Thanks for saying I’m disingenuous when you could have said, “Can you please tell me more about how you learn more about customers and what’s valuable to them when you don’t have a product yet?” Because you can do that even without a hypothesis. I’m working on writing that up since I get asked that a lot by startup people who assume you can’t create something without a hypothesis.

I believe a hypothesis puts you in a box AND can even bias your research. How about them apples!

Lean Startup doesn’t tell you how to do GOOD research. It’s not a how-to book on planning, recruiting, conducting, analyzing, and synthesizing research. It’s not a how-to on finding insights and opportunities from observational research. It suggests research, but you could read Lean Startup and do research completely wrong because you’re guessing at how it’s done.

I’m happy to hear you’re doing user research. I hope you hired a highly qualified expert and give them the time and resources to do it well and correctly… planning, recruiting, conducting, observing, analyzing, and synthesizing. Otherwise, you might have junk data that could lead you down wrong paths.

I hope that helps clarify some of the things that seem to have thrown you off.