As part of my commitment to building an entrepreneurial community where I live in Florida, I will be teaching Steve Blank’s (the world renowned guru for Startups) “Pre-Accelerator” program called NEXT. NEXT is a five-week “pre-accelerator” program rooted in Steve Blank’s Customer Development methodology. The NEXT program helps founders gain a crucial base of entrepreneurial skills and knowledge. It will focus on customer discovery, big market/big ideas, fundability, communication and go-to-market themes.
Here are the details:
- When: Saturdays, September 28—October 26 | 1-4 pm EST
- Where: University of North Florida Bldg. 15, Rm. 1303
- Cost: Early Bird Single Ticket – $99 until 9/14| Regular Team Member Ticket (min of 2 tickets) – $99 until 9/21 | Students/Veterans- $75 until 9/19| Prices increase after 9/21
- In Person Class: Sep 28, Oct 5, Oct 12, Oct 19, Oct 26
So you know, I make no money at this. It is part of my boardship for the non-for-profit iStartJAX and is a labor of love. I am considered somewhat of a serial entrepreneur.
To learn more about Steve Blank and the value of this method, here is a good video. Blank summarizes the three most important steps in the discipline of startup development.
- Business Model Canvasing (Osterwalder, modelH)
- Customer Development (NEXT)
- Agile Engineering (Minimum Viable Product)
I have written a host of articles on Business Model Canvasing and I am in the process of developing a model and book specifically designed for healthcare, called modelH. You can read more about that here. For NEXT, course participants will immerse themselves with Steve’s concepts utilizing Alex Osterwalder’s business model canvas.
I have also written about the use of Minimum Viable Product and its importance to the lean startup. You can read more about that here.
For the customer development piece, we are going to provide hands-on, interactive, and practical application. This is not a theory course – we will be developing our customers for our startup ideas, me included! As participants, you will be able to:
- Receive constructive feedback and clarify business assumptions;
- Discover new customers, customer segments and/or validate existing ones;
- Generate and test prototypes and revenue models;
- Amplify your network by interacting with like-minded entrepreneurs who are lean thinkers; and
- Interact with entrepreneurial mentors of our local community.
I wanted to give you a preview of presentation topics. I will write more about these as we engage. You can see the full details here: Source:
Week 01: Customer Discovery
Knowing your customer is the number one priority of any company. As such, we will set out to help you define who you building your product for, their pain points, and what they need. We will introduce customer interviewing and come back to it each week. It is that important to the success of a business model
Week 02: Big Markets, Big Ideas
This week will help bring some reality checks to your idea and how it fits into the “market”.
Week 03: Fundability
Sales from customers are the best funding you can receive, but sometimes outside investment is required to scale a company. But just because you need money does not mean your idea is “fundable.” This week is about getting money for your idea – assuming it is even fundable.
Week 04: Pitching Your Idea
This is about the right way to sell your idea to investors, customers, and the market.
Week 05: Go to Market
Before you launch your product, you should have a basic understanding of models and what go-to-market tactics work and don’t work with each model. This week is about how to go-to-market successfully.
As you can see, we have a lot of work to do. I hope to see you there.
Register at www.swnext.co/events/jacksonville-next
To your health
The Team at imagine.GO