Riskiest Assumption Testing vs. Minimum Viable Product

The Fastest Way To Test Your Business Idea
Riskiest Assumption Testing vs. Minimum Viable Product

by Niall Doherty Updated: October 15, 2018

A question from Adil on YouTube:

I’m looking to do some freelancing in web development and possibly turning this into a full-time thing, so your videos really do help.

I speak fluent English, but I have relatives in Switzerland and I think the potential to focus my efforts there could be very rewarding. The only issue is the language barrier ( French + German ) but I have a retired uncle who’s willing to help out on that. Since I live in Africa, even earning $2,000 a month would be quite enough to live comfortably and since everything’s so expensive in Swiss, I’m thinking I could be able to charge clients more if I was able to get enough work there.

He’s basically asking here if he should target clients in Switzerland for his freelance web development business.

And I replied:

Hard to know if it’s a good idea or not without trying it. I’d recommend looking up “Riskiest Assumption Test” and use that approach to quickly figure out if it’s worth pursuing or not.

So let’s talk about Riskiest Assumption Testing and how to use it, because it’s a tool that can save you from wasting a lot of time and energy when building your online business.

Here’s the plan:

First, I’ll give you an example of Riskiest Assumption Testing (or RAT for short)
And then we’ll dive a bit more into the theory.

Sound good?

Alright then…

Riskiest Assumption Testing – Irish Pubs Example

Two years ago I was living in Berlin in Germany for a few months when I had the best idea ever.

Kinda like this

I realized that a great niche for my web design business would be… Irish Pubs!

Think about it:

I’m Irish
I’ve been a web developer for many years
Irish pubs are everywhere
And Irish pub websites are generally pretty crap

I mean, clearly, my idea was a winner, and I was going to be super rich.

Kinda like this

But here’s the thing about ideas:

You never really know if an idea is good or not, until you actually test it out in the real world.

So the first thing I did when I had my brilliant idea was sit down and list out all the assumptions I was making.

And the biggest, riskiest assumption I was making, clearly, was that Irish pub owners would be willing to pay someone to build them a better website.

If that assumption was true, then brilliant, I’d be off to the races.
But if that assumption was false, then my idea wasn’t worth anything.

The next step then, after identifying that riskiest assumption, was to test it.

And it dawned on me that the quickest way to test whether or not Irish pub owners would be willing to pay someone to build them a better website… was to go and ask them.

So that’s what I did.

I hopped on my bicycle and cycled around to all the Irish pubs in Berlin and I spoke with the owners, and those conversations went a little like this:

Hey Mr. Irish Pub Owner, would you like a new website?
Ah no, we’re grand thanks.

Yeah, wasn’t a great response