Startup Week 1st session ...

Nice picture from https://pixabay.com/en/business-plan-tree-growth-grow-2987962/ 

Yesterday I had my 1st session during the Startup Week in Düsseldorf. Topic was Lean Startup (see my Eric Ries post from 13-Mar-18). Startup = "Life in chaos with unanswered questions", easy explanation from the session host, he knew what he was talking about 😉.

The sipgate facility was really nice, all what you would expect from an agile, lean, self organized company that is not a startup anymore. They are using the Lean Startup cycle - Learn, Build, Measure - to get better products to the market faster. During the session they provided three templates (I tried to find helpful links, my choice below, there are much more available) as supporting and working documents:

• Business Model Canvas
  • https://strategyzer.com/canvas/business-model-canvas
• Lean Canvas
  • https://leanstack.com/LeanCanvas.pdf
  • http://www.jeffgothelf.com/blog/leanuxcanvas/
  • https://board.tuzzit.com/try/lean_canvas?LNG=en_US#/popup/free
• Value Proposition Canvas
  • https://www.expressiveproductdesign.com/value-proposition-canvas/
  • https://ut11.net/blog/der-value-proposition-canvas/ (German)   

Some more details related to the three steps Learn, Build, Measure in the cycle, speed and fast iterations are key to success.

Learn

• Understand your customer - the right side of the Value Proposition Canvas
• Talk to 30 - 50 people, maybe even on the street outside of your office
• Have a Conversation instead of an Interview
  • Understand the Problem, Pains & Gains, do not verify or pitch the solution
  • Try to achieve three goals instead of working through a questionnaire
  • Use e.g. The 5 Whys process - https://open.buffer.com/5-whys-process/
  • Steve Blank - "get out of the building to get facts, inside are only opinions"
  • Alan Cooper - "search for desires"
  • Rob Fitzpatrick - "The Mom Test"                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hla1jzhan78 
• Make use of Personas    https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them,  much more personal than a target audience 
• Make use of Empathy maps   https://www.nngroup.com/articles/empathy-mapping/ or https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/the-practical-guide-to-empathy-maps-creating-a-10-minute-persona/ 

Build

• A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development
• Might just be a process to validate or invalidate with real users
• Could be an out-of-the-box landingpage with a chat tool included, to get in contact with people
• Get a fast, real experience and value for the customer, nothing that scales as you get rid of the prototype anyway
• Ask for money, if appropriate, to see how serious people are
• Required skills in MVP (build) teams - coding, strategy, user experience, communication, marketing

Measure

• Measure the right thing correctly
• Measuring = visualizing
• Better to excite a small target audience, as to just satisfy a larger group 

Entrepreneurship is an art, not a job - Steve Blank, American - Businessman Born: 1953,  https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/steve_blank