New Venture Development Fall 2019

when and where

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

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.

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.

Week 6: September 24, 26

September 24:

• This is just insane: "He was 'struggling not to laugh:' Inside Netflix's crazy, doomed meeting with Blockbuster." Vanity Fair, 9/17/19
• Featured Kickstarter Project: TRIWA Time for Peace II Watch made from Illegal Firearms (34 days to go)
• Setup for in-class graded activity on Thursday: Proof Eyewear; but first, a couple words on new venture metrics and early stage valuation methods. Metrics and valuations go together; hypothesize, experiment, measure, increase your venture's value...

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.

• See Instructions for "Take an Entrepreneur to Dinner" Assignment
• How to pitch (we'll cover this in class next week and practice)

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.

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

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:

• Idea worksheet (to help you think through your idea)
• Pitching worksheet (to help you develop aspects of and transitions between pitching stages)

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

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.

• Market analysis (5 points) (substitute for multiplicity of opportunities assignment)
• Customer development (5 points) (substitute for metrics assignment)
• Notes on Building the Value Proposition through Market Analysis (google slides)
• Notes on building a minimum viable product (MVP) Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Product Development from Cygnis Media (google slides)

Culminating project: a Kickstarter campaign or a business plan presentation

• Slides on running an insanely successful Kickstarter campaign (Note: If you actually ran this campaign on a small level you would validate your assumptions and more importantly your value proposition; then you would have a great shot at winning in Algdag.)
• Slides on creating a business plan presentation (this is the Aldag competition format if you want to enter the competition in the spring; I think YOU should)

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.

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

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

• Notes (AGAIN) on building a minimum viable product (MVP) Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Product Development from Cygnis Media (google slides)

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 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...:

• Preparing Customer Discovery Interviews (grasshopperherder.com)

and these supplemental articles for those interested...

• How to Verify Your Assumptions At Small Sample Sizes (medium.com)
• Triangulating the User Experience (medium.com)
• Concierge versus Wizard of Oz test (Medium.com)
• Startup marketing: 10 things to watch out for (Yourstory.com, Oct 2016)
• Are we having fun yet? Enjoyability, the missing -ility in many business models (Alberto Savoia, Founder @ Pretotype Labs, LLC, on LinkedIn) and browse Alberto's book "Pretotype it: Make sure you are building the right it before you build it right."

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:

• Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting (HBS, 2018)

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

• Landing pages
• Landing pages: The quick and dirty approach assignment with instructions
• How to set up a landing page using google sites and analytics
• Minimum Viable Team > Minimum Viable Product (grasshopperherder.com)

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.