Founder-centric workshop notes /by @maxua

Lately, I've been doing one-day workshops, based on the Foundation Skills day at Founder-Centric, with different accelerators around Europe. The goal of this day is to teach the principles behind Lean, Lean Startup and Business Model Generation, with a particular focus on practical application and "gotchas" for startups.

Max, founder of DOU, participated at Startup Wiseguys in Estonia, and shared his notes from the day. Thanks Max!

From Max's blog:

Part 1.

1. Do less. More constraints are better, so you grow with efficiency. Tweet Buffer
2. Sometimes you don’t see movement; failed tests allowed us to learn; thats how we succeeded
3. An entrepreneur is NOT an inventor. Tweet Buffer
4. Stealth mode and “coming soon” misses an important litmus test for success - market feedback. Tweet Buffer
5. Capital efficiency – are you front-loading your costs unnecessarily? Tweet Buffer
6. "There are no VPs and CxOs in a startup" - Steve Blank< Tweet Buffer/li>
7. “I wish I knew that sooner!”
8. you DONT know what will work or not
9. there different path to get to the goal
10. Customers are full of shit; they lie to us because we ask them to. Tweet Buffer
11. When you ask “would you buy?” you're invite your customer to lie to you. Tweet Buffer
12. Ask questions in the right way. it really matters.
13. Do 5-10 interviews to know what DOESN'T resonate. Tweet Buffer
14. track actual phrases used by customers, you can use it for copy/ads
15. ask them about the problem and how they solve it in their context
16. earlyvangelists.
• have the problem
• know they have a problem
• have budget to solve the problem
• tried to solve it themselves
17. Choose biz models that are faster to validate, even if it is not the “best”
18. clay christensen 9/10 fail. “jobs” approach. “You hire a product to …”
19. market pull. if there is hesitation – keep looking. that’s the stage you can test. when you start scaling you’re committed
20. “fail fast” = learn. everything you do must help you to get closer to ultimiate business
21. what is the fastest way to invalidate my hypothesis?

Part 2.

1. Choose your customer. You are NOT Evernote yet. Find your very specific niche you can saturate and show traction. Tweet Buffer
2. Commitment. It’s a good thing until it’s a bad thing. Have commitment about your vision but allow million variations in terms how you get there.
3. Vague customer definition.
4. Multiple customer definitions.
5. Clear definitions speed progress.
6. Find early adopters & find specific value prop. Help to communicate and get in front of those people.
7. “One word” customer segments enable you to invalidate your ideas fast. Tweet Buffer

Part 3. Business model canvas

1. What do I test? You can’t test everything. Local maxima problem. Tweet Buffer
2. Starting point matters.
3. Being able to see all the different possibilities to choose a starting point (business model).
4. Really great product is not enough. You have to build a business model to support the product. Tweet Buffer
5. Architects prototype so they don't get attached to bad ideas. Tweet Buffer There is a infinite number of b.model canvases.
6. Mckinsey proved funnels is wrong. What matters is timing when asking your customer to pay.
7. Snapshots and navigating a space.
8. Four actions framework: remove, reduce, increase, broad.
9. Take away something you think you need.
10. 5 rev. streams means 0 rev streams.
11. Learning is progress. Data is a tool.
12. We look for data that validates what we believe. “Torture the data long enough and it tell you everything”.
13. If this problem really crucial, I’ll find 5 people spending money to solve it now. Tweet Buffer
14. Get interviewing – 3 poor interviews is much better than 1 very good one. [because you can learn and adapt your interview approach faster by actually DOING the interviews sooner. - Sal]

Part 4.

1. What's the thing the really worries me? Now what do I need to build to test it? Tweet Buffer
2. MVP: incremental or piece by piece. Start with a riskiest part.
3. Growth engines
   • sticky. subscription, marketplace. Are my customers coming back?
   • paid acqusition. transactional biz.
   • viral
4. MVP. Action is not intent. Test actual customer behaviour, rather than asking them to state their intentions. Tweet Buffer
5. Landing page, Paper prototype, customer interviews.
6. Kickstarter, Dropbox video.
7. Holistic approach – look at the ultimate number that makes sense for the business as a whole.

It's interesting to see how things get interpreted. Sometimes what seem like quick points to me really resonated.  I also thought of this as a kind of guide to Lean Startup and related thinking, trying to communicate the context in which a lot of Lean Startup leaders operate, but realise from this that I'm contributing more than just a guide.  Seems that it will be useful to expand on some of the quick points I made that didn't come from the regular suspects.

If you find this useful, please let me know. And also check out Founder-centric, which I'm running with Rob Fitzpatrick.