The Verdict

Turn raw interview notes into an honest verdict: REAL, WEAK, or DEAD.

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13:15

start

60m

duration

exercises

things you leave with

Welcome

You have a stack of quotes and half-legible notes. Now the founder skill nobody teaches: reading what the evidence actually says instead of what you hoped it would say. Claude clusters your notes, surfaces the strongest quote, and calls out your confirmation bias to your face.

You walk out with

✓An honest verdict with evidence

✓Your strongest user quote

✓A spec brief hardened by reality

Why this session exists

Teams that grade their own homework honestly on Day 2 build things people want by Day 5. Teams that grade generously build elaborate things nobody asked for.

The arc, minute by minute

13:15

The three verdicts, and why DEAD is a win

13:25

Paste your notes: Claude clusters patterns and flags bias

13:45

Write the verdict + one paragraph of evidence

14:00

60-second verdict defenses; DEAD teams re-pick NOW, afternoon intact

Exercises

The synthesis run

Raw notes in, patterns out. Then the harder question to Claude: what did we want to hear, and did we hear it because it was true or because we asked for it?

Verdict defense

REAL, WEAK or DEAD, defended in 60 seconds with a quote, not a feeling.

prompt · give this to the room verbatim

Here are my raw notes from 5 customer interviews about [problem]. 1) Cluster them into patterns. 2) Surface the single strongest quote. 3) Now be brutal: which of my conclusions am I reaching because I want them to be true? What does the evidence NOT support?

Tools in play

Claude

Materials to prep

Evidence memo templates

The checkpoint · nothing counts unless it is live

Verdict on the wall. The afternoon builds only what survived.

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