Starter Pack

The Emerge Team is committed to supporting students, staff and recent graduates who are passionate about solving challenge-led problems. 

If you are curious about starting a business or are actively developing an idea, the Emerge Team strongly encourages you to identify the root causes of the problem.  This in turn will strengthen the product-market fit of future solutions.

Start with this simple matrix to help prioritise which problems are best to solve.  The goal is to identify problems that are big and frequently encountered i.e problems that people care about, that they care enough to change their behaviour and enough of them care to make it worthwhile. 

Use this matrix to understand the push-pull forces involved with existing solutions and how you might overcome them with a new solution.  Read more about this handy tool.

A MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is:

'The version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development'

A MVP is important for:

1. Proving your concept

2. Connecting with your customers early on

3. Guiding your eventual product

4. Making the best use of available resources and limiting damage

A canvas to support enterprising individuals to explore problems and ideas further in a structured way.  During 1-1 Support Meetings, the Emerge Team use this canvas to direct conversations and identify actions for further work.

An attached notes page provides insight as to what to include within each section. 

Please download and make edits so that you can personalise to your own idea using either Google slides or PowerPoint. 

A template to identify a key customer (rather like the Ideal Customer Profile) where you can record the important information of what motivates this person, why, how etc.  

Consider a few ideal customers that you want or need to find, then you can go and test these assumptions as you research the business problem further.

Face-to-face support meetings with the Emerge Team to gain feedback and insight into your business idea and current development.  

Focus within the meeting is usually aligned to the sections on the Ideas Canvas with action points provided at the end of the meeting for ongoing work.

The Emerge Team strongly encourages the Ideas Canvas to be completed by the founder, after the initial meeting and before follow-up meetings are held.  The Emerge Team is always on-hand though to answer any questions that founders may have.