The Real Startup Book: 2nd Edition: Find the right product for the right customers

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You can build almost anything now. That's the problem.When a working prototype is one AI prompt away, the expensive mistake is no longer building badly — it's spending a month building the wrong thing. The Real Startup Book is how you figure out what's worth building first.Eleven years after the first edition, the methods are sharper, the toolbox is bigger, and AI sits next to every entrepreneur on the desk. This second edition is a complete refresh — nearly triple the page count, ~30 new research and experiment methods, and copy-and-paste AI prompts on every method so you can run the work tonight.What's inside60+ research and experiment methods, indexed by what you're trying to learn — not by what's trendyNew AI-native methods: Disposable MVPs, Synthetic Persona Screening, AI-Moderated Interviews at ScaleAI prompts on every method — paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and goUpdated pitfalls for the AI era: avoiding hallucinated insights, fake validation, and overbuilding"At a glance" cards showing time, cost, tags, and which part of the Business Model Canvas each method revealsReal case studies from real founders — not recycled Silicon Valley folklorePraise for The Real Startup Book"If you want a book that can always be by your side whenever you need to validate a new business idea, look no further — just open it, and you'll know exactly what to do next. Built by practitioners, for practitioners, this book distills a decade of hands-on experience validating business ideas, now updated for the AI era."— Dan Toma, award-winning author of Innovation Accounting & The Corporate Startup"In a world where AI makes it easier than ever to build, the real challenge is knowing what's worth building in the first place. The Real Startup Book is an indispensable guide for entrepreneurs who want to stop guessing, start learning, and create products people truly want."— Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked, Indistractable, and Beyond BeliefWhat hasn't changedReal willingness-to-pay still requires real humans putting real money on the table. Product/market fit is still validated by retention and word-of-mouth — not by an AI panel rating your pitch. The methods that worked in 2015 still work; they're just faster, and the failure modes are different.Who this is forFounders, intrapreneurs, product managers, and innovation coaches who would rather run the experiment than read another framework diagram. If you've ever picked up a "lean" book and wondered "…but how do I actually do this on Tuesday morning?" — this is that book.New to this editionOver 150 new pages. Rewritten cover to cover with both human and AI hands. Every illustration redrawn. Full changelog inside. Read more