Step 2: Can you actually sell this? Customer Validation is the moment of truth.

Customer Validation is Step 2, and it answers the hardest question: will people actually pay for this?

You've found earlyvangelists who say they have the problem. Now you need to sell to them — not give it away for free, not offer a pilot, but get a purchase order or payment. This is where many startups discover their "validated" idea doesn't survive contact with a checkbook.

Blank insists on building a repeatable sales process during this step. It's not enough for the founder to close deals through personal relationships. You need a sales roadmap that someone else could follow: who to target, what to say, how to demo, how to close.

The critical checkpoint: if you can't get 3-5 paying customers using a repeatable process, you haven't achieved Customer Validation. Go back to Step 1 and pivot — change your hypothesis and try again. This iteration between Steps 1 and 2 is where most of the learning happens.