Picture By Kahlil Corazo

3 Weeks Into Bootlegging the Lean Launchpad
August 2012
What have we learned so far?
Three weeks ago we started our version of Steve Blank's Lean LaunchPad. These were our hypotheses:
  • The Lean LaunchPad would work for non-tech undergrads (the original was attended by graduate students and professional scientists)
  • CustDev would work for non-product dev businesses
  • CustDev would work for non-high-growth businesses
  • We could do away with expert lectures and do a Flipped Classroom
  • Mentors could just meet the students as a panel once a month
  • Organizing one is the quickest way to master Customer Development (ie, mastering The Startup Owner's Manual)
  • This experience would be useful for the local startup community

The objectives for the first three weeks were to select "CustDevable" business ideas, introduce the students to the Business Model Canvas and the concept of Customer Development, and to have the students go out of the building and start discovering and validating their business models. See the class website for more details.

Selection Criteria on the Fly
Each of the 14 students presented a business idea and I selected the most appropriate for Customer Development. I ended up with these principles for selection as I listened to their pitches using the Business Model Canvas:
  • There should be a domain expert in the business. There were two who already had businesses (car accessories and women's fashion), a trained make-up artist, and several who were extremely passionate about food.
  • The business model must be untested. What is the point of doing customer development if the business model has already been proven to work?
(For product dev startups, these are built-in. The product visionary is a domain expert or must get one in the startup team. And any business model for a new product is necessarily an untested business model.)

Customer Development works for service businesses
As early as now, I can say that Customer Development works for services. While teaching this, I'm also doing Customer Development--the right way for the first time--for my own service delivery business. It turns out there is such a thing as Service Design Thinking. If there is a worthwhile pain/gain addressable by an innovation--whether its in the product, the service or the business model--then CustDev is useful. Customer Development could simply be seen as systematic business model innovation to address discovered and validated customer pains and gains.

CustDev is easy to understand but hard to do whether or not you are an undergrad
My students easily understood the concept of Customer Development (I had them explain it to me as their exam) with only readings from The Startup Owner's Manual, a video lecture by Steve Blank and a video lecture by Chuck Eesley. It seems a Flipped Classroom works for this kind of thing, even if it's run by a pedagogy noob like me.

They also seemed to have an easy time interviewing people, with each group doing 30-40 interviews in one week (I had a much harder time setting my own interviews). The hard part is teasing out the insights from their interview data. The original version addresses this by having a experienced entrepreneurs and VCs mentor the teams. I was able to get commitments from local entrepreneurs and a VC, but I did not foresee the need for this kind of interaction (they will see them for the first time next week as a presentation panel a la American Idol).

Cloning as an option
I asked one group (the one with the makeup expert) to clone the business model of joyus.com. Doing customer development for an innovative existing business applied to the local market immediately gives you a business model innovation. I also thought the founder would be very inspirational for my mostly female students.

Organizing a Lean LaunchPad is a great crash course in CustDev
I don't know if it's too early to say this, but this might even be better than attending the original course in Stanford. Here's why:
  • While preparing for the course, I had to reverse engineer the syllabus, making explicit the learning objectives of each activity. This was a great way to learn what I needed to learn to master CustDev (I'll post something on this).
  • I was forced to learn the concepts well enough to guide my students
  • I was forced to keep up with the pace I was demanding from my students (I could not use my "quality-driven approach" cop-out)
  • This certainly costs a lot less than taking the course in Stanford
  • Most importantly, I'm seeing the methodology of CustDev applied to a range of businesses. As I do it for my business and guide my students in theirs, I'm gaining valuable experiential learning. Sometimes I feel like I bit off more than I could chew. But I guess that's a good sign.

State of hypothesis validation
  • The Lean LaunchPad would work for non-tech undergrads - Probably. I'll wait for the end of the sem before concluding. I had an email exchange with Felix Halcartegaray of the Catholic University of Chile, who along with Steve Blank did the first Lean LaunchPad outside of the US, and he said that it worked for his (tech) undergrads.
  • CustDev would work for non-product dev businesses - Yes! As long as the business model has not yet been proven to work. Otherwise, it's only about execution, not search. I had an email exchange with Jerry Engel, who along with Steve Blank will do a Lean LaunchPad version for the 99%. He thinks the process is applicable for "main street" startups.
  • CustDev would work for non-high-growth businesses - Yes. But you put in more or less the same amount of CustDev work for a high-growth business. Might as well look for businesses with huge potential.
  • We could do away with expert lectures and do a Flipped Classroom - Will wait for the end of the sem. Felix Halcartegaray also said they also did not have the weekly lectures on each of the 9 boxes of the business model canvas. I found a few videos to substitute these lectures. I'm hoping for more to appear in the future, particularly ones by Steve Blank and team.
  • Mentors could just meet the students as a panel once a month - Unclear. The quality of pivots is probably lesser. Perhaps the quality of learning the methodology is not affected.
  • Organizing one is the quickest way to master Customer Development - I can't think of a quicker way.
  • This experience would be useful for the local startup community - Let's wait and see.
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A Series on our D.I.Y. Lean LaunchPad

Musings on the Fundamentals

Goodies from Steve Blank
(A few months after we started, Steve Blank published online lectures and a recipe book for for running a Lean LaunchPad!)