Class 12 / 12

May 4, 2015

Jen van der Meer | jd1159 at nyu dot edu

Josh Knowles | chasing at spaceship dot com

LEAN LAUNCHPAD AT NYU ITP

6:30 – 6:30 Welcome and Eat

6:30 – 7:00 Jen and Josh Lessons Learned

7:00 Pace Notes

7:30 Luma

8:00 Lovoy

8:30 BeWell

TODAY:

.

WE ARE AT THE END AND THE BEGINNING

2/2Business ModelsCustomer Development

2/9Value Proposition Research tools

2/16President’s Day

2/23Customer SegmentsResearch Tools

3/23Spring Break

3/9Customer RelationshipsProduct Development

3/23ResourcesActivities + Costs

3/30Product DevelopmentUX and User InterfaceDesign

4/6UI UX Part 2

4/13Product DevelopmentUser test

4/20Product development

4/27Product MVP

May!Delicious CelebrationLessons Learned

3/2Revenue StreamsDistribution Channels

TODAY: LESSONS LEARNED

Not a demo day. – No correlation between great PowerPoint or videos and a two minute demo to building a successful business model.

Instead: we’ll have Learning Demos.

_Major insights

_Pivots from original business model assumptions

_Metrics that mattered

“Lessons Learned” day allows us to directly assess the ability of the team to learn, pivot and move forward.

What your future business partners, investors, and employees will seek out as you grow your companies.

5

WHAT CAME BEFORE STEVE AND ERIC

WHAT WE LEARNED

1. THERE IS STRENGTH IN ASKING FOR HELP

The structure of the course with mentors and advisors follows the Stanford Lean Lean LaunchPad blueprint – advisors as lecturers and helpful participants, but we did ask Mentors to show up, week after week, and help out individual teams.

There was skepticism that NYC, and NYU, and ITP was ready for this level of commitment, on a volunteer basis.

The first person I asked asked me for money, and status, and more.

The next 25 people I asked said yes, and all came when called, and some even kept showing up for more.

Thank you. Yes, NYC is building a strong tech ecosystem.

• Sarah Krasley, Autodesk• John Bachir, Medstro• Michal Krasnodebski, Shutterstock.

THANK YOU MENTORS

• Angad Singh, Lolly Wolly Doodle• Chris Mlne, IDEO • Tammy Kwan, Cognitive Toy Box• Britta Riley, Windowfarms• Christin Roman, UX Designer• Julie Berkun Fagjenbaum, Tweed

Wolf• Frank Rimalovski, NYU• Lindsey Marshall, NYU• Michal Krasnodebski, Shutterstock• Scott Miller, Dragon Innovation, Bolt

Ventures.• Peter Fusco, Lowenstein • Tami Reiss, Cyrus Innovation• Tarikh Korula, Seen.co• Alex Herrity, Signals• Chstine Lemke, Evidation Health • Travis Hardman, Daily Voice• Nick Chirls, Alex Lines, Notation

Capital

THANK YOU ADVISORS AND SPEAKERS

• Tom Igoe, ITP• Dan O’Sullivan, ITP• Frank Rimalovski, NYU Entrepreneurs Institute • Lindsey Marshall, NYU Entrepreneurs Institute

THANK YOU NYU

1. ENTER WITH A SACRIFICIAL PROTOTYPE

We learned the concept of the sacrificial prototype from Chris Milne of IDEO:

Concepts designed to spark conversation, and help people understand an issue, to which we deliberately do not form an attachment.

Design it so it looks unfinished – and people will give you more honest and useful feedback because they will not feel like they are hurting your feelings. They will truly co-create with you.

Lesson learned: emphasize the sacrificial prototype for the class

2. PREPARE TO BE WRONG

All student teams had hypotheses that were incorrect, and found this out through customer discovery and competitive intelligence.

But it took some time – there was a lag affect for a few teams to acknowledge this truth and pivot.

While many had already conducted usability tests, it’s a wholly different experience to ask for an opinion about the product you so dearly love.

How do we prepare a group of overachievers to celebrate this moment of wrong?

Lesson learned – build into the mentorship and advisor-ship more personal stories of what it means to be wrong, but then pivot, and find the way forward.

3. PIVOTING IS NOT FLIP FLOPPING

It starts with your team values

Then your vision

Why do you want to do this?

Then find a segment, a market, and a value proposition that fulfills this vision.

Customer discovery is not about collecting features lists from prospective customers or running lots of focus groups, and pivoting each time you hear something new.

“The founders define the product vision and then use customer discovery to find customers and a market for that vision.”

-Steve Blank, The Startup Owner’s Manual

PIVOTING GETS YOU CLOSER TO YOUR VISION

4. MORE UX HELP

But some of our strongest lessons learned and feedback came from building out the initial onboarding experience and initial MVP – how do we build this in earlier in the process.

Use Personas, Needs, and Tasks to narrow down feature sets has helped a number of our teams decide which aspects to build for their MVP.

5. KEEP A LIST OF INVALIDATED RESULTS

Keep them in a “one day” file

You never know when cultural norms shift

Technology gets ever more present

Components dwindle down to zero cost

What will be possible, but isn’t possible now

NEXT: PITCHFEST 2015

This year we have scheduled the workshop series and Pitchfest for after Thesis Week and the ITP show. We have also augmented the prep workshops to include business model and design thinking exercises to connect students to their primary intentions and to tell a persuasive story.

• Idea Submission: Friday May 22, 2015• Workshop 1: Monday June 1, 2015• Workshop 2: Monday June 8, 2015• Workshop 3: Monday June 15, 2015• Pitchfest 4: Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Thank you!

Jen van der Meer | jd1159 at nyu dot edu

Josh Knowles | chasing at spaceship dot com

LEAN LAUNCHPAD AT NYU ITP