Step 6 of 11 — Assumptions
What you need to believe vs. what's actually true
Every startup rests on a stack of assumptions — things you BELIEVE but haven't PROVEN. The ones you're most confident about are usually the ones most likely to kill you. Testing them before you build is the whole game.
Why this matters
If your startup fails, it's almost never because the code had bugs. It's because an assumption you made was wrong — customers didn't actually want it, wouldn't actually pay, or couldn't be reached the way you planned. Listing your assumptions explicitly turns invisible risks into visible ones. Then you can test the critical ones in 2 weeks instead of building for 6 months and finding out.
What you'll do in this step
- Margawise surfaces assumptions from your idea, personas, problems, and market automatically.
- Each is tagged with a risk level (Critical / High / Medium / Low) — how much does this one have to be true?
- You test the Critical and High ones first — usually in interviews, sometimes with experiments.
- As evidence comes in, the status moves: Untested → Hypothesis Formed → Evidence Collected → Supported or Invalidated.
A real example
For Ananya's internship app, here are 4 real assumptions ranked by how much they need to be true.
CRITICAL — Customers exist and feel this pain
"Second-year Tier-2 BCom students can't find internships and feel this as a real, urgent problem." If this is wrong, everything else is wasted. Test first via 10 interviews.
CRITICAL — They'd pay money to solve it
"Priya would pay ₹299 for a 1-on-1 application review." Maybe she would. Maybe her parents pay but not her. Maybe she'd pay ₹99 but not ₹299. Must test with actual ₹ before building.
HIGH — Connecting to seniors is the right solution
"Priya would rather talk to a senior who got an internship than read a generic guide." Plausible, but maybe she'd rather have a guide she can consume at 11pm. Test in interviews.
MEDIUM — We can reach them via college WhatsApp groups
"We can get to 500 students by posting in 10 Jaipur college groups." Worth testing but not till the first two assumptions hold.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Treating assumptions as facts — "obviously students want internships" is still an assumption until you've talked to 10 of them.
- Testing the easy ones first — confirming a Low-risk assumption feels productive but doesn't de-risk your business.
- Skipping the willingness-to-pay assumption — "they'll pay" is almost always the make-or-break, but it's the one founders avoid testing.
How Margawise helps
- AI extracts assumptions from everything you've filled in so far — you don't have to think of them from scratch.
- Risk levels are pre-assigned so you know which to test first. Override them if you disagree.
- "Add to interview" links an assumption to your next interview — so you come out with evidence for the specific risks you care about.
- Evidence collected auto-advances the status, and the Decision stage weighs Supported vs. Invalidated assumptions for your final recommendation.
Ready to try this in your own project?
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