27. Personal inventory
Students make two lists on a single page:
What I’ve Got What I Can Do (startup ideas)
They’re graded on the length of the list and
the relevance of the ideas to their resources.
31. Build an audience
Quantity of content published
Daily analytics screenshots & action log
Post-mortem of what worked & didn’t
Variety of channels and content tried
33. 1 Parts
3
Progress
2 Whole
Articulating a clear
story
34. Platform Platform
esday, 14 June 2011 Tuesday, 14 June 2011
35. Isolate the
dynamic
Given a short case study (and
possible online research):
A canvas with only 3 post-its
A paragraph on why this is the
key dynamic
36. Business model pitches
Explains the overall business in first
90 seconds
Focused on the right bits
Used fewest post-its
Good, energetic story
Connects trends, customer problems
& current behavior to proposed
37. Business model options
Pure quantity
Breadth of variation
Legibility
Understandable when they review them in 3 months?
41. The mom test
Talk about their life, Future-tense
not your idea opinions are lies
Ask about specifics You gain nothing
in the past by convincing
them
60. Problem Solution Excited Feature
Goal Remiss Upset
Person Obstacle Alternative request
Pair. One interviewer, one notetaker.
One phrase per card.
Interviews! Use the icons as your record notes.
The order doesn t matter, but bring up
each topic during the interview.
62. Braintrust
Problem, Learning Goal, Plan,
turned in weekly.
Selection & analysis of big
problem and learning goal
Efficiency of plan to answer it
Concise
Feedback from peers collected
64. Add a zero
1.Pick a startup, ideally local.
2.Think of 3 ways to add a
zero (an order of
magnitude)
3.Email them to the founder,
asking to discuss.
4.Write up lessons learned
from the conversation.
5.Automatic 100% if the
startup tried it and learned
something!
66. Segmentation
Reduce an idea with a broad
market to 10 possible segments,
each with a TAM lower than
1,000.
Include at least one likely
awareness channel for each.
Pick one. Turn in a contact list of
prospects in that segment.
67. Pivot or persevere?
Given a short case study:
Analysis of the commitments and signals from customers
Exploration of the possible learning goals
Description of a reasonable way to achieve this learning.
68. Signal vs. Noise
Log into an analytics account (or look at print-outs) and
isolate the growth engine from the TechCrunch traffic.
Turn in the relevant numbers only, with a paragraph
explaining why this is the growth engine.
69. How do we grade
Customer Development?
Got conversations
Note-taking
Asked good questions
Analysis of multiple conversations
70. Option Cards
Students are taught how to use option
cards in their startup. At the end of the
semester, they submit their decks.
Quantity of cards
2 subsets, based on different
fictitious problems
(low conversion rate, Google becomes
your competition, failed to build, etc.)
71. Lean Usability
Optimise a university web app.
Groups of 4 run 4-5 30-minute
usability tests, submitting:
Whiteboard snapshot
#1 problem discovered
List of other problems & why they
weren’t chosen.
72. Hacking time
Hack a personal habit this week. Write a paragraph on what
you tried, and why. Write another on how it went.
73. MVP design
Given a short case study, and a specific learning goal:
Good balance of speed, cost and certainty of learning
Clear steps
Clear success metric
81. Flexible curriculum
Lay out the big principles
you want to impart.
Come up with a set of
swappable options.
Assemble them as
needed. Don’t converge
until you need to.
83. Flexible curriculum
Make sure they fit well by, looking at the
overall output:
Each principle was conveyed and
applied in practice.
The energy levels stayed high all day.
The overall tone conveyed the right
message. (We walked the talk.)
It adapted to student needs.
88. Personal inventory
Students make two lists on a single page:
What I’ve Got What I Can Do (startup ideas)
They’re graded on the length of the list and
the relevance of the ideas to their resources.
89. Constrained launches
With enough harnesses, these are 1-2 week
practical assignments:
Launch a consumer/SME SaaS MVP.
Launch a drop shipper.
Concierge a market place (find liquidity)
Build an audience. (blog, Twitter, Google+, etc.)
Launch an enterprise service.
Growth hack a startup.
97. Gotchas
Mismatched goals & skills
Lack of practical design /
tech skills
No help-seeking attitude
Using speakers/mentors
who don’t get startups
“We just need to raise
funding.”
98. Gotchas
Students not knowing
each other
Expecting students to stay
in sync
Hung up inconsequential
details.
In love with their first idea
102. Thank You!
We are Founder-Centric.
Salim Virani Rob Fitzpatrick
@SaintSal @robfitz
salim@foundercentric.com rob@foundercentric.com
103. Work with us. Content: Use our accelerator stuff!
Plug in polished workshops, videos
and materials.
Programme design: Let’s sit Fast & easily-gradeable
down and work out options to assignment packs
help you hit ambitious, Slide decks
measurable goals. Case studies
Card games
Workshops: Fly us in to give
students a practical boost (or Full facilitation guides
kick), and to help keep them on Training videos
track. Teacher community
