The LEANSpark Playbooks
Free, practical guides and playbooks for building a startup on evidence — not enthusiasm.
Is there demand for your idea?
Answer it in three playbooks
All playbooks
Running Lean: The AI-Native Founder's Playbook
A practical playbook for building an AI-native startup on evidence, not enthusiasm — the three stages from idea to traction, with exercises and prompts at every step.
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Coaching Lean: The AI-Native Coach's Playbook
A playbook for coaches, professors, and program directors in the AI era — why assessment was never the moat, how to run a whole cohort from one dashboard, and the human craft a machine can't touch, across the three levels of Coaching Lean.
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How to Talk to Customers
A practical guide to customer interviews that get the truth, not compliments — who to talk to, the three-act interview and four forces, how to synthesize a Customer Forces Story, and how to turn a conversation into a real commitment, with exercises and prompts at every step.
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Is Your Idea Worth Pursuing?
A practical runbook for stress-testing a raw idea before you build it — the three approaches, the four core tests, and the Rapid Viability Test, with exercises and prompts at every step.
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How to Sell Before You Build
A practical guide to validating demand before you build — the Mafia Offer's three parts, the four-act pitch, the smallest believable demo, running ten-plus pitches up the commitment ladder, and letting real conversion numbers call persevere, optimize, or pivot, with exercises and prompts at every step.
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How to Turn Visitors Into Customers
A practical guide to the landing page as Room 3 of the customer journey — a five-question brief answered from evidence, why validated context out-converts taste, a seven-dimension scorecard with a gate on each, the five metrics that matter (and why qualified signup is the only one that counts), and a one-variable-per-cycle loop that learns, with exercises and prompts at every step.
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How to Design What Customers Want
A practical guide to designing an offer instead of a product — the Kano feature cocktail mixed from real interview evidence, the five Ps (Problem, Promise, Proof, Product, Price) drafted from prospect quotes, and the one-page integration checks that make the offer tell one story before you pitch it, with exercises and prompts at every step.
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