Everyone picked one idea and dug deep into it. Discussions went long on each one, but we learned more about the ideas and markets.
The presentations ended up not getting recorded.
Is your idea worth pursuing? Can you build a sustainable product and business around it? We took our first steps towards answering these questions today. Your ideas are not precious, and will certainly evolve as you learn more about what your customers really want. We began using the Business Model Canvas as our map for discovery.
Ultimately your customers will decide your idea’s value. You need to articulate the Value Proposition for your product from their point of view.
Can you build a sustainable company around that idea and value proposition? We talked about general classes of customer segments, from mass markets, market segments, niche markets, and custom individualized products. We then explored a few ways to estimate the size of your customer base.
Here’s the Powerpoint deck. Again, formatted to be overlaid on video and (intentionally) not wordy. There are few expansions in the slide notes though.
Prepare a seven minute presentation about one of your ideas. The audience is us, BUT make it a formal presentation. Remember – three words maximum on your slides!
1. Value Proposition
Do a one sentence version, then explain it in more detail. Why do they need it? Why is it better than their current solution? (Best slide usage: can you demonstrate this with a simple graphic and no words?)
2. Market Opportunity
Estimate the market size for your product in customers and in dollars.
How many customers in a niche to launch with? Is there a bigger market beyond the niche (and if so, how big)? Do the same, but in dollars.
3. What are possible revenue models for your product? How much would customers be willing to pay? Keep it general here, we’ll be digging deeper in future classes.
4. Competition. What is your direct competition? What are indirect competitors? Your direct competition will be products that solve the same problem in a similar way. Your indirect competition are all the things your customer could do instead.
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There are three goals for this homework:
Christina Wodtke wrote an excellent article about team ideation with a nice portion on how to think about your value proposition in “Ideation Sprints for New Products & Services.” Her website is filled with other articles about design thinking that can help you out.
As promised in class, here’s the cliched blobby guy giving a presentation. As a special bonus, he’s watermarked! Don’t use him. 🙂
Below, you’ll find info about homework for this week and some additional resources about creating founding teams from our friends at CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
A link to this video on Vimeo and the password to view were emailed to you.
Presentation feedback survey is due by end of day on Friday; the link was emailed to you.
Before you fill out the survey, watch your team’s presentation video. Count the “ums,” “uhs,” and other stalling words you used in your part of the presentation. There is a question on the form for you to fill in that number.
CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship is full of great resources for startups.
The center hosts a regular seminar series called CONNECTS and they keep an archive of past talks on their YouTube channel. In this video, Kim Needham talks about the importance of having a founding team, and some of the challenges that come along with it.
In today’s class we talked about the personal aspect of being an entrepreneur – what are your motivations, and do you “have what it takes.” We continued the theme talking about how important articulating your vision is to help you recruit others for your journey.
We began the class talking about why people start companies, and the risks in doing that. Some examples from our Miro board:
Each member then shared thoughts about three traits of an entrepreneur of their choice:
We touched briefly on personality types, as are commonly identified in the field of psychology and profiling systems like Myer-Briggs and others.
There isn’t a strong correlation between personality types in entrepreneurs, but there is commonality in:
Your vision is the most powerful tool you have for your company. A strong vision will keep everyone focused and aligned on the same goal, give clarity about your purpose, create confidence from your customers and stakeholders, and will even help you define your company culture.
Now is a good time to reassess your motivation for starting a company.
We will talk about core values later in the semester. Today we focused on companies’ core purposes, and the envisioned futures they may have shared. Though we looked mostly at game and film companies, the exercise works across any industry.
Class 02-S21 (vision).pptx (Formatted to be an overlay in Zoom/OBS).
Each team (announced in class, and sent via email) will do a ~7 minute presentation in Tuesday’s class. After each presentation, we will discuss both the content and the style of the presentation.
Your Team – Who you each are, your relevant background.
Your Vision – What is motivating this team? What problem do you want to solve, or what outcome are you trying to create?
Three Product Ideas – These are only meant to be simple examples of how you might address your vision. No need to do analysis on their viability yet. We need to be inspired by what you want to accomplish.
Though it will only be us in the room, imagine your audience to be your first angel investors. You want them to be intrigued with your ideas and your qualifications to succeed in that area.
We’ll be in Zoom. Screen sharing is a possibility. You can use OBS or other tools to augment your webcam. Use whatever techniques you’d like, but remain in the Zoom domain.
Each team member should participate in the presentation.
Visual aids are wonderful. They can also be distracting. Use images that are relevant to your message. Minimize the use of text, to the point of a maximum of three words per slide. You want us paying attention to you, not reading text.
Text exception: You can use more words on a Vision slide, but be concise.
Welcome to EET for Spring 2021. In our first class we learned more about everyone’s backgrounds and interest in this topic. We reviewed the topics and schedule for the semester, including what you hoped to get out of the class:
| Three things you want from this class? |
|---|
| 1- The basic knowledges an entrepreneur should know. / 2- Better communication skills and more professional expression./ 3- The things should know as a F1 student who want to start a business in US. |
| be able to better identify my entrepreneurial strengths and work on improving them. become better at presenting / speaking about my ideas. working on financials for companies |
| The pipeline of starting a company, how to find chances, financial staff related with companies |
| General financial literacy, Understanding how entertainment industries make money, internal financial structures of large tech companies (e.g. Amazon) |
| 1. Know how to evaluate whether a business idea can be successful or not 2. Understand how to bring an idea from conception, to the investment phase, to production 3. Understand the complexities of entrepreneurship |
| Demystification of process : so an (even slight) illumination of the process behind starting a company out of thin air (since that is so opaque, and terrifying now); Trial Run: so a chance to try something out that is otherwise high-risk or harms my/other financially, in this low-risk sandbox atmosphere; Critical Feedback: i.e. an opportunity to understand more precisely and completely how other teammates/peers perceive my flaws and faults , so that I can learn where to direct my energy in resolving them, or find individuals to work alongside who cover the areas of development in which I am the most weak. |
| Knowledge from business side(raising money, contacting with VCs, how to design business model for my product and making my company survive.), Get some experience of pitching a product idea and creating a company.(presenation skill, communication skills) learning about how the other people(product managing side, business side and designing side) in the team think about their role and how should I better corporate with them. |
We also did another exercise to learn more about each person’s strengths and what they would like from a team partner. I hope you were paying attention, some of your homework depends on it!
Notes from each day’s class, password protected presentation recordings, homework and other resources will be updated here throughout the semester.