New Venture Development Fall 2019

when and where

  • 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays, August 22 - December 6
  • Bidgood 240

October 1 update: I am eliminating the multiplicity of opportunities assignment and replacing it with a market analysis for you to do for your new venture teams. Same amount of points. See schedule for October 8/10 for instructions. I am also eliminating the "metrics" assignment and replacing it with the team assignment of customer development.

the "interview an entrepreneur" assignment is due before Thanksgiving break begins (November 26)

August 22

Course opener (google presentation with activity instructions). The "Gallery of Amazing Lego Things" will appear on this site soon.

Meanwhile, the book (to the right) is a *real* thing, and I have read it (among around at least 10 others "Lego-blocks-will-help-your-organization-overcome-inertia-through-regression-to-childhood" activities), agonized over its contents in terms of its usefulness to a classroom, and tried to reverse engineer the value creation *implied* by its price (OK, it's $20 on Amazon). Why? So I can share that story in the classroom with you. It turns out there is a *substantial* market for people who are willing to be engaged in training involving Lego pieces, and we should not dismiss that large group of people. At the same time, why don't *we* deconstruct the Legos context and just assign random artifacts (game pieces or tokens, game rules) and work toward better representations of what we study, internalize, and create.

And so, still working on it... Show me your best impression of a duck... and... if you have any insights into creating a valuable learning experience using Legos or other "play" artifacts, let me know and you and I could become co-authors on the next great Harvard Business Review...

Building from waste

This book provides a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource for architectural, interior, and industrial design. This is related to my discussion in class on 8/22 of asphalt, the state of plastics recycling, and Tewa Technologies' "plasphalt" product. Link: https://issuu.com/birkhauser.ch/docs/building_from_waste

August 27, 29

August 27: Syllabus review, What will we do (assignments overview), Entrepreneurs and Opportunities

August 29: Continue entrepreneurs and opportunities, "Connect the Dots" card game beta test, complete QUIZ 1 (5 points) by midnight, August 30. Yes, there is a quiz later today.

Note: I am going to go through some of the slides today F-A-S-T, you are still responsible for reviewing them as you take the quiz later today. (Inserts womp womp meme here)

August 30: Make sure you have completed your Quiz 1 by 11:59 pm, Friday, August 30. Quiz 1 update: I emailed the quiz at 4:15 pm August 29. Contact me if you did not receive it.

Infographic: The Future of Stadium Tech Market Map

There are several aspects of the "stadium tech space" that aspire to improve the live game experience. Stadium analytics, real-time player insights, robots and drones, concessions and payments, ticketing and security, and live betting are all categories that could be substantially improved to create a better game experience.

Scenario 1: You use your Bryant-Denny app to order food from concessions and pay for the order, noting your seating section and row. A person, robot, or drone brings your order directly to you.

Scenario 2: The stadium is equipped to provide a live betting experience in real time for fans watching at the game and those watching at home or the bar... The odds and bets placed are broadcast on a large screen easily within view of the opposing team's place kicker as he lines up for a 3-point chipshot.

Scenario 3: ESPN announced in 2018 that Aaron Rodgers just signed a record 4-year contract extension for $134M, with a guarantee of nearly $103M. He has 313 touchdowns in 13 seasons for the Packers. That's an average of 24 touchdowns per season and would project him to have another 100 touchdowns or so during the new contract period. $103M divided by 100 touchdowns is $1 million per touchdown. Real time analytics could show how much a particular touchdown or field goal costs.

Elmer Winter How is he relevant to the 21st century working model? Read "It's not technology that's disrupting our jobs" before class and review in class Notes from the Gig Economy

See also: Amazon's Last Mile (Amazon Flex on Gizmodo.com)

September 3, 5

Continue with Entrepreneurs and Opportunities, Run Connect the Dots game in class Tuesday, finish Entrepreneurs and Opportunities with "How do entrepreneurs pursue opportunities?" and "Windows of opportunities" Thursday

Complete Quiz 2 by midnight Friday, September 6

Did you really think I would forget about our first-day-of-class Lego Adventure Challenge? I didn't think so.

September 10, 12

September 10, Bootstrapping; maybe not just a mindset of frugality, but of removing the biggest deal-killing risks first as cheaply as possible... First, we'll visit the Validation page, then overview how smart entrepreneurs find and remove "deal-killer" risks.

September 12, Bob Reiss and R&R (5 points of total course grade, work in teams in class). Read case before class! Open, follow the instructions on, and edit this document. If you are not going to be in class on Thursday, you are responsible for answering the questions in this document and submitting it to NVDBAMA@gmail.com by the end of Friday.

Complete Quiz 3. Questions come directly from the R&R case and the Gilbert & Eyring (2010) reading

Image source (above and below): Gilbert, C. G., & Eyring, M. J. (2010). Beating the odds when you launch a new venture. Harvard business review, 88(5), 92-98.

Week 5: September 17, 19

September 17, pro forma financials (google slides); September 19, Autoshop case study in class (5 points of total course grade, work in teams in class); This google doc has the questions you need to answer to get full credit for this activity. We'll open the class session with an overview of the assignment, watch the presentation video, and then have everyone get to work on the activity questions.

See also these notes on validation

Complete Quiz 4 - I emailed Quiz 4 at 4:55 on Thursday. If you did not get it, please email me! You can also use this link to access the quiz.

Venn Diagram o' the week.

Attributes of a promising entrepreneur

Week 6: September 24, 26

September 24:

September 25 is Career Fair Day at Coleman Coliseum. But you and I know that every day is career day...

Here is the promised article "Why Software is Eating the World" by Marc Andreessen.

September 26:

  • In class graded activity: Proof Eyewear. We will complete this activity in class (5 points); if you can't be in class, let me know so we can arrange for you to complete out of class before 11:59 pm, Friday, September 27.
  • 11:00 pm, September 25: This is an update to the above bullet. Some of you will not be able to attend lecture tomorrow due to the career fair. I really want you guys to crush it in the career fair, so please reach out to the teammates you've already established to join them in the submittal of this assignment. And for that reason I am extending the deadline for submitting this to 11:59, Friday, September 27. I won't complain if you turn it in sooner. You're "on your honor" to attribute credit to effort where effort has been applied; freeriders are frowned upon....

Complete Quiz 5

Week 7: October 1, 3

Progress Check: You should be seriously considering who you will interview for your interview an entrepreneur assignment and what idea you will pitch on October 15 in class.

October 1

Read (this week - before class on 10/3):

  • 12 things about product-market fit (A16Z.com, 2/18/17)
  • THE PMARCA GUIDE TO STARTUPS: "Part 4: The only thing that matters" (pmarchive.com, 6/25/07, an archive of Marc Andreessen tweets)

In class: Webvan Goes Public, Customer Development and Customer, Product, and Value Proposition (google slides). We'll make customer personas in class.

Bonus viewing: Gustaf Alstromer of Y Combinator on Growth and Product-Market Fit.

October 3

Before class: make sure you create a customer persona for a person whose needs might be solved by Webvan's value proposition.

In class: We'll run a graded activity on Webvan in class (5 points); instructions to complete the assignment out of class will be posted here soon. Topics: value proposition, market size, product-market fit, customer development.

Here is the google doc with instructions and content for completing the Webvan customer persona and VP activity.

Complete Quiz 6 (<-- your link to quiz 6) by 11:59 pm, Friday, October 4

An early look at the final project for this class:

Reminder: Your entrepreneur interviews are due by the start of Thanksgiving Break

Week 8: October 8, 10

We are half-way through the semester this week.

October 8:Pitching, how to pitch, pitching practice, ...google slides on pitching; and a Pitching Worksheet (google doc) and a listing of bad products (google slides); see also "Pay Attention!"

If your team wants to use visuals during your pitch today, you must build them into this google slides file

October 10:

In class: Pitching practice

Complete Quiz 7 (<-- This is the link to your Quiz 7) by 11:59 pm Friday, October 11

Week 9: October 15, 17

October 15: Individual pitches in class

  • Dress code is you must dress
  • Individual pitches unless you get my permission beforehand
  • No slides; be your own Papyrus font!
  • Pitch is worth 5% of your overall grade.
  • Can't be in class? Film your pitch with your smart device and post it as "unlisted" on YouTube and share the link with me; or send the file to me directly. Again, if you post on YouTube send me the video URL.
  • I will ask you to enter a brief summary of your idea in a google form that I'll send before today's lecture (Form is also embedded below). Please complete it before class starts at 2 pm October 15, even if you won't be in class. We'll use that google form to vote on teams.

Content: You will prepare for and deliver a one-minute pitch in which you identify 1) a big pain you and/or a constituency are experiencing, 2) your brilliant solution to that pain, 3) how your solution differs from what people are currently using, however imperfectly their current solution is working, 4) an argument for why you should be the person to pursue this opportunity, and 5) a call to action (CTA: here you will ask classmates to join your team; you are not asking for money)

How to get startup ideas (slides)

How to pitch (slides)

Supplemental files for in class:

October 17: No lecture. View Kevin Hale - How to Work Together Quiz 8 questions are based on the content of this video.

Be sure to complete this pitch summary form to describe your pitch to the rest of the class so we can form into teams.

Complete Quiz 8 (<-- this is the link to your Quiz 8), by 11:59 pm, Friday, October 18

TEAM UP - Read the Descriptions, Team Up in Class on October 22. Use the Button on the Upper Right to View in Full Screen

MGT 482-582 Fall 2019 Pitch Summaries (Responses)

Week 10: October 22, 24

Up Front: "Person of interest". I have never heard anyone pitch this idea.

October 22; Roadmap for the rest of the semester

First of all, here are the student pitch summaries from last week. Click on "form," then "show summary of responses" to see what your fellow students are pitching and how committed they are to the idea.

We'll formalize new venture teams in class and go over remaining semester activities.

Culminating project: a Kickstarter campaign or a business plan presentation

October 24: No lecture; you should go to Bidgood 240 at 2:00 to develop your team charters, assign early-stage tasks, etc.

View these slides on what kinds of experiments you should run: Customer? Or Market? (google slides)

As a team, begin your market analysis (5 points); due on November 21 class session.

Complete quiz 9 (<-- here is the link to your Quiz 9) by 11:59 pm, Friday, October 25.

Week 11: October 29

October 29: No lecture - Begin to engage in customer development (5 points); due on November 21 class session.

View How to Conduct Customer Development; read the instructions, watch the video, and follow the directions for engaging in your customer development activity.

Read Customer Development, excerpted from The Startup Owner's Manual, by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

No quiz this week

October 31 - November 3, Fall Break

At this juncture...

I feel it's important for you to know that in some iterations of this course I run a design sprint with teams in class to help them further develop and then focus on the attributes of their value proposition that you believe will be most valued by customers. SO HERE I am posting links to some of those activities that I use. Your team should consider using these as much as possible to help develop your assumptions and hypotheses about your new venture and to include those learnings in your final presentations.

You should think about running an experiment related to your customer-value proposition relationships:

Here's an example of building a hypothesis and metrics

  1. What do you want to put in front of your first customers?
  2. What do you want the outcome to be?
  3. What is the metric of success or failure? (e.g., I want at least 100 people to try my MVP and at least 10 to pre-pay to be the first to use it)
  4. How long will you run the test?

Your end hypothesis: "If I (#1 above), I expect that #2 will happen and will know I am successful if I achieve (#3) over a period of the next (#4).

You should build a prototype, a minimum viable product (MVP) Prototype (a verb) - Build your MVP

Stanford d school note: Prototype to test

Digital Prototyping Tools

  • Keynote / Google slides
  • Sketch
  • Invision
  • Pixate
  • Marvel

Voice Interaction Prototyping Tools

  • Wizard of Oz

Prototyping Tips

Take shortcuts and prepare assets in advance for your team that might be needed to make quick mocks. For example, create a Sketch sticker sheet to collect logos, imagery, and screenshots of your existing product. If you’re prototyping a physical product, hold your Design Sprint in a makerspace or workshop and collect the necessary physical materials you need to make fast prototypes. You do not want to spend prototyping time searching the internet for images or running to a hardware store.

Deliverable: Send me a link or digital image of your in-progress MVP

Week 12: November 5, 7

No lecture either date: Work on market analysis and customer development assignments. And prototypes.

Here is the teams roster for the remainder of the semester.


MGT 482-582 Fall 2019 Project Team Assignments

Complete quiz 10 (<- link to your Quiz 10). Complete before midnight Friday 11/8.

Week 13: November 12, 14

Tentatively no lecture either date: Begin (if you haven't already) work on your Kickstarter campaign or business plan presentation.

More customer development and market analysis (includes instructions and resources for team activities)

What you should also be doing as a team:

  • Market and product, research and experiments. What type of lean startup method should I run? (slides).
  • Smoke tests. Work in teams to build upon your market analysis; develop customer discovery interview questions, contextual inquiry / ethnography, data mining in class. Here is your worksheet for developing customer discovery interviews. You'll develop in class learning goals and open-ended questions that you agree upon as a team, then conduct the interviews between now and Thanksgiving break (this activity "checks a box" for your final team project)

Read this...:

and these supplemental articles for those interested...


Intellectual Property (optional, a resource for you)

And here is a segment on intellectual property for you to review if you haven't been exposed to the topic yet.

View on your own: Intellectual property and its protection (slides)

...specialized knowledge, networks, social capital, the market for lemons, patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights...

Readings on your own:

A Kickstarter how-to: How We Raised $1 Million in 7 Minutes: The Snapmaker team explains the community building that went into their record-breaking Kickstarter campaign for a three-in-one 3D printer, CNC, and laser cutter. (Medium.com, 5/24/19)

Here's a resource for developing your Kickstarter campaign: Kickstarter Magazine Creator Toolkit

Week 14: November 19, 21- Global Entrepreneurship Week

Riverpitch is November 19

Work in teams on completing market analysis and customer development; begin or continue work on your Kickstarter campaign or business plan presentationHere is the link to the "Live" Q&A document we created together today between 2:00 and 3:00

Topic: Organizing to Operate

Building the founding team, splitting the pie, compensation, HR (yep, you NEED HR)

Evaluative market experiments (landing page, sales pitch, flyers, pocket test, event, fake door, high bar). Work as teams in class to develop and start running at least one of these evaluative market experiments. And also see Steve Blank and Bob Dorf on customer development in The Startup Owner's Manual.

Slides and resources for landing pages

Week 15: November 26

November 26 is missed assignment make-up day.

Meanwhile, why don't you do yourself a favor and view one of the best talks I've ever seen on how a "non-technical founder" can build value into a startup through small experiments that disprove or help validate assumptions.

Week 16: December 3, 5

December 3: Crushing your new venture team business plan presentation - Finalize Prototypes; practice team presentation; get feedback to incorporate into final presentations on December 5

December 3: Student teams will present one of the following:

  • a Kickstarter campaign to make initial sales of your product
  • a business plan that can be used to raise investment money from an angel or venture capital investor

Each new venture team will present to us - Present your data, learnings, and prototypes

for your final presentation focus on these four things:

  1. what is the problem you identified, and who has it?
  2. what did you do to validate your initial assumptions about the problem? (refer to customer discovery interviews, personas, solution sketches, etc.)
  3. given what you learned through validation, how did those learnings influence the prototype you made?
  4. Then demonstrate your prototype, and present your Kickstarter campaign or business plan slides

December 5: No lecture; December 3 is the last day of class.