The document outlines a comprehensive program designed for startup founders, focusing on key topics such as ideation, customer development, and co-founder discussions. It emphasizes the importance of mentorship, delivering monthly mechanics, and ensuring accountability in deliverables. Additionally, it provides practical exercises and resources for participants to develop their value propositions and product-market fit.

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Dave Parker
@DaveParkerSEA
@6MonthStartup
www.dkparker.com/blog
Slides -

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Welcome!

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OFFICE HOURS – January 8, 2020
before session.
Thanks!

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Agenda
¤ The Program
¤ SLACK Channel
¤ Mentor Feedback
¤ Month 2 Agenda
¤ Value Proposition
¤ Breakthru Insight
¤ Customer Development
¤ Awkward Co-Founder Discussions
¤ Month 2 Deliverables

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About Dave
¤ 5X founder, Board Member, former SVP Programs at UP
Global (Startup Weekend + Startup America)
¤ Startup Next creator
¤ Start Week Organizer
¤ Soon to be Author “6 Month Startup – Ideation to
Revenue”
¤ 8 transactions – 6 sell side, 2 buy side
¤ VC @SevenPeaksVC – Mountain West, Seed Stage
¤ Why? Looking for future founders to invest in…

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The next 6 Months
¤ Ideation/Research/Competitive Analysis
¤ Value Prop/Customer Development/Insight/Competitive
analysis
¤ Product/Features/Expense
¤ Revenue - Monetization, Sales, Marketing and Business
Development
¤ Product/MVP/Product Market Fit
¤ Launch/Go to Market/Revenue

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Monthly Mechanics
¤ 1:Many Meeting with Mentors – during dinner
¤ Training material
¤ Workshop as small groups
¤ Monthly Deliverables
¤ Meetups are stand alone events – come for what you
need, Mentors are based on deliverables, not “drop ins”

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Rules of the Road
¤ #GiveFirst
¤ Don’t Ramble – I’ll interrupt
¤ Network – you need to build you network for the future
starting tonight
¤ No I won’t do the work for you! I’m not checking your
deliverable! Your table mates will
¤ Mentor access is based on your work

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Mentor Feedback
¤ Peer Review
¤ Review deliverables
¤ Who goes first? Table Picks
¤ Mentor Intros

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Introductions
• Javier
• Nick
• Sean

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Mentor Feedback
¤ Deliverables:
¤ Why are you doing this
startup
¤ Product/Service
Deliverables
¤ Market Size
¤ What I thought, What I
Learned, What I’m going
to do about it
Hi, I’m <your name here>, and I’m the
problem I’m solving is <insert problem here>.
Our product <insert product info here> is
designed for our target customer of <insert
target customer here>. We make money by
<insert method here> and our team is the right
team because <insert why you’re awesome
here>

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Timer – 5 Minutes

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Break

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Now that you’ve narrowed your
ideas – let’s get started

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Greate Ideas are from
Breakthrough Insights

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Legendary = Breakthrough Insights
¤ What is a Breakthrough Insight? Andy Rachleff
¤ More than Analysis
¤ Right or Wrong Idea
¤ Have to be Right
¤ Consensus on Non-Consensus
¤ Too Obvious = multiple competitors, price erosion, etc

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¤ Earned secret – what do you know
¤ Truly Disruptive – to a market not previously served
¤ Why now – what change has occurred to enable
¤ Living in the future? Not in today’s whitespace
¤ “Right Kind of Crazy”

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Value Proposition

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Positioning
¤ Positioning is holding a place in your customer’s mind –
not as everything, what’s memorable?
¤ Who is the initial customer
¤ Think about limiting service and customer first – before
you expand
¤ You’re not precluded from selling other services or products
¤ What claim or promise will you make?

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Exercise
¤ Write out:
¤ What makes you different?
¤ Why should people buy from you?
¤ Write your websites tagline and opening paragraph
¤ What claim/promise will you make
¤ Write your DRAFT Unique Selling Proposition
¤ Compare this to your Pitch

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Customer Development

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Converging Definitions
¤ Design Thinking
¤ Stanford “D-School” IDEO U Crash Course
¤ Lean Startup
¤ Steve Blank
¤ Eric Reis
¤ Agile Development

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Design Thinking
For Companies it assumes you have customers (and
resources)
¤ Emphasize
¤ Define
¤ Ideate
¤ Prototype
¤ Test

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Lean Startup
¤ Entrepreneurs are everywhere
¤ Validate learning
¤ Build, Measure, Learn

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Agile Development
¤ “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through
early and continuous deliver of valuable software”
AgileManifesto.org
¤ Known Problems vs unknown problems

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Customer Development
¤ Parallel process with Product Development
¤ “Get out of the Building”
¤ Develop for a few not Many
¤ Prioritize features based on Needs not Wants
¤ Validate with Revenue/Commitment

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What is Customer Development?
¤ Four Steps of an Epiphany – Steve Blank

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A More Mature Model

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You are not Henry Ford

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Customer Discovery Goals
¤ Acute focus on problem – not product
¤ Find out if customers care?
¤ What do they want?
¤ Determines the difference your product at launch and at
scale
¤ Feature priorities & Product Roadmap

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Customer Dev Mechanics
¤ Google Forms
¤ Structured questions
¤ Progression
¤ Easy to Hard
¤ What do you really want to know?
¤ Will they pay for it? How much
¤ Why will it fail
¤ Neutral, not Guided Questions

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Customer Dev Mechanics, Cont
¤ Build a list of interested parties
¤ Mail Chimp List setup
¤ Ask for permission to email
¤ Two week updates – Format: “What we did, what we’re
going to do and where we can use your help”
¤ This setups you up to make progress every two weeks!

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What Not To Do
¤ You are not the customer
¤ Don’t tolerate a small sample set – this could delay your
success by Years
¤ Avoid “Selection Bias”
¤ “Isn’t our product amazing”
¤ No rhetorical questions
¤ No blind surveys
¤ Can’t outsource

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How Many Customer Interviews
¤ B2B – 25+
¤ Profile
¤ Job Title
¤ Type of Company
¤ B2C – 50+
¤ Demographic
¤ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ = bad

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Fundraising Note
You have opinions
You have Data
You get money!
Investors have opinions
They have money

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Repeat after me:
Hi, my name is <your name>, I’m
an entrepreneur, half my ideas
are great, half are crap, let’s test
this one”

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Hypothesis vs Fact
¤ If you are convinced you’re right you won’t be open to
radical feedback that could change the trajectory of
your business & life!
¤ Always testing what you think you know
¤ Permission to give negative feedback
¤ If this idea was to fail, why would it fail?
¤ Why is this idea stupid?

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What questions do you want to
answer?
Top five now?

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Examples – Go!

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Awkward Co-Founder Discussions

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Everyone Has Expectations
¤ Set up a process to get the expectations out in the open
¤ Pre-Incorporation
¤ Meeting 1 of 2
¤ Why do you want to do this
¤ Capital in vs out
¤ Timing of life
¤ Passion
¤ Go to Startup Equity Calculator

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Co-founders, part 2
¤ Meeting 2 of 2
¤ Print out a copy- bring it to the meeting
¤ How far off are you? What responsibilities?
¤ At Incorporation
¤ Reverse vesting schedule
¤ What happens when someone leaves?
¤ Option pool 20%
¤ Why 50/50 is the only wrong decision

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Post Incorporation
¤ Milestones/Deliverables
¤ Slicing Pie
¤ Market rates
¤ Don’t over inflate
¤ Track time and contribution
¤ Regular meeting
¤ Weekly standups
¤ Make HR changes fast – they won’t get easier

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Exercise: Write up your co-founder
concerns and expectations. Don’t
have a co-founder? Who do you
need to find?

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Next Session – January 8,
Value Prop/ Product/ Features
/Expenses

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Month 2 Resources
¤ Books
¤ Lean Startup
¤ Startup Owners Manual
¤ Business Model Generation
¤ The Founder’s Dilemmas
¤ Blogs
¤ Competitive Analysis for websites
¤ Slicing Pie
¤ Foundrs

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Month 2 Deliverables
¤ https://wp.me/P3bssR-j23
¤ Customer Development
¤ Write your questions
¤ Build your forms
¤ Get first 20+ interviews completed
¤ Review your results
¤ Schedule both co-founders meetings
¤ Print out the Foundrs.com results
¤ Get the discussion out there and competed before you incorporate
¤ If you’ve incorporated, get it right
¤ Setup Slicing Pie

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BREAK!