Where business ideas actually come from: a problem somebody already has. Who the customer is (and is not), why everyone is never a customer, the discipline of talking to real people about their past behavior before building anything, and how to test an idea cheaply — conversations, commitments, and the smallest honest experiment — before it costs real money. New episodes every Sunday. Run the Room builds business from the very beginning — foundations first, one step each week.

Sources:
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Market research and competitive analysis (the six questions: demand, market size, economic indicators, location, market saturation, pricing): https://legacy.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/market-research-competitive-analysis
- Thomas R. Eisenmann, Why Start-ups Fail, Harvard Business Review 99, no. 3 (May–June 2021): 76–85 — abstract and citation: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=60200
- Harvard Business Review summary of the CB Insights review of 101 startup post-mortems (42% no market need): http://feeds.harvardbusiness.org/~r/harvardbusiness/~3/nW14cQDhvjQ/the-simple-question-that-can-make-or-break-a-startup
- Steve Blank, Customer Development — 'There are no facts inside the building, so get outside': verify by searching steveblank.com for Customer Development and the phrase 'no facts inside the building'
- Rob Fitzpatrick, The Mom Test (2013) — the three rules for customer conversations: verify by searching 'The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick three rules past behavior'
- Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (2011) — validated learning, minimum viable product, and the Zappos test: verify by searching 'Lean Startup Eric Ries build measure learn minimum viable product Zappos'

Starting From Zero opens Run the Room at the true beginning: what a business actually is. Alex and Jordan define a business as an organized answer to somebody else's problem, offered in exchange for money, with the machinery to keep that exchange going — then test that definition against Peter Drucker's 1954 claim that the purpose of a business is to create a customer, the three legs of offer, customers, and money, Bureau of Labor Statistics survival data, cash-flow research, and four common impostors: a hobby, a job you buy yourself, an audience, and a product without a system. New episodes every Sunday. Run the Room builds business from the very beginning — foundations first, one step each week.

Sources:
- Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 37: "There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer" — https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Drucker&oldid=2975895
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Launch your business guide (structure, registration, tax IDs, licenses): https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/launch-your-business
- U.S. Small Business Administration, Choose a business structure (updated March 7, 2025): https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/launch-your-business/choose-business-structure
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics establishment survival through March 2025 (77.9% year 1, 51.4% at 5 years for the 2020 cohort, 34.7% at 10 years for the 2015 cohort), summarized at: https://startbusinessbystate.com/business-survival-rates-by-state/
- SCORE / U.S. Bank study cited on cash flow and small business failure (about 82% tied to poor cash flow management), and Federal Reserve 2026 Report on Employer Firms based on the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey: https://www.oneparkfinancial.com/blog/why-82-percent-of-small-businesses-fail-because-of-cash-flow

To verify items without a stable URL: search the Bureau of Labor Statistics site for Business Employment Dynamics Table 7 establishment age and survival, and search the Federal Reserve site for the 2026 Report on Employer Firms, Small Business Credit Survey.

Most meetings are a waste of time — not because meetings are broken, but because nobody ever learned how to run one. Run the Room takes one meeting type each week through three parts: planning, running, and follow-up. New episodes every Sunday at 7:00 PM ET. First up: the IEP meeting.