One of the highlights of my work in Mexico last week was an unplanned coaching dinner with two brilliant young entrepreneurs charged with passion and vision.
I was encouraged by their intuitive sense of the power of rapid prototyping, using what you have to quickly test entrepreneurial assumptions. Testing means discovering people who actually purchase the prototype. As it turns out the metric of buyer far outperforms other metrics inlcuding social media likes, website hits, celebrity endorsements, fan surveys and even non-buyer investors.
The key to their learning is empathetic listening to prototype buyers. Listening simply involves discovering what they liked, why, and what else would make their life better related to the basic function of the product.
It is this passion for learning that will launch their successes.