How to you teach your entrepreneurship students to fail forward, not epically?

1. Entrepreneur’s Hazard
11/12/2012
Valley of Death=DEBT!
• “Six years of miserable life…”
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• According to the U.S. Census, 48.8 percent of the new
businesses were alive at age five.

2. The Lean Startup:
College Edition
Dr. Amy Sauers
College of Business
St. Petersburg College

3. WIIFM?
• Fail forward, not epically
• The key to success is failure
11/9/2012
• How to fail towards success in a 4-step lean progression
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4. WIIFM?
• How to fail towards success in a 4-step progression
Dream big,
start small
11/9/2012
Sell
“Minimum
Fail more, fail Viable
more quickly, Product"
and move on (MVP)
(pivot) • Feature
added is an
experiment
Learn from
and build with
customers 4
• Test, adjust,
and iterate

5. Overview Crisis & Paradigm Shift
Old Business School VS. New Lean
Modeling
Theoretical Underpinnings of New Lean
11/9/2012
Paradigm
Lean Startup Hypotheses Applied to Course
Pretest Results
How To: Teaching the Lean Startup in 8
Weeks
Post-Test Results
Next Steps: Paired-Samples T-Test; Startup
5
Weekend Next

6. Crisis & Paradigm Shift
• Crisis:
• 50% batting average
11/9/2012
• New product failure = 75%
• Old: Standard business school is inadequate
• How to manage people
• How to get things done more efficiently
• How to cut costs and reduce waste
• How to buy advertising for your market
• How to budget 6

7. Crisis & Paradigm Shift
11/9/2012
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8. Crisis &
Paradigm Shift
• New: Startup = operate
11/9/2012
under conditions of
extreme uncertainty
• What market?
“I never want to make
something someone
doesn’t want to buy!”
– Thomas Edison
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• Pivot before run out of $

9. Old VS. New
11/9/2012
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10. Old VS. New
• Perfectionism • RERO
• Expensive • No to little waste
11/9/2012
• “We know what customer’s • Ask customers
want” • Believe the sales you actually
• Believing our projections make
• Strat Plan: Make linear progress • Iterate
• Execute the plan • Experiment to find a business
• Closed system model that’s valid
• Open system
Naïve Business School Lean Business Modeling
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11. Theoretical Underpinnings of
New Lean Paradigm
• Crossing the Chasm (1991), Geoffrey Moore
• How to cross the valley of death? Win your niche target
11/9/2012
market
• The Art of the Start (2004), Guy Kawasaki
• Make meaning
• Raising money warps you; bootstrap
• Business Model Generation (2010), Alexander Osterwalder
• Business Model: Render your view of your business on a 11
page

12. Theoretical Underpinnings of
New Lean Paradigm
• The Lean Startup (2011), Eric Ries
• Pivot
11/9/2012
• Sell Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Running Lean (2012), Ash Maurya
• The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012),
Steve Blank
• Get outside the building and talk to
customers! 12
• Product-market fit

13. Lean Startup Hypotheses
Applied to Course
• Entrepreneurs will have more success, less wastefully and
sooner (than traditional business) if…
11/9/2012
• Entrepreneurs do not waste time over-planning in the
beginning
->Entrepreneurs start their own business on day 1
• Entrepreneurs first ask customers before creating solution
-> Get out of the building
-> Talk to 3+ customers about their pain point
• Entrepreneurs do not assume they know the answer
-> Test logical solution to the pain with customers 13

14. Lean Startup Hypotheses
Applied to Course
• Entrepreneurs will have more success, less wastefully and sooner
(than traditional business) if…
11/9/2012
• The entrepreneur makes their business model visible and testable
-> Map about all business assumptions and test each
• Entrepreneurs are not perfectionists: Release early to customer
-> Minimum viable product is sold/given to customers to learn
from them
• Minimum of time and money is spent (while still learning)
-> Without making sales, entrepreneurs cannot know what the
sales forecast will be
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15. Pretest Results
Before my Lean Startup Entrepreneurship course:
½ of my students got Lean Startup assessment items incorrect:
11/9/2012
• Entrepreneurs must risk their entire savings and their livelihoods to be
real entrepreneurs.
• There is no particular curriculum to teach entrepreneurship.
• If you don't have or can get $1 million, you can't really start a company
today.
• Entrepreneurship requires both dreaming big to motivate oneself and
others and then starting small on one executable milestone.
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16. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Startup Spiral
• Week 1: Customer Pain Point focus
11/9/2012
• "Get out of the building" and ask target customers their
pain points.
• Do a first pass filling in of your spiral as a draft.
• Pitch it to your class partner, using the Fundability Rubric.
• Written Reflection: List assumptions and pivots. 16
• Submit entire (revised) PowerPoint.

17. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 2: Solution focus
11/9/2012
• Quickly mock up 2 different flyers to test possible
solutions
• Each flyer should start with a different hunch as to the
customer pain point
• Fill in your Strategic Solution quadrants
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18. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 3: Target Market focus
11/9/2012
• Research your Niche Target Market.
• Send out and collect data from customer surveys.
• Include a customer profile story.
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19. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 4: Demo & Sell today
• Pitch, then plan.
11/9/2012
• Demo the offering (MVP).
• Test market through selling.
Prospect Contacted Need USP Outcome of
name how selling?
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20. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 5: Marketing & Sales
11/9/2012
• Create 3-4 SMART Marketing Goals based on strategy
statement.
• Create your Top 10 Target Sales Contacts Table - who you will
personally ask to join/invite to solve their customer problem.
Contact Contact Need USP Start date Outcome
name Info – End date of selling?
1.
2.
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3.

21. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 6: Value Chain Processes
11/9/2012
• Draw your value chain process/distribution flow chart.
How
Supply of Delivered to
transformed
product customer
into value
• Identify your top 5 critical processes
• Create a checklist for each of the 5 critical processes
• (Often these processes are order taking, security of
customer order and information, fulfillment/delivery,
customer servicing, after-sales care) 21

22. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 7: Team & Delegation
Customer
11/9/2012
• Create your bottom-up org chart where the customer
is at the top. "Management" supports/is under the
doers.
Customer
• Delegate the top 5 processes to the doers. Create a Service
Roles and Responsibilities Job Description for each
Team Member.
• Who is in your support network? Management
Support
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23. How To: Teaching the Lean
Startup in 8 Weeks
• Week 8: Revenue Model, Financials and Health Metrics
• State your revenue model.
11/9/2012
• Create your 3 financial spreadsheets from a bootstrapping
paradigm.
• What will your startup capital be (money you have personally
saved that you would not mind risking and losing it all).
• Key Health SMART Goals with Metrics.
• 3 Community Benefit Events held in year 1;
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• My plan for Giving Back includes ___."

24. Post-Test Results
• 9/10 students got a 100% in a post-course test of Lean Startup
concepts.
11/9/2012
• Post-Lean Startup Course: student startups are much more
feasible.
• Student Take-Away Quotes:
“Make your startup a story and show your customers that you are
‘one of them’ and want to provide them with a solution to the
same pain point that you yourself had. I will use this information
to help make my business plan stronger and build a better
customer base.”
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25. Post-Test Results
• Student Take-Away Quote:
11/9/2012
“I think the one big thing that sticks with me …is the idea that
anybody can start his or her own business. It doesn’t take
someone with tons of green to make a business. The smallest
ideas can be started slowly (bootstrapping) and turn into a big
ideas that can lead you to a fortune 500 company.”
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26. Post-Test Results
• Student Take-Away Quote:
11/9/2012
“I think the art of writing a business plan lies in attention to
detail but also attainable goals. It is easy to create a great
sounding plan on paper, but harder to turn it into a reality.
Staying grounded is key.. that is an ideal I will take away from
this course.”
“This course has helped me with brainstorming and problem
resolution, also how to respond to feedback. I liked that we
had to adjust our ideas each week based on feedback from
partners and the instructor.” 26
Achieving Goal  Learning!

27. Next Steps: Paired-Samples T-
Test (for pre- and post- course)
Validating questions…
11/9/2012
• Which of the following choices best describes the lean, agile startup
methodology to this entrepreneurial problem:
• "Pablo wants to start a pita sandwich lunch shop. His first step
should be…
A) Save up $500,000.00 dollars for startup capital.
B) Ask target customers about their pain point with this offering.
C) Get a co-founder to handle the financial side.
D) Write a 50-page business plan.
E) Try to get an SBA loan. 27

28. Review & Call to Action
• Crisis & Paradigm Shift
• Old/Naïve Business School VS. New/Lean Business Modeling
• Theoretical Underpinnings of New Lean Paradigm
11/9/2012
• Lean Startup Hypotheses Applied to Course
• Pretest Results
• How To: Teaching the Lean Startup in 8 Weeks (Spiral)
• Post-Test Results
• Next Steps: Paired-Samples T-Test; Startup Weekend Next!
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 So take one step today to START LEAN. And teach your students!