The document discusses the lean startup methodology which advocates for talking to customers and validating business ideas through small, low-cost experiments before building full products or raising funding. It contrasts the lean approach of testing hypotheses with potential customers upfront versus the classic approach of raising money to build a product without customer validation. Advice is provided on how to get paid for ideas by potential customers in advance through small experiments to validate customer interest and problems.

1. LEAN STARTUP CIRCLE
Oct 17, 2014

3. A quick story..

4. WHERE DIDTHIS IDEA COME
FROM?
•Pitch to investors
•Get money
•Hire people to build it,
and a sales team
•Built it
•Pray someone will buy it
Classic way

6. THE HARD QUESTIONS
• What problem are you actually solving?
• How much do people actually care about the problem you
are solving?
• Most importantly - How do you know people will pay for
product?

7. TO FINDTHE ANSWERS

8. TALKINGTO CUSTOMERS
BEFORE A PRODUCT WAS
BUILT

9. ASKING FOR MONEY BEFORE
A PRODUCT WAS ACTUALLY
BUILT

11. WHERE DIDTHIS IDEA COME
FROM?
•Pitch to investors
•Get money
•Hire people to build it,
and a sales team
•Built it
•Pray someone will buy it
Classic way
•Come up with an idea
and the ideal client
•Build the pitch
•Reach out to potential
customers and find out
their issues
•Get them to pay you to
built it for them. In
advance!
•If not, why?
Lean way

12. TESTING A FRESH
BUSINESS IDEA
Experiment Hypothesis:
“I think people will pay $29/m for XYZ”

13. LEAN PRINCIPLES
Fast
Fast
Fast
What’s the smallest thing we can put out
there to understand if they will pay us?
Let’s collect the results of our experiment.
What did we learn and what do we
change?

14. TWO STORIES

15. Food on theTable
(From “The Lean Startup” book)

16. http://youtu.be/IfKMsdI9wJM
Steli Efti - Elastic Sales

17. HOWTO GET PAID

18. PROS / CONS OF ASKING FOR
MONEY UP FRONT
Cons
•It doesn’t scale
•You have to talk to people (hard
for many of us)
•You might get rejected

19. PROS / CONS OF ASKING FOR
MONEY UP FRONT
Pros
•Costs (nearly) nothing
•Get real feedback right away
•You learn a lot about why people
DO and DON’T like your idea
•You get a bit of $$$

20. YOUR STARTUP
Anyone stuck?
Have an idea you want to validate?
Have a product with no customers?
Have customers but need to
scale up?

21. LET’S HELPYOU!
1.What’s your name?
2.Favorite ice cream?
3.What is your business or idea?
4.What stage is it at now?
5.How can we help?

22. VOLUNTEER
Volunteers Needed:
Help organize speakers and locations
Help maintaining Meetup.com
If you have a topic you can speak about
Talk to orEmail me

23. YOUR STARTUP
Let me know if you want to be
interviewed to get help from the group
next month

24. NEXT MONTH
Nov 18, 7pm
Notman House

25. SEEYOU NEXT MONTH!
jevin@quickjack.ca
438-880-5389