Testing Business Ideas

DEFINITION

Evidence

What is Evidence?

Evidence is what you use to support or refute the hypotheses underlying your business idea. It is data that you get from research or generate from business experiments. Evidence can come in many different forms, ranging from weak to strong evidence.

For the purposes of Testing Business Ideas, we focus on your business experiment evidence which we define as:

• data generated from an experiment or collected in the field.
• facts that support or refute a hypothesis.
• possibly of different nature (e.g., quotes, behaviors, conversion rates, orders, purchases…); can be weak/strong.

Strength of Evidence

The strength of a piece of evidence determines how reliably the evidence helps support or refute a hypothesis. You can evaluate the strength of evidence by checking four areas. Is the evidence based on...

Weak Evidence		Strong(er) Evidence
Opinions (beliefs) When people say things like “I would…,” “I think _____ is important,” “I believe…,” or “I like…”	Facts (events) When people say things like “Last week I _____ ,” “In that situation I usually _____ ,” or “I spent _____ on.”
What people say What people say in an interview or ...