EWMBA 295T: The Lean Launch Pad
EWMBA 295T: The Lean Launch Pad
EWMBA 295T: The Lean Launch Pad
Course Description:
This course provides real world, hands-on learning on what it’s like to actually start a high-
tech company. This class is not about how to write a business plan. It’s not an exercise on
how smart you are in a classroom, or how well you use the research library to size markets.
And the end result is not a PowerPoint slide deck for a VC presentation. And it is most
definitely not an incubator where you come to build the “hot-idea” that you have in mind.
This is a practical class – essentially a lab, not a theory or “book” class.Our goal, within the
constraints of a classroom and a limited amount of time, is to create an entrepreneurial
experience for you with all of the pressures and demands of the real world in an early stage
start up.
You will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you
encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. You’ll work in teams
learning how to turn a great idea into a great company. You’ll learn how to use a business
model to brainstorm each part of a company and customer development to get out of the
classroom to see whether anyone other than you would want/use your product. Finally,
based on the customer and market feedback you gathered, you would use agile
development to rapidly iterate your product to build something customers would actually use
and buy. Each block will be new adventure outside the classroom as you test each part of
your business model and then share the hard earned knowledge with the rest of the class.
Class Culture
Startups communicate much differently than inside a university or a large company. It is
dramatically different from the universityor large culture most of you are familiar with. At
times it can feel brusque and impersonal, but in reality is focused and oriented to create
immediate action in time- and cash-constrained environments.We have limited time and we
push, challenge, and question you in the hope you will quickly learn. We will be direct, open,
and tough – just like the real world. We hope you can recognize that these comments
aren’t personal, but part of the process.
We also expect you to question us, challenge our point of view if you disagree, and engage
in a real dialog with the teaching team. This approach may seem harsh or abrupt, but it is
all part of our wanting you to learn to challenge yourselves quickly and objectively, and to
appreciate that as entrepreneurs you need to learn and evolve faster than you ever
imagined possible.
Amount of Work
This class requires a phenomenal amount of work on your part, certainly compared to many
other classes. Projects are treated as real start-ups, so the workload will be intense.
Teams have reported up to 20 hours of work each per week. Getting out of the classroom is
what the effort is about. You will be spending a significant amount of time in between each
of the lectures outside your lab talking to customers. If you can’t commit the time to talk to
customers, this class is not for you.
This class is a simulation of what startups and entrepreneurship is like in the real world:
chaos, uncertainly, impossible deadlines in insufficient time, conflicting input, etc.
This class pushes many people past their comfort zone. It's not about you, but it's also not
about the class or the teaching team. This is what startups are like (and the class is just
small part of what it is really like.) The pace and the uncertainty pick up as the class
proceeds.
Team projects can be software, physical product, or service of any kind. The teams will self-
organize and establish individual roles on their own. There are no formal CEO/VP’s. Just
the constant parsing and allocating of the tasks that need to be done.
Besides the instructors and TA, each team will be assigned a mentor (an experienced
entrepreneur or VC) to provide assistance and support.
Suggested Projects: While your first instinct may be a web-based startup we suggest that
you consider a subject in which you are a domain expert, such as your graduate research.
In all cases, you should choose something for which you have passion, enthusiasm, and
hopefully some expertise. Teams that selected a web or mobile-based product will have to
build the site for the class. Do not select this type of project unless you are prepared to see
it through.
Deliverables
1. Teams building a physical product must show us a costed bill of materials and a
prototype.
2. Teams building aweb product you need to build the site, create demand and have
customers using it. See http://steveblank.com/2011/09/22/how-to-build-a-web-
startup-lean-launchpad-edition/
3. Your weekly blog is an integral part of your deliverables. (We currently use the Lean
LaunchLab.It’s how we measure your progress
4. Your team will present a weekly in-class Powerpoint summary of progress
Grading Criteria: this course is team-based and 85% of your grade will come from your
team progress and final project. The grading criteria are broken down as follows:
15% Individual participation in class. You will be giving feedback to your peers.
20% - The team weekly “lesson learned” presentation(see appendix for format)
Test
Hypotheses:
Test
Agile • Demand Hypotheses:
Development Test Hypotheses: Creation •Problem
• Product
Test • Customer
Hypotheses: • Market Type
• User
•Channel • Competitive
• Payer
• (Customer)
• (Problem)
Customer
Development Test Hypotheses:
Team • Channel
“Genius is the ability to make the most mistakes in the shortest amount of time.”
Slide 3-n What did you learn about “topic of the day” (Canvas block x)?
Slide 4 Diagram (if appropriate) of what you learned this week (e.g., customer
workflow, payment flows, distribution channel diagram)
Feedback from the teaching team during oral presentations is where the most learning
occurs. Due to the pace and tempo of the course, participants must be held accountable to
the material for the specific class.
Before You Show Students should come to class able to answer the following questions:
Up in Class What’s the difference between search and execution?
What is a business model versus business plan?
What is the business model canvas?
What are the 9 components of the business model canvas?
What is a hypothesis?
What is Customer Development?
What are the key tenets of Customer Development?
Assignment Prepare your team’s business model using the business model canvas
for Jan 23rd Come prepared with a customer contact/visit list that will last a week
class
Reading for BMG, pp. 86-111, 135-145, skim examples pp. 56-117
next week - SOM, pp. 51-84, market size, value proposition and MVP pgs 188-199
getting out of the building, 457-459 market type
What’s a Startup? First Principles
Make No Little Plans – Defining the Scalable Startup
A Startup is Not a Smaller Version of a Large Company
12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews
Assignment Lecture
for next week Watch Lecture 2Value Proposition
Presentation
o Identify your market size
o Identify your type of business (IP/licensing/startup/unknown)
o Propose experiments to test your value proposition, customer segment,
channel and revenue model of your business model
o What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each test?
Talk to at least 10 potential customers
Get team Launchpad Central up and post first discovery narratives
Assignment Lecture
for Next Week Watch Lecture 3Customer Segments
Presentation
o What are the Pain Relievers, Gain Creators and key features?
o What is the resulting MVP?
o Propose experiments to test your value proposition
o What constitutes a pass/fail signal?
o See http://www.slideshare.net/sblank
for examples of what’s needed in next weeks presentation
Talk to at least 10-15 potential customers
Post discovery narratives on Launchpad Central
Web startups need site or wire frame
Assignment Lecture
for next Watch Lecture 4 Distribution Channels
week Presentation
What are the Pains, Gains and Jobs to be done?
Draw a diagram of the customer workflow
What is the resulting Customer Archetype? Draw a diagram
How do they solve this problem(s) today? Does your value proposition solve
it? How?
What was it that made customers interested? excited?
If your customer is part of a company, who is the decision maker, how large
is their budget, what are they spending it on today, and how are they
individually evaluated within that organization, and how will this buying
decision be made?
See http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/for examples
Talk to at least 10-15 potential customers
Post discovery narratives on Launchpad Central
Web startups need site up and running
Customer How teams get customers into their sales channel and move them
Relationships successfully through the sales cycle
How to keep them as customers and
Get / Keep / How to grow additional revenue from those customers over time.
Grow Students should understand how to develop “get customer” experiments to
determine tactics that move customers into and through the sales funnel in
Learning a repeatable and scalable way.
Objectives Ensure that the students have an understanding of the concept of “Lifetime
Value of a Customer” and how to calculate this figure and incorporate it
into their customer acquisition strategies.
Reading for SOM pp. 180-188 revenue and pricing hypotheses, 260-269 verify business
next week model, 438-456 metrics that matter
Watch: Mark Pincus, “Quick and Frequent Product Testing and Assessment
Revenue Revenue model = the strategy the company uses to generate cash
Streams from each customer segment
Direct Sales, Licensing, Subscription
Learning Within the revenue model – how do I price the product?
Pricing is a tactic
Objectives
Revenue model is the strategy
This is not about income statement, balance sheet and cash flow.
Those are operating details that are derived after a proven Revenue
Model and pricing.
Presentation
Talk to at least 10 potential customers
Test pricing in front of 100 customers on the web, 10-15 customers
non-web.
What’s the revenue model strategy?
What are the pricing tactics?
Draw the diagram of payment flows
Assemble an income statement for the your business model.
What are the metrics that matter for your business model?
Did anything change about Value Proposition, Customers/Users,
Channel, Customer Relations?
Update your blog and canvas
See http://www.slideshare.net/sblankfor examples
Slide 1 – Team Name, with a few lines of what you initial idea was and the size of the
opportunity
Slide 2 – Team members – name, background, expertise and your role for the team
Slide 3 - Business Model Canvas Version 1 (use the Osterwalder Canvas do not make up your
own).
Here was our original idea.
Slide 4 - So here’s what we did (explain how you got out of the building)
Slide 6 - Business Model Canvas Version 2 (use the Osterwalder Canvas do not make up your
own).
We iterated or pivoted… explain why and what you found.
Slide 7 - So here’s what we did (explain how you got out of the building)
Slide 9 - Business Model Canvas Version 3 (use the Osterwalder Canvas do not make up your
own).
We iterated or pivoted… explain why and what you found.
Etc. ,,, Every presentation requiresat least three Business Model Canvas slides.
Final Slides – Click through each one of your business model canvas slides.
Enrollment
Admission is by teams of 4 (MBA’s must be 2nd year)
Teams must interview with the teaching team prior to the class start date.
Your entire team must attend the first class to be enrolled.
The class list and any wait-listed students will be posted online
Students
▪ EMBA295T is only open to students at UC Berkeley from any school or department.
▪ Non graduates and non students can serve as advisors to the teams but our priority is
providing a learning environment for Stanford Graduate students.
▪ Exceptions for team size and external members will be made on a case-by-case basis.
▪ There are no remote options for this course - you must take the class on campus.
▪ This is very intense class with a very high workload. We expect you to invest at least 5-10
hours per week.
▪ You cannot miss the first class without prior approval
Company Ideas
▪ Is this class for web startups only?
No, anyone with any idea and preferably a product can form or join a team
▪ What if I do want to test a web idea?
Great. Only condition is that you have to get the site up and deliver the minimum product
feature set during the quarter.
Intellectual Property
Who owns the intellectual property tested in the Business Model?
1. Youown what Intellectual Property (patents, hardware, algorithms, etc.) you brought to
class with you. No one has claim to anything you brought to class.
2. You all own any intellectual property developed for the class (such as code for a web-
based project) developed during class. If a team is working with a UC related-technology
(i.e. either research from one of the team members or a UC patent), you must check with
the Office of Technology & Licensing (OTL) to better understand any UC licensing and
royalties issues.
3. You and your team members need to disclose to each other what IP/Licensing rights
any company you’ve worked at has to inventions you make at school.
4. If any or you decide to start a company based on the class, you own only what was
written and completed in the class. You have no claim for work done before or after the
class quarter.
4. If a subset of the team decides to start a company they do NOT “owe” anything to any
other team members for work done in and during the class. All team members are free to
start the same company, without permission of the others. (We would hope that a
modicum of common sense and fairness would apply.)
I feel my idea / Business Model may become a real company and the "next killer
app" and I want to own it myself what should I do?
This is more than likely the wrong class to take. Your slides, notes and findings will be
publically shared. Your team owns everything done in class. Discuss Intellectual
Property rights with your team from the beginning. If you can’t come to agreement with
the team, join another team, pick another project, or drop the class. Remember anything
you do and learn in the class is public.
Will my Intellectual Property rights be protected when I discuss my ideas with the
class?
NO. This is an open class. There are no non-disclosures. All your presentations and
Customer Discovery and Validation notes, business model canvas, blogs and slides can,
and more likely will, be made public.
I’m not comfortable sharing what I learn with others what should I do?
Don’t take this class.
Help!
What kind of support will our team have?
The teaching team consists of three professors, a TA and a mentorper team. A mentor
is an experienced entrepreneur or venture capitalist assigned to your team. They’ve
volunteered to help with the class and your team because they love startups.Their job is
to guide you as you get of the building.
How often can we/should we meet with our mentor?
Your mentor is expecting to meet with you at least every two weeks face-to-face. You
can email them or meet with them more often as they have time for.
Can I talk to a mentor not assigned to my team?
By all means, do so. All the mentors are happy to help. However they cannot support
your team full time unless your mentor decides to swap places with them.
I have a busy schedule and my mentor can’t meet when I want them to.
Mentors have day jobs. Asking them to meet or reply to you ASAP is not acceptable. So
plan ahead to allow for a reasonable amount of time for a reply or meeting. Be concise
with your request and be respectful of their time.
I need help now.
You first stop are your TA’s. Email or sit down with them during the week if you have a
problem. Your professors have office hours every Tuesday at 3pm. If you need
something resolved sooner, email us.
Who are the Mentors?
See the mentor list at the end of this document and on the class website.
Team Dynamics
What roles are in each team?
Traditionally, each team member is part of the “customer development team”.You have to
Grading
▪ How do you determine our grade?
15% Individual participation in class. You will be giving feedback to your peers.