Click: Complete Summary of Jake Knapp’s System for Making Products People Love

Introduction: What This Book Is About

“Click” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky presents a powerful, proven system for creating products and services that truly resonate with customers. Drawing on their firsthand experience building successful products at Google (like Gmail and Google Meet) and investing in hundreds of startups (like Slack, Blue Bottle Coffee, and One Medical) through Google Ventures and Character Capital, the authors reveal the fundamental principles behind products that “click.” This book teaches founders, leaders, and teams how to transform big ideas into beloved solutions by focusing on customer needs, differentiating from the competition, and rapidly testing hypotheses.

The core message of “Click” is that while countless factors contribute to a product’s success, the ultimate determinant is whether it “clicks” with its target audience. This means the product must solve an important problem, stand out from alternatives, and make intuitive sense to people. The authors argue that most new products fail because teams lose sight of this fundamental question, getting caught up in internal processes rather than customer-centric innovation. “Click” provides a actionable blueprint, the “Foundation Sprint,” designed to compress months of strategic planning into just two days, enabling teams to quickly establish a clear “Founding Hypothesis” and test it with real customers.

This book is invaluable for anyone embarking on an ambitious project, whether at a startup or a large organization. It offers a practical, step-by-step guide to avoiding common pitfalls like cognitive biases and unproductive group dynamics. By emphasizing rapid decision-making, focused experimentation, and continuous learning from customer feedback, “Click” empowers teams to increase their chances of building something truly valuable. Readers will learn not just what makes a product click, but precisely how to apply these lessons to their own work, fostering clarity, momentum, and deep connection with their customers.

Chapter 1: Reset

“Reset” introduces the critical first step for any ambitious project: creating dedicated, focused time. The authors recount the origin story of Google Meet to illustrate the transformative power of this “reset” and the fundamental lesson that follows.

The Problem with Business as Usual

Jake Knapp describes his frustrating experience trying to launch a video-call project at Google in 2007. For 18 months, despite its potential, the project languished due to the typical modern workplace environment: scattered efforts, constant distractions, and fragmented time. He had to “squeeze” project work between other meetings and emails, leading to tiny, inefficient “islands of time.” This perpetual context switching prevented deep work and cohesive progress, making it nearly impossible to develop a coherent strategy or build anything substantial. This common approach, where people bounce between tasks, prioritizes small, immediate obligations over long-term, significant achievements.

The Power of the Reset: The Google Meet Origin

The turning point came in January 2009 during a week-long trip to Stockholm with colleagues Serge Lachapelle and Mikael Drugge. Facing the potential closure of their office, they made a radical decision: drop everything and dedicate an entire week to the video-call project. They set an audacious goal to have a working prototype by Friday, not just a proposal or slide deck. To achieve this, they eliminated all distractions, logged out of email, skipped meetings, and found a windowless conference room for absolute focus. This intense, uninterrupted work allowed for “higher-quality time” where they stayed “in context,” deepening their focus and improving output each day. The result was a functional prototype of a “dead-simple multi-way video call” that immediately “clicked” with other Googlers, eventually becoming Google Meet with hundreds of millions of users.

Lesson 1: Drop Everything and Sprint on the Most Important Challenge

This experience solidified the first fundamental lesson: Drop everything and sprint on the most important challenge until it’s done. The authors have applied this principle in hundreds of sprints, consistently observing its “supernatural” effectiveness in transforming what teams can accomplish. The “reset” is about creating a “continent” of time for deep, shared focus, moving away from the “islands of time” caused by multitasking and interruptions.

How to Execute a Project Reset

Implementing a project reset, though simple in concept, requires specific techniques to overcome the inertia of traditional work.

• Start with the Decider: The person responsible for making final decisions on the project must be part of the sprint team. This “Decider” (e.g., CEO, head of product, SVP) provides critical insight when strategy is forming and ensures decisions “stick,” bypassing internal politics and gaining immediate buy-in. Their support is crucial for clearing schedules and assembling the team.
• Form a Tiny Team: To move fast and maintain focus, keep the sprint team small—no more than five people, including the Decider. Emphasize contrasting perspectives (e.g., engineering, sales, product, marketing) to foster better decisions, recognizing that too many people diminish returns.
• Declare a Good Emergency: Leverage the “eject lever” message technique, typically used for bad emergencies (e.g., software bugs, natural disasters), to create space for sprints. Frame starting the project right as a “good emergency” that justifies canceling meetings and ignoring inboxes. The Decider should broadcast this message to set expectations for everyone outside the sprint team.
• Work Alone Together: Counterintuitively, avoid open-ended group brainstorms. Instead, adopt a “work alone together” approach where individuals generate proposals silently before reviewing and voting in silence. This method prevents dominant voices from monopolizing discussion, includes introverts, and leads to more, higher-quality solutions and faster, better-considered decisions.
• Get Started, Not Perfect: The sprint’s goal is to create a rough draft—a “Founding Hypothesis”—that can be tested immediately, not a perfect plan. This mindset reduces stress and encourages rapid decision-making. Recognizing that first guesses are almost always “off,” the focus shifts to learning and adjusting through fast experiments rather than endlessly refining a hunch.

Chapter 2: Customer

“Customer” highlights the paramount importance of centering your project around the user and a genuine problem they face. This chapter introduces the “Basics” questions for defining your project and the foundational Note-and-Vote method.

The Skyscraper Robot Problem: Focusing on Ourselves, Not Customers

Jake Knapp draws a parallel to the 1988 movie “Big,” where a toy executive pitches a “Skyscraper Robot” toy. The executive focuses on market share and sales projections, but the child-like Josh (Tom Hanks) points out, “What’s fun about playing with a building?” This illustrates a common pitfall: teams often prioritize internal desires (profits, ego, “cool” technology) over what customers actually want or need. Knapp admits to making this mistake himself, designing a complex 3D conference room for Google Meet because it seemed “cool,” not because it solved a real user problem. This leads to “absurdity” and products that fail to click.

Lesson 2: Start by Identifying Your Customer and a Real Problem You Can Solve

The second key lesson is to start by identifying your customer and a real problem you can solve. Successful teams treat customers as “honored guests,” focusing on serving their needs. This customer-first mindset is crucial for making a product click and for achieving genuine satisfaction in the work itself. Without understanding and respecting the customer, products become “Skyscraper Robots” that nobody wants, wasting time and energy. The “Basics” of the Foundation Sprint ensure this customer-centric approach from the outset, providing clarity and purpose.

Techniques for Identifying Customer and Problem

The Foundation Sprint uses specific techniques to define the target customer and problem clearly.

• Use the Note-and-Vote Instead of a Group Brainstorm: The “Note-and-Vote” is a critical collaboration recipe designed to quickly find good ideas and make decisions. It ensures all voices are heard and prevents single ideas or loud voices from dominating.
  1. Question: The Facilitator asks a clear question, e.g., “Who are our customers?”
  2. Silent Work: Everyone silently writes as many answers as they can on separate sticky notes (kept anonymous) for about five minutes.
  3. Silent Share: Sticky notes are posted where everyone can see them, including duplicates.
  4. Silent Vote: Each person silently reviews the notes for about five minutes and places two or three dot votes on their favorite proposals.
  5. Debate: If the Decider isn’t certain, they may call for a short debate on the top proposals.
  6. Decide: The Decider makes the final choice, not necessarily following the votes.
     This method boosts quality by allowing independent thought and promotes honesty by keeping proposals anonymous, making it “WAY faster” than traditional brainstorming.
• Use Plain Language: Avoid technical or business jargon when defining customers and problems. Plain language ensures precision and shared understanding across the team. For Google Meet, “teams with people in different locations” is more precise than “distributed enterprise orgs.” Simple, concrete descriptions are preferred.
• Take the Common Sense Test: After defining the customer and problem, ask the team: “Does this make sense?” Answers should reflect “real people” and “real problems,” not bend reality. For Google Meet, the problem was “difficult to meet,” not “lack of convincing wood grain on 3-D conference tables.” Simple, verifiable realities lead to meaningful work.

Chapter 3: Advantage

“Advantage” focuses on identifying a team’s unique strengths, which are crucial for developing solutions that no one else can match. The chapter explores three types of advantages: capability, motivation, and insight.

The Blind Spot: Ignoring Your Own Strengths

Most teams, surprisingly, fail to capitalize on their unique advantages, opting instead to mimic existing solutions. This leads to “mediocrity” and playing by “other people’s rules.” When a team overlooks its special strengths, it misses opportunities to create a truly differentiated and superior product.

Lesson 3: Take Advantage of Your Advantages

The third core lesson is to take advantage of your advantages. This means explicitly identifying what your team does exceptionally well, what drives them, and what unique understanding they possess. This focus allows teams to develop solutions that only they can deliver, leading to products that “rise up and stand out.”

Three Flavors of Advantage: Capability, Motivation, and Insight

The authors define three distinct types of advantages, illustrated through the story of Phaidra’s founders:

• Capability: This refers to what your team can do that few others can match. It often involves specialized know-how or unique resources.
  • Katie Hoffman: An expert in mechanical engineering with a focus on industrial controls, specializing in retrofitting plants.
  • Jim Gao: An expert in mechanical engineering with a focus on data centers, particularly optimizing cooling systems.
  • Veda Panneershelvam: An expert in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence, particularly deep reinforcement learning for complex problems like Go.
• Motivation: This is the specific, bright “fire” that drives your team to solve a particular problem, often stemming from personal frustration.
  • Katie: Frustrated by the inefficiency and static nature of traditional industrial control retrofits.
  • Jim: Frustrated by the limitations of physical systems and the vast energy waste in data centers.
  • Veda: Motivated to use AI to solve “massive problems for humanity,” specifically pushing the boundaries of AI capabilities.
• Insight: This is a deep, unique understanding of the problem or the customer that others lack.
  • When Katie, Jim, and Veda combined forces to form Phaidra, their combined capabilities (AI + mechanical engineering) were powerful. However, Katie’s real-world insight into the messy operations of industrial plants and how manufacturers make decisions was crucial for designing, selling, and implementing a solution for the world outside Google. This insight into customer behavior and operational realities unlocked Phaidra’s strategy.
• The Equation: The combination of these elements creates a potent formula: capability + insight + motivation = unique advantage. These advantages serve as a powerful “decision-making tool,” guiding the team toward creating a truly special solution.

Identifying Your Team’s Unique Advantage in the Sprint

To pinpoint your team’s advantages during the Foundation Sprint:

• Use the Note-and-Vote: Apply the “work alone together” and “Note-and-Vote” process again.
• Categorize Answers: Teams should generate answers in three specific categories: capability, insight, and motivation.
• Focus on Uniqueness: Seek advantages that make your team unique and “tough to beat.” For Google Meet, this included web and video engineering capability, insight into remote team meeting needs, and motivation to enable widespread collaboration.
• Decider’s Choice: The Decider selects one most important advantage in each category, which will later inform how the solution differentiates from the competition.

Chapter 4: Competition

“Competition” emphasizes the crucial, yet often overlooked, step of honestly assessing who you’re up against, including unexpected alternatives. This understanding is key to crafting a winning strategy.

The Necessity of Realism: Beyond Direct Competitors

Many teams naively assume their new product will be so revolutionary that customers will instantly abandon existing alternatives. However, getting “real about the competition” is essential because customers always have options, even if they aren’t obvious. The story of Nike signing Michael Jordan, as depicted in the movie “Air,” illustrates this. Nike wasn’t just competing with other shoe companies (Converse, Adidas); they also had to understand Jordan’s deeper motivations and the unspoken biases against Nike’s brand. Sonny Vacarro’s ability to predict how competitors would fall short in their pitches to Jordan’s mom, Deloris, demonstrated his profound understanding of the competitive landscape. This knowledge allowed Nike to craft a strategy that truly stood out.

Lesson 4: Get Real About the Competition

The fourth key lesson is to get real about the competition. This means moving beyond a narrow view of direct rivals to consider all ways customers currently solve their problem, or even choose to do nothing at all. This honest assessment informs how your solution can be superior and how to capture customers’ attention.

Techniques for Identifying Competition in the Sprint

Use the Note-and-Vote method once more to identify the competition, guiding the team with specific considerations:

• Start with Direct Competitors: Begin by listing other companies or products that directly solve the customer’s problem. This is the most straightforward category. Emphasize well-known alternatives, as these are the ones you’re directly competing with in customers’ minds. A lack of direct competitors might signal that there isn’t a “real problem” worth solving.
• Search for Substitutes: Acknowledge that customers often use “substitute solutions” or workarounds even if there’s no direct product. Phaidra, for example, didn’t compete with other industrial AI but with manufacturers’ engineers manually adjusting systems. Breakthrough products frequently compete with substitutes rather than direct rivals. Identifying these workarounds is crucial, and a simple question like “How do you solve this problem today?” can reveal them.
• Or You Might Be Competing Against Nothing: In some rare, high-risk, but potentially high-reward scenarios, customers have a real problem but no existing solution—they “do nothing” and live with the pain. For example, a startup helping small businesses calculate their carbon footprint found their competition was “customers doing nothing and feeling bad about it.” While risky (this specific idea failed), overcoming “doing nothing” can lead to massive success, as seen with House Rx, which made it possible for clinics to run in-house pharmacies where it was previously “impossible.”
• Go for the Gorilla: Regardless of the number of competitors, identify the “strongest, toughest, biggest alternative”—the “eight-hundred-pound gorilla.” Slack, for instance, chose to position itself against email, the undisputed heavyweight champion of business communication, rather than smaller direct messaging apps. This forced them to create a solution that was radically better and helped quadruple their user base. Targeting the strongest competitor pushes a team to create the best possible solution and make a truly compelling case for switching.

Chapter 5: Differentiation

“Differentiation” focuses on how to make your product stand out by offering a brand-new framework for evaluating solutions, captured visually in a 2×2 chart. This is the essence of why customers choose your offering.

The Cost of Change and the Need for Radical Separation

Introducing a new product asks people to change, and every change incurs a cost (money, time, effort, risk, stress). To overcome this, a solution must “stand out”—it must be differentiated. Jonny Godwin, founder of Orbital Materials (an AI company inventing new molecules), initially struggled because his solution was seen through the lens of traditional, slow, trial-and-error material development. His “kitchen-sink approach” to sales, listing a dozen benefits, was overwhelming.

Lesson 5: Differentiation Makes Products Click

The fifth key lesson is that differentiation makes products click. It’s the “essence” of your solution, capturing customer attention and explaining why they should switch. The most successful products don’t just differentiate slightly; they create “radical separation” by offering a “brand-new framework for evaluating solutions.” They illuminate previously unconsidered or unimproved factors. This not only helps customers understand and adopt the product but also energizes the team by providing a clear “North Star” and a compelling purpose.

Techniques for Designing Differentiation

The Foundation Sprint provides a recipe for crafting compelling differentiation:

• Use Your Unique Advantage: The best differentiators lie at the intersection of “what is super valuable to customers and what you can uniquely deliver.” This links back to the advantages identified in Chapter 3.
• Start with “Realistic Optimism”: Adopt a mindset that imagines the project’s ideal outcome in the real world. This means envisioning the “most valuable possible change” for customers, having “maximized your team’s advantages,” and “overcome all difficulties.” This prevents both cynical underestimation and unrealistic dreams.
• Follow Our Differentiation Recipe: Differentiation is like “making pizza from scratch”—achievable with the right recipe and effort.
• Try to Win on the Classics: First, consider classic differentiators that are universally understood and appreciated: fast vs. slow, easy vs. difficult, free vs. expensive, focused vs. unfocused, simple vs. complicated, integrated vs. siloed, automatic vs. manual, and smart vs. not so smart. Teams work alone together, placing dots on spectrums to see where their solution could excel compared to the competition, assuming its “best version.”
• Choose Your Own Differentiators: Go beyond the classics to identify custom differentiators that matter most to your specific customers and where your solution can be uniquely strong, while the competition is “crummy.” For example, Orbital Materials focused on “higher quality” and “lower failure rates”—factors that were immediate and practical benefits for chemical manufacturers, and which they could uniquely deliver through AI. The Decider then chooses the top two differentiators.
• Make a 2×2 Chart with Extreme Differentiation: This is the visual cornerstone. Create a 2×2 chart using your top two chosen differentiators as axes. Your project should be “all alone” in the top right quadrant, pushing competitors into the “other three quadrants (which form an L shape that I like to think of as Loserville).” This chart focuses on customer perception, not just technology. It must be honest and deliverable, as differentiation only works if you deliver on your promise. This simple chart becomes a “beacon” for decision-making throughout the project, ensuring everyone understands the core value proposition.

Chapter 6: Principles

“Principles” focuses on translating differentiation into actionable, practical guidelines for team decision-making, reinforcing the project’s core strategy. This culminates in the “Mini Manifesto.”

The Power of Practical Principles

Jake Knapp learned the value of decision-making principles at Google, where “Ten Things We’ve Found to Be True” influenced daily work. Principles like “Focus on the user,” “It’s best to do one thing really, really well,” and “Fast is better than slow” were not just platitudes; they were a “manifesto for decision-making.” They sped up decisions, provided authoritative criteria, and consistently reinforced Google’s differentiation as the “fastest and most useful way to get things done.” Without such principles, teams often “create and re-create our decision-making criteria from scratch,” leading to inefficient, ego-driven, or unprincipled choices.

Lesson 6: Use Practical Principles to Reinforce Differentiation

The sixth key lesson is to use practical principles to reinforce differentiation. The word “practical” is crucial; principles should be relevant and actionable, not abstract ideals. They serve as a “decision-making guide” and “North Star” for the team, ensuring consistent alignment with the chosen differentiation.

Techniques for Drafting Practical Principles

The Foundation Sprint employs specific techniques to create effective project principles:

• Practical Principles, Not Company Principles: Focus on writing principles that are specific to the project at hand, not timeless company credos. Drawing inspiration from Google’s early “survival guide” principles (like “Focus on the user”) and Apple’s 1977 principles (e.g., “Understand customer needs better than any other company”), emphasize urgency and direct applicability to the immediate challenge. These principles are meant to guide concrete actions and decisions right now, rather than inspiring future generations.
• Turn Your Differentiators into Principles: Your two strongest differentiators from Chapter 5 can directly become two strong principles. A handy trick is to ask: “What advice would I give a new team member to make sure we follow through on our differentiation?” For example, ASI’s “student-led” differentiator became “Remove the fog in academic exploration.” Orbital Materials’ “functional” differentiator became “A new material isn’t a breakthrough without a chemical process.”
• Differentiate, Differentiate, Safeguard: Aim for three principles using this formula:
  • One principle for each of your two differentiators.
  • One “safeguard” principle to protect against unintended negative consequences. This principle forces the team to consider how success might inadvertently harm customers or the world. For example, Phaidra’s safeguard principle was “Empower don’t replace,” ensuring their AI augmented engineers rather than putting them out of work. Google’s former “Don’t be evil” also served this purpose. This encourages a bold, useful cultural principle if desired.
• Note-and-Vote to Write Your Project Principles: Apply the “work alone together” and “Note-and-Vote” process for generating principles. Individuals silently propose principles, vote, and then the Decider makes the final selection. This method is “much more effective” than group wordsmithing.
• Keep Wordsmithing to a Minimum: While important, collaborative wordsmithing should be limited to about five minutes. The best writing and editing are done by individuals. The principles are experimental at this stage, not “carved in marble,” so focus on getting them “good enough” to start.

The Mini Manifesto: Unifying Strategy

The principles, combined with the 2×2 differentiation chart, form the “Mini Manifesto.” This single-page document is an “easy-to-understand guide for making decisions” throughout the rest of the Foundation Sprint and beyond. It serves as a visual beacon, reminding everyone involved—leaders, builders, marketers, customers—of the project’s core value proposition and what truly matters most.

Chapter 7: Options

“Options” introduces the second day of the Foundation Sprint, where teams explore multiple potential approaches to their project before committing to one, effectively performing a “pre-pivot.”

The High Cost of Real-World Pivots

The author begins by highlighting the common occurrence of “pivoting” in product development—when an initial strategy fails, and a team shifts direction. While smart, real-world pivots are “time-consuming” and costly, often taking months or even years (e.g., Slack started as a game called Glitch and took two years to pivot). Most teams lack the “stamina” (conviction, cohesion, motivation, money) for such long delays.

Lesson 7: Seek Alternatives to Your First Idea

The seventh key lesson is to seek alternatives to your first idea. Instead of blindly committing to the initial concept, the Foundation Sprint encourages a “pre-pivot” on Day Two. This involves stopping, taking a breath, and generating multiple viable approaches to the project. This deliberate exploration ensures the team makes a “measured decision rather than a knee-jerk reaction,” and also creates a “backup plan.”

The Genius Loci Story: Uncovering a Better Path

The story of Genius Loci, a company helping tourists find hidden local stories, illustrates the power of exploring options. Founders Eglé Minkstimaité and Stéph Cruchon initially envisioned a “clear-cut” app with GPS as the solution. However, Eglé suggested pausing to consider new options. This led them to analyze alternatives like:

• Using different technology (not GPS): Considering other location or interaction methods.
• Building a website instead of an app: A potentially less “magical” but more robust solution.
• Making a physical solution: Such as signs at points of interest.
• A combination of the above.
  This exploration revealed a critical flaw in their original app-only plan: its “magic was fragile” due to reliance on perfect GPS coordinates, strong cell signals, and pre-downloaded apps. The “physical sign + website” combination, initially dismissed as clunky, emerged as far more robust and easier to build. This “physical-digital combination clicked” and became their successful approach.

Techniques for Generating and Summarizing Options

• Start with Known Options: Begin by listing all approaches the team has already considered or debated.
• Imagine Your Approach Fails—Then What?: To generate new ideas, push the team to answer: “What would happen if your project hit a dead end?” or “How would you solve your customers’ problem if you couldn’t do it the way you want?” Also, consider how a new competitor might approach the problem.
• Consider Alternate Customers: For some teams, the core question isn’t the product form but the target customer. Phaidra, for instance, had to choose between data centers, paper plants, and chemical reactor plants as their initial focus. Hypernatural, an AI video tool company, considered small business owners, podcasters, video creators, and marketing agencies.
• Boring is Fine: The goal is not creativity for its own sake, but “viable approaches.” It’s “totally okay if the options on your list seem obvious or even a bit boring.”
• Write One-Page Summaries: For each chosen approach (narrowed to 3-7 if many), create a one-page summary. This ensures clarity and shared understanding across the team. Each summary should include:
  • The title of the approach.
  • A one-sentence summary explaining why it’s a good idea, ideally referencing the problem and differentiation.
  • A quick doodle (not a polished rendering) to visually explain how it might look or work. This helps solidify understanding.

Chapter 8: Lenses

“Lenses” introduces a powerful visual tool, “Magic Lenses,” for evaluating project options from conflicting perspectives, enabling faster, more informed decisions without interpersonal conflict.

The Power of Conflicting Opinions

Jake Knapp recounts how his father, inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals” (about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet), instilled in him the value of seeking out and considering “contrary opinions.” Lincoln’s practice of inviting political rivals to his cabinet and listening to their “competing perspectives” before committing to a course of action proved highly effective. Knapp later adopted this “structured argument” approach in his own work at Google, realizing that while “awkward,” it led to “smarter decisions.” This counters the common tendency to avoid disagreement or engage in unproductive political “dogfights.”

Lesson 8: Consider Conflicting Opinions Before You Commit to an Approach

The eighth key lesson is to consider conflicting opinions before you commit to an approach. This means actively soliciting diverse viewpoints, even if they’re not naturally present on your immediate team, and evaluating options through different “lenses.” This process allows for a “thorough argument without raising anyone’s blood pressure,” by externalizing complex thinking and biases.

Magic Lenses: A Visual Tool for Structured Argument

“Magic Lenses” is a visual technique for evaluating options by plotting them on multiple 2×2 charts, each representing a different perspective or “lens.”

• Genius Loci Example Revisited: When Eglé and Stéph initially looked at their app-with-GPS idea through a “vision lens” (ideal user experience), it seemed like the clear winner. However, they then applied other “lenses”:
  • Pragmatic Lens: What’s the fastest, cheapest thing to build? The app suddenly looked “expensive and slow” compared to other options.
  • Middle-of-Nowhere Lens: What if the cell signal is weak or the user hasn’t heard of us? The app was a “big loser,” revealing its fragility.
  • Revised Vision Lens: Reconsidering what truly defines “magical,” they realized a website could look like an app, and a beautiful physical sign could be as discoverable as a notification. This led them to see the website + physical signs combination as even better for the user experience.
• The Power of Visualization: Drawing a series of 2×2 charts for each lens takes “complexity out of our heads and makes it visual,” allowing the team to “zoom out and look for patterns” and identify the consistently strong option.

Techniques for Using Magic Lenses in the Sprint

• Try the Classic “Team of Rivals”: Even without actual rivals on the team, simulate these perspectives using four default lenses:
  • Customer Lens: How does each approach best serve the ideal user experience? (e.g., “More long-term value” vs. “Less long-term value”).
  • Pragmatic Lens: What’s the most practical, quickest, or cheapest to build? (e.g., “Easy to use” vs. “Hard to use” for development).
  • Growth Lens: How will this approach help the business grow?
  • Money Lens: Which approach maximizes profit or financial viability?
  • Reclaim, a startup building an AI-powered scheduling assistant, used these lenses to evaluate options like “Synchronized ‘no meeting days’,” “Analytics for time spent,” and “Smart scheduling links.” Each option was plotted across these different dimensions.
• Create Custom Lenses: Beyond the “team of rivals,” design 1-3 custom lenses specific to your project’s critical success factors or risks. Reclaim, for example, created a “Revenue + Cure” lens to assess which option would best “cure pain” for customers and generate revenue. Your differentiation chart from Day One can also serve as a powerful lens.
• Zoom Out, Review, and Decide: Finally, look at all the 2×2 charts together. Identify patterns: Does one option consistently win across most lenses? Does a particular lens prove most useful for evaluation? Based on this comprehensive visual analysis, the Decider chooses one “top bet” (first choice approach) and one “backup plan” (the next approach to consider for a pivot). For Reclaim, “Smart Scheduling Links” consistently won across all lenses, changing their initial assumption and leading to their fastest-growing feature and eventual acquisition.

Chapter 9: Hypothesis

“Hypothesis” highlights the critical distinction between a “plan” and a “hypothesis,” emphasizing that all initial assumptions are just educated guesses that need to be tested. It introduces the “Founding Hypothesis” as a transparent, testable statement of a project’s core predictions.

The Danger of Conviction: The Planet Vulcan Story

The chapter opens with the story of Urbain Le Verrier, a brilliant mathematician who predicted the existence of Neptune (which was later proven correct) but then spent 18 years fruitlessly searching for “Planet Vulcan” between the sun and Mercury. Despite repeated failures to corroborate observations, Le Verrier “refused to let go of his hypothesis,” demonstrating a classic scientific blunder. Einstein later explained Mercury’s irregular orbit with relativity, showing that Le Verrier’s math was correct but his underlying assumption (another planet) was flawed. Le Verrier’s failure illustrates how even brilliant minds can succumb to cognitive biases when they become overly committed to a first idea.

Cognitive Biases: The Invisible Traps

Le Verrier’s stubbornness is attributed to common cognitive biases that affect everyone:

• Anchoring bias: Falling in love with the first option or explanation.
• Self-serving bias: Favoring approaches that promote one’s self-interest or ego (e.g., Le Verrier wanting to discover a second planet).
• Overconfidence bias: Believing positive assumptions and ignoring risks.
• Confirmation bias: Actively seeking only data that confirms existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.
  These biases work together, creating a powerful, often invisible, pull toward premature commitment. They make teams “feel conviction” even when they are biased, leading to locking into one option without proper analysis.

Lesson 9: It’s Just a Hypothesis Until You Prove It

The ninth key lesson is that it’s just a hypothesis until you prove it. Until a solution “clicks” with customers, the entire project foundation is an “educated guess”—and almost certainly “off” in some way. Framing it as a hypothesis, rather than a “plan,” makes it feel “fluid and flexible,” encouraging testing, learning, and adjustment without the fear of reputation being at stake. The Foundation Sprint is designed for rapid learning, not rapid commitment.

The Founding Hypothesis: A Clear, Testable Statement

The final step of the Foundation Sprint is to condense all key guesses into a “Founding Hypothesis.” This is a single, Mad Libs-style sentence that makes all underlying predictions explicit:

For [target customer], who has [problem], our [approach] will solve it better than [competition] because [differentiation].

• Examples:
  • Jake’s high school game: “For arcade-game fanatics, who have a shortage of fun new games, our Mealy Mouse will solve it better than Solitaire because it offers more levels and loud, humiliating sound effects.”
  • Gmail: “For email users, who have overflowing inboxes, our Gmail will solve it better than Outlook, Hotmail, and Yahoo because we offer more storage and great search.”
  • Phaidra: “For industrial engineers, who have inefficient and tedious operations, our AI autopilot will solve it better than manual adjustments because it’s superhuman and trustworthy.”
• Unmasking Absurdity: The Founding Hypothesis can quickly reveal a project’s absurd or unviable premises, acting as a “Tom Hanks” pointing out flaws (like for the “Skyscraper Robot”). Even if rational, plainly stating predictions can be startling and highlight the massive “Prove it!” challenge.
• The Scorecard: JZ and Knapp provide a “scorecard” that adds an “existential, testable question” to each prediction in the hypothesis: Do you have the right customer? Right problem? Right approach? Will people choose your solution over the competition? Do they care about your chosen differentiators? Will they believe your solution is radically better? And, most importantly: Does it click? These questions force teams to immediately assess whether their work truly matters to customers, enabling them to face predictions head-on rather than building a finished product for months or years before finding out it was wrong.

Chapter 10: Experiment

“Experiment” focuses on how to rigorously test your Founding Hypothesis using “tiny loops” and prototypes before committing to full-scale development. The Design Sprint is introduced as the ideal method for these rapid experiments.

The Stress of One-Shot Attempts vs. The Power of Iteration

The chapter opens with Jake Knapp’s childhood experience playing “Super Mario Bros.” at an arcade vs. at home on his Nintendo. The arcade, with its public audience, scarce opportunities (25 cents per attempt), and high stakes, was “super stressful” and made him “terrible.” His home Nintendo, with unlimited attempts, no penalty for failure, and no audience, allowed him to “experiment, learn, and improved” until he mastered the game. This illustrates the difference between traditional “long loops” of product development (costly, high-stakes, one-shot) and the power of “tiny loops” for learning.

Lesson 10: Experiment with Tiny Loops Until Your Solution Clicks. Then Build It.

The tenth and final lesson is to experiment with tiny loops until your solution clicks. Then build it. Ambitious projects typically take a year or more, making traditional launches (MVPs) “long loops” that are too slow to get real-world data and test a hypothesis. Tiny loops, conversely, provide “unlimited chances” to “practice until you master the challenge” and de-risk the project before significant investment.

Phaidra’s Story: Proving the Hypothesis with Tiny Loops

Phaidra, the AI startup for industrial plants, exemplifies tiny loops. Instead of building their “AI autopilot” for a year, they worked in week-long sprints to test their Founding Hypothesis:

• Monday: Mapped the customer problem (plant engineers’ need for trust in AI decisions). Decider Katie focused on the crucial AI dashboard.
• Tuesday: Sketched competing proposals for the dashboard design, working “alone together.” Nine different design proposals were generated.
• Wednesday: Reviewed proposals and voted in silence, then the Decider chose solutions for testing.
• Thursday: Built a realistic fake prototype—mock-ups linked to simulate the functional dashboard, even though the autopilot software didn’t exist yet.
• Friday: Interviewed four plant engineers via Zoom, watching them try to use the dashboard and assessing their “sincere interest” in signing up.
• The Initial Failure: The first prototype “just wasn’t good enough.” Engineers found it confusing and didn’t trust the AI’s decisions; nobody signed up.
• The Pivot in the Next Loop: Crucially, the team remained optimistic about their core hypothesis (customer, problem, approach) but realized they hadn’t delivered on “differentiation” (transparency for trust). They immediately cleared the calendar for another week, sketched new solutions, built a new prototype (with a detailed timeline of AI actions), and tested again.
• The Click: The second prototype clicked. Engineers, initially skeptical, nodded as they examined the timeline and details, and were ready to sign up for a test run. Phaidra had validated its vision through rapid iteration.

The Design Sprint: The Perfect Tiny Loop

The Design Sprint is the recommended weeklong technique for tiny loops. It’s a five-day process for solving problems and testing ideas:

• Monday: Map the customer problem.
• Tuesday: Sketch competing solutions on paper.
• Wednesday: Decide which solutions to test.
• Thursday: Create realistic prototypes.
• Friday: Test with customers.
  It acts as a “time machine” to see customer reactions before building, providing “hyperefficient pivots” when needed.

Tips for Running Tiny Loops with Design Sprints

• Follow the Checklist: Use established step-by-step guides (like the book “Sprint” or thesprintbook.com).
• You Can Prototype Anything: Design Sprints work for software, sales decks, marketing materials, physical devices, services, and process changes.
• Focus on Risks: Prioritize prototyping and testing elements that address the most important risks to your project (e.g., Phaidra focused on building trust).
• Prove the Story First: In early sprints, test how customers will discover, learn about, and decide to try your product (e.g., sales deck, marketing website). This assesses key scorecard questions like customer fit and differentiation appeal, and is often easier to prototype.
• Test Multiple Prototypes Head-to-Head: Unlike MVPs, Design Sprints allow testing multiple competing solutions simultaneously (e.g., Slack tested Stewart Butterfield’s “work game” vs. Merci Grace’s “product tour,” finding the latter clicked). This “Hunger Games–style approach” leads to smarter decisions.
• Face the Competition: Pit your prototypes directly against top competitors, substitutes, or the “status quo.” This adds valuable reality and builds confidence when your solution clicks.
• Repeat Until It Clicks: It’s common for teams to adjust their solution and even their Founding Hypothesis over several sprints. These are “hyperefficient pivots,” not failures.
• Watch for Reactions: Look for genuine “reactions” over mere “feedback.” Customer body language (leaning forward, asking to use immediately, trying to grab the prototype) are “solid gold” signals of a click. While not a substitute for market launch data, testing with 5-15 individuals provides a “darned interesting signal” and prevents wasting a year building the wrong product.

Afterword: The System

The Afterword brings together all ten lessons, revealing the “system” for success: a Foundation Sprint followed by consecutive Design Sprints. This approach aims to give teams an “unfair advantage” by fostering clarity, trust, and momentum.

The Dream Situation: Character Labs

Jake Knapp describes his ideal work scenario at Character Capital: Character Labs, where he, JZ, and Eli Blee-Goldman work with brand-new founders for a full month. This setup allows them to apply their complete system: starting with a Foundation Sprint to form a hypothesis, then running consecutive Design Sprints to test and refine that hypothesis. This “powerful” system radically increases velocity and helps founders jump closer to “making a product people want.”

The Ten Key Lessons Revisited

The system integrates all ten lessons from the book:

1. Drop everything and sprint on the most important challenge until it’s done. (Focus and dedication)
2. Start by identifying your customer and a real problem you can solve. (Customer-centricity)
3. Take advantage of your advantages. (Leveraging unique strengths)
4. Get real about the competition. (Honest market assessment)
5. Differentiation makes products click. (Creating unique value)
6. Use practical principles to reinforce differentiation. (Actionable guidance)
7. Seek alternatives to your first idea. (Preventing premature commitment)
8. Consider conflicting opinions before you commit to an approach. (Structured debate)
9. It’s just a hypothesis until you prove it. (Testing assumptions)
10. Experiment with tiny loops until your solution clicks. Then build it. (Rapid iteration and learning)

Proven Success Beyond Startups

The authors highlight that these lessons are not just theoretical or limited to venture-backed startups:

• Blue Bottle Coffee, Flatiron Health, One Medical, and Slack: All were small startups when first profiled in their book “Sprint,” and all grew into multi-million or billion-dollar companies, embodying these ten lessons in their early days.
• Camille Fleming (Doctor): Used sprints to open a rural health clinic. She crafted a hypothesis, prototyped a marketing website, tested with locals, adjusted when it didn’t click, and repeated until it did, gaining the confidence to launch a successful business.
• Sebastian Stricker (UN World Food Programme Veteran): Applied the method to his “get one, give one” snack business, iterating on packaging and recipes until it clicked with shoppers, leading to over 56 million meals distributed.
• Gaël Mercier (Brussels Public Transportation): Used physical prototypes on city streets to test signs and station designs, even interviewing “fare cheaters” to understand customer behavior.
• Helen Bjorkman (Tetra Pak): Ran over 100 Design Sprints, from employee onboarding to factory repairs, at a manufacturing giant.
• Hernán Virgolini (Argentina): Set up programs teaching Design Sprints to secondary school students.
• Alan MacCormack & Russ Wilcox (Harvard Business School): Lead MBA and engineering students through Design Sprints.
• LEGO: Adopted Design Sprints across an entire division, running hundreds of sprints for everything from marketing to finance.

The Psychological Boost: Trust and Camaraderie

Eli Blee-Goldman notes that beyond “progress toward product-market fit,” sprints build “trust and camaraderie within the team.” Everyone sees each other’s “unique contributions,” creating a “psychological boost” that lasts long after the sprints. This reconnection with purpose and colleagues helps transform careers and allows people to “unlock their best work,” feeling “like kids again. Like inventors!”

Conclusion: Your Role as Leader

The book concludes by empowering the reader: this “new way of working requires a leader.” Having read the book, the reader is “perfectly qualified” to introduce the Foundation Sprint, build excitement, and make it happen. The “checklist awaits” for those ready to embark on this journey, with the ultimate goal of solving “an important problem for real people” and creating a solution that “clicks.”

Key Takeaways: What You Need to Remember

Core Insights from Click

• Products click when they solve an important problem, stand out, and make sense to people. This fundamental alignment between product and customer is the ultimate determinant of success.
• Most new products fail because teams lose sight of the “click.” They get bogged down in execution details rather than focusing on customer perception and desirability.
• The Foundation Sprint compresses months of strategic work into two days. It provides a structured, time-efficient way to define your project’s core elements and hypothesis.
• Effective strategy starts with your customer and their real problem. Prioritize understanding and serving your target audience, not just pursuing internal goals or “cool” ideas.
• Leverage your team’s unique advantages. Identify your distinct capabilities, motivations, and insights to create solutions that only you can deliver.
• Honestly assess all forms of competition. This includes direct rivals, substitute solutions, and even the option of customers doing nothing.
• Differentiation is crucial for capturing attention and encouraging change. Make your product radically different, creating a new framework for customers to evaluate solutions.
• Practical principles guide consistent decision-making. Translate your differentiators and values into actionable rules for your team.
• Always seek and evaluate alternative approaches. Don’t fall in love with your first idea; explore multiple options to avoid costly pivots later.
• Your initial strategy is merely a hypothesis. Avoid cognitive biases by framing it as a testable guess, not a rigid plan.
• Experiment with “tiny loops” using prototypes. This allows for rapid learning and adjustment from customer feedback before investing heavily in building the final product.
• The Design Sprint is the ideal follow-up to the Foundation Sprint. It provides a proven, five-day process for testing your Founding Hypothesis with real customers.
• Success builds trust and camaraderie within teams. The focused, collaborative nature of sprints strengthens team bonds and re-energizes individuals’ purpose.

Immediate Actions to Take Today

• Identify the Decider for your next big project. Get their buy-in to clear calendars and dedicate focused time.
• Form a small, diverse team (3-5 people). Ensure contrasting perspectives are represented.
• Practice “working alone together.” Try a simple Note-and-Vote for a team decision to experience its efficiency.
• Frame your next big idea as a hypothesis, not a plan. Challenge your assumptions immediately.
• List all existing solutions (and substitutes) your target customer uses for a problem you want to solve.

Questions for Personal Application

• Who is your core customer, and what single problem are you truly solving for them?
• What are your team’s top three unique advantages (capability, insight, motivation) that no one else can match?
• Who is the “eight-hundred-pound gorilla” you’re really competing against, and how will you position yourself against them?
• What are two radical differentiators that would put your solution “all alone” in the top right of a 2×2 chart?
• What practical principles can you draft to ensure your team consistently delivers on your differentiation?
• What are at least three distinct approaches you could take to solve your customer’s problem, beyond your first idea?
• If you built a non-functional prototype of your solution, what is the single most important question you would need to answer from customer testing?
• How can you initiate a “good emergency” in your organization to create the dedicated focus time needed for a Foundation Sprint?