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| Criterion | ![]() Business Strategy 5-Minuten VC-Check | ![]() Architecture arc42 | ![]() Product Discovery Smoke Test | ![]() Product Discovery Fake Door Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | The 5-Minute VC Check clarifies opportunities and strategic options at the earliest idea stage. It compares problem quality, customer willingness to pay, alternatives, differentiation, and market potential, and captures the result as a VC-check note, go/sharpen/park decision, and risk list. | arc42 structures architecture knowledge so teams can document system, decisions, and risks consistently. The template builds a living understanding of the architecture instead of scattered notes. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | When demand is still unclear, it measures interest in a feature before it is built. It separates real behavior from polite agreement and deliberately keeps build effort small. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 5-15 min | 1-2 Tage | 1-5 Tage | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | 1-5 | 1-4 | Nutzertraffic | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | VC-check note, Go/sharpen/park decision, Risk and assumption list, Next validation step | Architecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment View | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Click Data, Interest Signal, Learning Decision |
Tagsno overlap | StartupValidationCompetition | ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ValidationExperimentsDemandDiscovery |



