Founders Master Class: 7 Essential Steps for Startups
What you'll learn
- Discover which of your assumptions are wrong (and which are right!)
- Understand what your customer really needs
- Hone a value proposition that combines user needs with your business vision
- Measure your product's effectiveness
- Make key decisions efficiently
- Decide what NOT to build
- Learn new techniques that you can use forever to make progress quickly
Requirements
- Sticky notes (3" square)
- Sharpie (fine point recommended)
- White printer paper
- Colored dots or colored marker
- Blue painter's tape
- Critical thinking, empathy for you customer, drive, and commitment
Description
This Founders' Master Class walks you step-by-step through the hard work that business founders must do to prove out their ideas and launch a successful product.
This is a premier program, currently in use by accelerators and incubators around the world. It is endorsed by Lean Startup creator Eric Ries, and has been use by 500 Startups, Singularity University, and the Obama White House. Whether you're a tech entrepreneur or simply learning how to apply the principles of Lean Startup, this course will set you on a productive path.
This is a HANDS-ON workshop, not just talks — Allow yourself extra time at the end of each step to do the work and move your company forward. A complete set of handouts and worksheets is downloadable as PDF files.
---If you're an active entrepreneur, there is no better online resource for getting started and moving forward efficiently.---
The seven workshops in Startup How To cover:
Document your assumptions about your customer
Do GOOD customer development interviews
Figure out the key learnings from customer development
Hone your value proposition based on what you've discovered
Use that value proposition to prioritize your product features
Identify which metrics clearly show your product's success
Root your whole business, and your product in a statement of vision and values.
This isn't a "how to" curriculum, it's an active experience, rooted in the principles of Lean Startup. Our promise is that if you give us an hour, we'll save you a week.
“Teams using the Janice's curriculum will understand Lean Startup at a fundamental level.”—Eric Ries, Author The Lean Startup, and Luxr advisor
"If we'd had this material six months ago, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions." —Bill Gross, Idealab
Who this course is for:
- Active entrepreneurs
- Corporate innovators
- Business founders
- Product managers
Instructor
Janice Fraser
Janice Fraser is a serial entrepreneur and a globally recognized expert on the management practices needed to support innovation at scale. Her clients have included the Obama White House, Proctor & Gamble, Lyft, and the Navy Seals Training Command. Frasier currently serves as SVP at Bionic, where she installs entrepreneurship and venture capital as forms of growth management in Fortune 100 companies, which enables them to launch new billion-dollar businesses.
Previously, Fraser was Director of Innovation and Transformation at Pivotal. For 16 years before that, Janice started half a dozen companies with a variety of outcomes — both exits and flat-out shutdowns. Among them, Janice was founder/CEO of Luxr, an early Lean Startup firm (sold to Pivotal), and Adaptive Path, the world’s first UX firm (sold to Capital One).
The material presented here was developed for LUXr, which provided workshops for hundreds (thousands) of entrepreneurs around the world. She personally worked with more than 50 companies in a 10-week product acceleration program. With backing by 500Startups, Mitchell Kapor, Bill Gross's Idealab, and Tony Hsieh's Vegas Tech Fund, Luxr reached entrepreneurs around the world before the company joined the exceptional team at Pivotal, where Janice & team continue to coach entrepreneurs inside large companies as well at startups.
My promise to you is this: You give us a day, and we will leapfrog your company forward at least a month.
Janice is a guest speaker at many conferences and top business schools around the world, including Haas, Kellogg, Stanford, and the Presido Graduate School of Management.