Exploration, pitching and concierge are 3 common experiment categories in the startup world.  Often these are incorrectly seen as steps, but they’re not. This will help choose which method is appropriate.

Exploration (Learn, aka Customer Discovery)

• if you have an early idea for a solution
• if your customers aren't biting your arm off and chasing you for your product
• if you're not sure where you need to be to make new customers aware of you
• if you don't know what budget you belong to, or who else in the organisation can affect your sales
• if you don't know how to segment your customers based on behaviour or job-to-be-done
• if you're not confident how consistent your problems are within your target segment

• if you have an idea of how and when people will buy from you
• if you have an idea of when customers start looking for a solution, and where they look

• if you're confident in the customer segment to target, but less sure about exactly how to help them
• if building the solution will take time and there are still unknown unknowns in terms of how customers will use it
• if you have an idea for a solution but don't know the exact customer context or job-to-be-done