The big idea with the Foundation Sprint is to capture the essential strategy behind your new product, then formulate a clear hypothesis you can validate with real customers. This is our best method for starting big projects — and it’s the sprint we use most often with our portfolio companies at Character Capital.
The Foundation Sprint increases the success rate for new products and companies by helping you:
If you want to run a Foundation Sprint with your team, here are the best ways to get going:
After you by the book, be sure to come back here and claim the Click Bonus Pack, which includes:
If you want more help, please email us at jakeandjz@character.vc and we’ll see what we can do.
Jake Knapp is co-founder and general partner at Character Capital and a New York Times bestselling author. Previously, he helped build Gmail and Microsoft Encarta, cofounded Google Meet, and was a partner at Google Ventures. He lives on Orcas Island in Washington state.
John Zeratsky is co-founder and general partner at Character Capital and a New York Times bestselling author. Previously, JZ was a partner at Google Ventures and a designer at YouTube, Google, and FeedBurner, a startup which was acquired by Google in 2007. He lives in Milwaukee.
Together, Jake and JZ are the authors of Sprint, Click, and Make Time and the creators of the Foundation Sprint and the Design Sprint. They have helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market, including those at Google, Microsoft, YouTube, Slack, Uber, and One Medical Group. Their methods for innovation and rapid collaboration have been adopted by Airbnb, Amazon, LEGO, MIT, Mercedes-Benz, Harvard Business School, the University of Oxford, and many other organizations.
