-
Introduction - Start Here
-
Section 1: Planning Your Business
In the first section, Planning Your Business, you will learn how to find your customers, how to create a value proposition (a product that customers want) and how to build a business model around it. You will also learn how to use your startup to test your business model quickly and cheaply, and how to make necessary changes.
- 1.0 Introduction – An idea is not a business
-
Exercise 1: Think problems, not solutions
- 1.1 Meet your customer
-
Exercise 2: Problem brainstorming
-
Exercise 3: Find your first customers
- Case study: Enervalis
-
Exercise 4: Online research
-
Exercise 5: Pick your problem
-
Exercise 6: Is your problem validated?
- 1.2 From idea to solution
-
Exercise 7: Mind maps
-
Exercise 8: Creating a customer profile
-
Exercise 9: Ranking customer problems
-
Exercise 10: Creating a value map
-
Exercise 11: Ranking value propositions
-
Exercise 12: Finding fit
-
1.3 What’s a business model
- DELIVERABLE: no. 1 – Letter of intent (LOI) or softer letter of support
- 1.4 Types of business models
- 1.5 Make your own business model
-
Exercise 13: Make your own business model
-
Case study: Tecnoturbines
-
DELIVERABLE: no 2 – Business Model Canvas
- 1.6 Test your business model
-
Exercise 14: Creating a hypothesis
-
Exercise 15: Creating experiments
-
Exercise 16: Create your MVP
-
Exercise 17: Pivot or proceed?
-
Case study: EOLOS
- 1.7 From startup to business
-
DELIVERABLE: no. 3 – Competitive landscape
-
Section 2: FUNDING Your Business
In the second section, Funding Your Business, you’ll learn how to test your startup like an investor. You’ll also better understand how venture capital works.
-
2.0 Introduction
-
2.1 Opportunity assessment
-
Exercise 18: How an investor sees your startup
-
2.2 Road test your startup
-
Exercise 19: Road test your startup
-
DELIVERABLES: no. 4 – Go-to-market strategy
-
2.3 Exploring funding options
-
Case study: Skeleton Technologies
-
2.4 Setting up your business
-
DELIVERABLES: no. 5 – Roadmap
-
-
Section 3: PRESENTING Your Business
In the third section, Presenting Your Business, you’ll learn how to present your startup to investors and customers.
-
3.0 Introduction
-
3.1 Telling stories
-
3.2 How to pitch to investors
-
Exercise 20: The elevator pitch
-
Case study: Hygen
-
3.3 The pitch deck
-
DELIVERABLES: no. 6 – Pitchdeck
-
3.4 Putting it all together
-
-
Resources
Finally, the Resources section at the end contains a glossary and reading list to help you on your journey from an idea to a profitable business.
-
Glossary
-
Further reading
-
-
Primer Demo Day
-
Presentations from Demo Day
-
1.2 From idea to solution
1.2 From idea to solution
As we emphasized earlier, finding your customers is the most important step when building a startup. But once you have some potential customers you can talk to about your idea, it’s time to start transforming that idea into a product or service—a solution.
There are two very valuable tools you will use when turning your idea into a startup, and your startup into a business: the Value Proposition Canvas and the Business Model Canvas. Both of these were developed by some very smart people at a company called Strategyzer in the books Value Proposition Design and Business Model Generation, written by Alex Osterwalder and his team.
In this chapter, we’ll start with Value Proposition Design: what is it, how you can use it, and how the Value Proposition Canvas can help you find your customer and design your solution.
But first, let’s explain the specific vocabulary that’s used throughout these books, as it might be unfamiliar to many readers. We will use this vocabulary throughout Sections 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6.
