DC Startup & Tech Week

As Albert Einstein said:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

This workshop is designed for those who are interested in the formation and growth of startups, specifically about ideation: how to best understand and put to use both Design Thinking and the Lean Startup methodology. As Einstein said, it’s really all about finding a real problem to solve because, without it, you’re simply creating a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. Both Design Thinking and the Lean Startup methodology take a lot of the risk out of any idea you might have and using them will help you build a more successful entrepreneurial enterprise.

In this workshop, instead of talking about how to build a true (and very long) business plan, which VCs will never read, unfortunately, we will focus on how to create the crucial business model elements that go into creating a successful business and that can be incorporated into an investor deck, which VCs will read (a model investor deck that is standard with all investors will be shown, discussed, and distributed to all participants).

Such business model elements include:

o Customer (the problem) and product (the solution) exploration and validation through customer interviews
o Basic market sizing
o Creating customer personas
o Use of the Lean Canvas
o Creating a positioning statement
o Competitive analysis
o A marketing plan, including the “4 Ps”
o Building a low-fidelity prototype/minimal viable product (MVP), and
o Creating a basic pro forma

In short, learning (or refreshing your memory) on these entrepreneurship fundamentals will help you understand/identify a need/problem, help you vet product ideas, and will raise your odds of success.