the competitive landscape yet. If your differentiation is vague ("better experience"), you haven't found it. If your customer description is broad ("small businesses"), you're not focused enough.
The Decider makes the final call. Everyone else can disagree-and-commit, but someone needs to own the hypothesis.
Before you wrap, identify the top three assumptions embedded in your hypothesis that need validation soonest. These become your roadmap for the next phase.
The difference isn't dramatic in terms of immediate outputs. However, it’s evident in how decisions get made afterward. The Founding Hypothesis acts as a filter. It doesn't eliminate uncertainty, but it turns every debate into a simpler question: Does this support our hypothesis, or is it a distraction?
Teams move faster not because they're rushing, but because they're not relitigating the same foundational questions in every meeting.
The Foundation Sprint isn't for every situation. It's most useful when you need to address misalignment and uncertainty early—before building or prototyping starts.
Use it when:
Skip it when:
If you find yourself in a meeting where everyone thinks they're aligned until someone asks "wait, what are we actually building?"—that's usually a sign you could use this.
Even a focused two-day sprint can go sideways if you're not careful about a few things.
Teams treat Day 2 like brainstorming and end with five "equally good" hypotheses. This defeats the purpose—the goal is convergence, not divergence.
What helps: The Decider chooses one hypothesis before the sprint ends. Everything else goes in the parking lot.
The hypothesis uses safe language: "help users be more productive" or "solve communication challenges." This feels collaborative but produces nothing useful.
What helps: Push for specificity. If you can't name the exact user segment and exact problem, you're probably not done yet. Some discomfort usually means you're getting somewhere.
The team leaves with a "draft" that needs "one more review" from someone who wasn't there. The hypothesis sits in limbo while momentum dies.
What helps: The Decider should be in the room both days and commit before everyone leaves. Otherwise you're just postponing the decision.
You run the sprint without the person who has authority to decide, or without the person who knows the users best. The output ends up requiring validation from people who weren't part of the process.
What helps: Confirm attendees before scheduling. No Decider means you can't really finish. Missing critical expertise usually means you should reschedule.
Your Founding Hypothesis becomes the anchor for every next step.
Use the hypothesis as your challenge statement on Day 1. The How Might We question comes directly from it. The sprint isn't exploring possibilities—it's testing whether your specific hypothesis holds up.
The hypothesis defines scope. Build only what validates or invalidates the core belief. Every feature debate references back to the hypothesis.
The hypothesis generates your interview questions and validation criteria. You're not doing open-ended discovery—you're testing specific assumptions about the customer, problem, and differentiation.
Sometimes Day 2 reveals the hypothesis isn't strong enough to commit to. That's valuable learning. You might need to return to discovery, pivot to a different approach, or acknowledge this direction isn't worth pursuing. Better to learn this in two days than after two months of building.
Here's a simple test: Ask your team if everyone can state your core hypothesis in one sentence—and see if you all say the same thing. If the answer is no, these two days are probably worth it. The alternative is spending weeks building alignment through expensive experiments instead of focused conversation. Two days of structured thinking beats a month of misaligned prototypes and circular debates.
The Foundation Sprint isn't glamorous, and it doesn't produce a finished product. What it does produce is more valuable: a shared compass that turns early energy into informed action.
If we help [specific customer segment] solve [specific problem] with [specific approach], they will choose it over [current alternatives] because [unique differentiation].
Test your hypothesis:
If you can't answer all five clearly, your hypothesis probably needs more work.
Think of us as your tech guide, providing support and solutions that evolve with your product.
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