Get paying Customers for your startup. Know in 12 weeks if your idea is real.
A validation program for working professionals with a startup idea. Keep your job, run real experiments and walk out with paying Customers — or a documented reason to kill it. Either way, you win.
Not ready to apply? Join a free 90-minute workshop.Open to anyone with a new business or product idea. Next: Mon, Sep 28 · 7 seats left.Pick a date →You're good at what you do. That was never the question. The question is whether the thing you keep thinking about at 11 pm is real — and right now the only way to find out is to quit, spend two years and most of your savings, and discover the answer the expensive way.
There's a cheaper way to find out.
What finding out actually costs
The usual way to learn whether your idea works is to commit first and get the answer over years. Testing first gets you the same answer in weeks — while you keep your job and your savings.
¹ Median time from first activity to a working business. ² Illustrative for a mid-career professional living on savings while building — your numbers will differ.
Both of them are a win
You proceed with evidence
Paying Customers as a positive signal, a Path-To-Customers you can run nights and weekends, and your job and savings intact while you decide what comes next.
You get a documented kill
A written decision you can defend — and you've saved hundreds of thousands in salary you never gave up and capital you never spent on the wrong idea.
This is not a class in entrepreneurship. It is a 12-week decision about your idea, based on real-world experiments with Customers.
Everything it takes to get the answer
Do the work, and you don't leave without a result.
Complete all 12 experiments. If you finish without either a paying or committed Customer or a written kill decision David will co-sign, you keep the Workbench free for a year and we work 1-on-1 until you have one.
It's gated on your behavior, not your satisfaction — because the only way this fails is if the work doesn't get done.
The Fundamental Thesis
Every experiment and insight rolls up into one shareable, investor-ready document: what you believe, the evidence behind it, and the decision it points to. It's the artifact advisors and investors actually want to see — and the thing most founders can never produce.
See how the Workbench builds it →Every week runs an experiment and produces data and evidence
Specificity is the point. You always know what you're testing this week and what you'll have to show for it.
Kickoff & the Riskiest-Assumption Map
Customer–Problem Scan
Problem Interviews at Depth
Problem Validation Decision
Solution Concept & Value Hypothesis
MVP 1.0 Demand Test
Pricing & Willingness to Pay
Solution Validation Decision
Path-To-Customers: Channel Tests
Repeatable Acquisition
Business Model Roll-up
Fundamental Thesis & Decision
Insight-Driven Iteration
Our proprietary validation method, in three phases, each broken into experiments. Run a test, capture the Customer insight, then proceed, pivot, or kill — until you've earned a business model that scales.
Concise, testable, and honest about what "success" requires. Every experiment in the program moves one term of this equation from assumption to evidence.
FounderDojo Is A Difference Maker
"FounderDojo helps you block out the noise. It helps you focus on what really matters to make your startup successful."
"I owe 100% of my success to FounderDojo. Whatever else you're thinking about doing, stop and sign up. It will save years of your life."
"FounderDojo taught me how to listen to Customers. Now I know how to get insight from Customers and use it to improve my business."
David Linhardt — 8-time founder
Ex-Amazon, ex-P&G. I left the corporate hierarchy, started a business in my house with $5K, and learned the hard way that a startup is nota smaller version of a big company. It's fundamentally different.
I've built eight startups — seven profitable, with three exits — and now run a studio applying this exact validation process. In the program, I coach every cohort personally.
Read the full story →The real objections
A classroom, or a 12-week decision about your own idea
Those programs run four days to eight weeks and hand you a framework. This runs twelve weeks against your own idea, with weekly live sessions, two private 1-on-1s, and the Workbench — and you keep your job the whole time. You leave with evidence about your own idea and a decision, not lecture notes. HBS fee includes lodging and most meals; competitor prices verified 14 August 2026 and move by term.
You already know most startups don't make it. What you don't know is whether yours would.
Twelve weeks to find out — while you still have your job. Walk out with paying-customer proof, or a documented reason to stop.