Launch + Grow Your Business w/ Startup Customer Development
What you'll learn
- Why customer development is an essential practice for startups & entrepreneurs
- How to apply lean startup techniques to your own business
- How to create and test a problem hypothesis
- Where to find target customers and early adopters
- How to develop effective user interview techniques
- How to interview customers and extract valuable insights
- How to increase the speed at which you find product-market fit
- To dramatically improve the chances your startup will succeed
Requirements
- Passion, grit, patience and fortitude
Description
This is the course for you if:
You want to launch and grow a new business or startup
You have launched a business and failed before
You are building a business and want to grow faster
You are a seasoned entrepreneur looking for your next big idea
You are a product or project manager trying to get better user engagement
You are a marketing professional and want to understand your customer
You are just interested in how startups work
Customer Development is the single most important skill entrepreneurs need to be successful. Whether launching a startup for the first time. Or you've tried and failed before. Or you have an existing business is building out a new product -- customer development is the critical activity you cannot skip.
The principles were invented by Steve Blank, the father of the lean startup movement. They're tested, proven, and used by successful entrepreneurs and product managers every day to identify business opportunities and validate ideas -- before you launch them.
Here are the top benefits of customer development.
Stop wasting time on ideas that customers don't want
Figure out meaningful customer problems worth solving
Validate your solution actually works with real customers
Increase your startup success rate 10x
Find product-market fit faster
Gain confidence that your idea will work by interviewing customers
Based on lean startup best practices
This course is for entrepreneurs, dreamers, risk-takers, adventurers, and anyone who has ever had a business idea. The truth is that most startups fail. But this statistic would be much lower if founders simply embarked on the simple, but not easy, process of Customer Development. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs neglect to do this before launching their business — mostly because it’s hard and not nearly as fun as building your product or service. But also because most people really don’t even know how to do it.
This course is designed to demystify the customer development process by breaking down the technique into easy-to-understand steps. You will learn exactly what to do and how to do it. I will show you examples and give you templates to follow. I will guide you through personal experience — showing you what worked and what hasn’t worked for me and the hundreds of people I’ve taught this work to.
So, why should you take this course instead of the 100 other great courses on Udemy that teach entrepreneurship, building apps, or starting companies? Well, I’m certainly a believer in consuming all the knowledge you can get your hands on — so take as many courses as you can handle. But this course is unique because it focuses on tactics not theories. It will help you get into action and stop sitting on the sidelines.
Who this course is for:
- Entrepreneurs, product managers and business owners
- Anyone with an idea for a business
- Anyone who ever wanted to be their own boss
- Anyone who has tried and failed to launch a startup or new business
- Anyone who wants to change their career
- Beginners in entrepreneurship and startups
- Startup junkies and seasoned entrepreneurs
Instructor
I've been in the startup scene for most of my career and I've done just about every role. From CEO to Chief Janitor, Head of Product to Marketing Lead.
I have deep expertise in Saas, Content Marketing, SEO, Mobile Apps, Startup Accelerators, Lead Generation, UX, Angel & Seed Funding, B2B Software, Enterprise Sales and Bootstrapping. And I've been writing content on these topics for most of my career.
I co-founded Amplify, Startup Accelerator (3 funds, $15MM raised) and Velocify (formerly Leads360) sold for $128MM. Raised $35MM+ in venture capital. And I've had a startup fail miserably. I've angel invested in a dozen companies. I've seen over 3,000 startups apply to Amplify and been pitched by hundreds of entrepreneurs. And have raised more than $50MM in aggregate seed and Angel funding for our portfolio companies.
I am currently co-founder of Markup Hero, a screenshot & annotation SaaS tool and have been teaching high school entrepreneurship for 6 years. I'm a regular blog contributor to various high profile business websites and have been featured on a dozen startup podcast shows.