This module of the course is worth 80 points of your total grade for the course. You are welcome to start once you've completed modules 2 and 3.
Read:
"How to get startup ideas," PaulGraham.com, November 2012
and...these slides on the same topic with my own embellishments...
Graded Assignment
Write out your idea for an entrepreneurial opportunity. Tell your audience what the big pain is your constituency group is having, describe your brilliant solution, state how your solution is different from what your constituency group is currently using to solve the problem, tell us why *you’re* the person who should be pursuing this opportunity, and give us a call to action. This can be simply “join my team,” “visit my website,” or “help fund me to make this idea a reality.”
So your deliverable will be structured like this:
My idea is (just explain what the problem is, who has the problem, what those people really need, what I will provide them)
Big pain: Laser focus on the big pain (lost time, physical pain, cognitive overload, embarrassment, injury, ...) and elaborate on the journalistic interrogatives: who, how, where, what, when, why...
Your brilliant solution: What does your idea solve? Give an overview of what your idea provides in terms of a unique value proposition to a group of people (think about underserved groups of customers, and on the features your idea has to deliver its benefits, such as faster, cheaper, more effective, more entertaining, and on...)
Differentiation: Here you should identify attributes of the big pain and how your idea addresses / solves it more effectively than what the customer is (usually currently) using.
Why You? This one is a difficult one to formulate. "I had the idea, right? What MORE do I need to do for you people?" Did you spent some time trying with great effort to identify a valuable unsolved problem and solve it? You probably created some supporting material to go with it. In other words, you have some very early-stage thoughts about your idea and whom it helps. Is there anything in your education or experience that makes you a good person to pursue this idea? What could you do with $10 to get more certainty about unanswered questions YOU have about your idea?
Call to Action: "Join my team." "When can I meet all of your firm's partners?" "Will you listen to my funding plan?" ALWAYS close by asking your audience to do something.
You can send your idea and written pitch as a Word doc, Google doc, or copy-and-paste into an email. Use pictures! Send me your written pitch by email with the subject line MGT 482-582 Winter Interim Written Pitch.
Now that you’ve written your idea in great detail and understand the attributes of your opportunity, create a customer persona of an “ideal first customer” who has the problem you’re trying to solve and identify demographics, behaviors, and goals and needs of this customer. How? Read the overview and instructions for customer personas page, then make your own customer persona. This should be drawn on an 8 ½” by 11” sheet of paper. Send me by email a high-quality digital image of your customer persona with the subject MGT 482-582 Winter Interim Customer Persona (or something approximating that subject line).
A value proposition statement is a single, hard-working sentence that incorporates the value you create (your idea and unique value proposition) for whom (a customer) under what circumstances (where and when does the customer experience the problem?) and in what ways that are different from other possible choices available to that customer. You’ll follow a script-building approach that is found in this set of google slides.
How do I turn this assignment in? Send your value proposition statement in the text of an email with the subject MGT 482-582 Winter Interim Value Proposition Statement.
Bonus reading worth your time: Business Model Generation for context of the value proposition within a venture's business model (Google slides)
The map activity borrows from the first day of the Google Ventures Design Sprint, and we adapt the map here to help you better define your optimistic outcome, your key characters, and the different steps in the process that need to occur in order for your key character to become aware of your value proposition, evaluate it, purchase it, and use it to solve the problem s|he is having.
In this activity you’ll write your thoughts on dozens of sticky notes and post them on a large whiteboard, wall, or sheet of a flipchart. Your goal is fluency in ideas, as well as the comprehensiveness of the attributes of your characters, process steps, and optimistic outcome. You’ll need to generate at least five sticky note thoughts each for your characters, process steps, and optimistic outcome. This will likely need to be an iterative process in which you take a first attempt at creating the map (e.g., for a half-hour to an hour) and then return for a second take for about the same time. Once you’re satisfied with the map, list at least ten things that could possibly go wrong with any one of the sticky-note assertions or assumptions you’ve made. For example, you might prescribe that a customer will log into an account. An event that could go wrong in this situation would be that the person might forget her password. Once you’ve completed the map and identified at least ten issues that could come up, take a high-quality digital image of your map and send it to me by email. List your ten or more potential issues in the body of the email as text. Send the digital image and the list of potential issues in a single email with the subject line MGT 482-582 Winter Interim 2020 Map Activity.
Here's a step-by-step way to approach your map activity:
View: The “Understand” phase “Monday” slides (slides 15 through 29) in Design Sprint Organization (Google slides)
Find a whiteboard, flipchart, wall, or "something" to put all of your ideas (if you're looking at "something" please make sure I'll be able to view it). Get a lot of sticky notes and some black markers.
Write out three initial sticky notes. Their titles should be Key Characters, Steps of the Process, and Optimistic Outcome, and you should put them on the map at the top left, top middle, and top right, respectively.
List who your key characters are, what optimistic outcome(s) you expect to deliver to your key characters, and steps of the process. Brainstorm for around a half-hour by writing out thoughts that occur to you about the characters, processes, or outcomes you think should be part of this map. You're writing a story about people who experience a type of problem during situations in their lives and how they solve it. How do they learn about, get more information on, evaluate, and purchase your offering? What's their happy ending? (If you're pitching a weed business I expect at least a full paragraph).
Step away after a half hour of this activity. Step. away. Then come back and go through another iteration of your brainstorming process, this time building off the ideas you had in the first iteration. Add, remove, relocate, embellish upon your first batch of sticky notes. Take around a half hour for the second iteration. No one will probably know if you did this or not, but you'll have a better experience if you follow instructions closely.
Once you’re satisfied with the map, list at least ten things that could possibly go wrong with any one of the sticky-note assertions or assumptions you’ve made. For example, you might prescribe that a customer will log into an account. An event that could go wrong in this situation would be that the person might forget her password. Once you’ve completed the map and identified at least ten issues that could come up, take a high-quality digital image of your map and send it to me by email. List your ten or more potential issues in the body of the email as text. Send the digital image and the list of potential issues in a single email with the subject line MGT 482-582 Winter Interim Map Activity
Now that you’ve identified the characteristics, processes, and optimistic outcomes toward identifying and delivering your value proposition to customers, draw at least three sketches of your solution. Take an 8 ½” by 11” sheet of paper and fold it into thirds so that there are three panels. Draw one sketch of your possible solution in each panel. Once you’ve completed these sketches, draw a more complete solution sketch that focuses on the solution sketch you think is most promising. In the more complete solution sketch you’ll draw your customer in the situation he is in when he is experiencing the problem, draw how he finds out about your solution, and draw how his condition has improved as a result of using your solution. There are several examples on the course website. Take a high-quality digital image of both your draft solution sketches and your final solution sketch and send them by email to me with the subject line MGT 482-582 Winter Interim 2020 Solution Sketches.
View: “Sprint Tuesday” slides (slides 38 through 52) in Design Sprint Organization (Google slides)
Send me your FOUR sketches by email. (Keep in mind that I want three "draft" sketches of your solution and one "final" sketch that covers the three components described in the google slides.)
You will build a low-resolution minimum viable product that reflects your proposed solution. The MVP must possess the minimum set of features you believe are necessary to deliver the value proposition. The ideal MVP will have attributes that allow it to be tested with a group of very early potential customers. Your solution must provide a way to answer one of the key questions or assumptions you have about your customer, product, or market (ten points) and includes a listing of those core features you expect to test on customers (ten points). Send by email a video link, prototype images, or other materials that comprise your solution to MGTX82BAMA@gmail.com with the subject line MGT 482-582 Winter Interim Solution
and “Sprint Thursday” slides (slides 77 through 105) in Design Sprint Organization (Google slides)
Then use the instructions above to submit three draft and one final solution sketch.
You will write an end-of-process reflection essay in which you discuss your experiences in the completion of each of the above steps AND you will complete a learning style survey.
What do I do?
Download and or create your own document from this google doc, MGT 482-582 Reflection Essay (DO NOT ASK FOR PERMISSION TO EDIT MY GOOGLE DOC; you need to download it as your own). Send your finished document as a Word or google doc as an attachment in an email to MGTX82BAMA@gmail.com with the subject line MGT 482-582 Winter Interim Reflection Essay.
Complete the learning style survey. Your learning style survey inputs will come directly to me so you do not need to send it any other way. Go to this link to complete the survey.
Made it this far? You are done with the course. Use this link to return to the main page for New Venture Development 2021-2022: Winter 2021-2022