Tackle the Riskiest Parts First

Definition

Step 2 of Running Lean's meta-process treats building a successful product as fundamentally a risk-mitigation problem, borrowing "tackle the riskiest parts first" from the product-development playbook. Critically, for most products the Solution isn't what's riskiest — "the bigger risk for most startups is building something nobody wants." The book supplies an explicit weighting order for ranking competing business models, from highest to lowest priority: customer pain level (Problem), ease of reach (Channels), price/gross margin (Revenue/Cost Structure), market size (Customer Segments), and last, technical feasibility (Solution).

In the Book

Chapter 1 frames de-risking as the entrepreneur's "real job," separate from the vision itself. Chapter 4 applies the ranking directly to the CloudFire case study: four Lean Canvases were drawn up for four candidate customer segments — Parents, Photographers, Videographers, and Consumers. Videographers offered the highest margins but were also the most technically risky, since the existing technology hadn't been proven on large video files; Consumers had the weakest value proposition and the hardest monetization path. Weighing pain, reach, and margin over solution difficulty, the author chose to prioritize the Parents and Photographers segments first.

Why It Matters

It converts a vague fear ("this might not work") into an ordered, arguable checklist, so scarce early effort goes to the assumption most likely to kill the plan — usually a customer or market assumption — instead of the part founders find most enjoyable to work on, which is almost always the solution.