As you may already know, the Startupfest Lean Workshop is part of our “2 extra days of Startupfest” initiative. For the first time, we’re offering a full day of activities before the Fest’s opening party on Wednesday, July 10th. One of these activities is the Startupfest Lean Workshop, where our lineup of entrepreneurs and experts (Alistair Croll, Ben Yoskovitz, Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovitz) will use the latest thinking in customer development, analytics and continuous learning to look at what it takes to build a better business faster. From understanding your product and market, to building the right tam, to measuring the right things, it’s a day of concrete real-world lessons from seasoned entrepreneurs. This event is for Startups and Product Managers that want to better understand the metrics they should be tracking.
**Register before June 30th and you’ll have the chance to be one of the 3 case studies examined during Q&A!
Interested in a bit of “Lean” insight? Follow CRM Software Analyst Ashley Verrill ‘s check-in with Alistair Croll, co-author of Lean Analytics and one of our four expert panelists!
“If you build it, they will come.” This mantra worked for Kevin Costne, Darth Vader and business strategies back in ’89, but times have changed since then.
Gone are the days when entrepreneurs could launch a product and sit back as consumers rush out of the cornfields to get it. Now, consumers know what they want, and they’re happy to tell you – if you’ll listen.
That’s the basis of the Lean Startup movement. Developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries, the movement tells entrepreneur to develop products that consumers actively want, rather than what they think consumers want.
Alistair Croll, founder of Solve for Interesting, expands on this idea in “Lean Analytics.” In the book, Croll explains how companies can use social media and new technologies to collect data about consumer needs.
Croll suggests:
- Pinpointing the business’s most important metric for growth (e.g. revenue)
- Identifying the business model’s riskiest aspect
- Establishing a Minimum Viable Product, or a strategy to test the risk against the growth metric
- Analyzing the results
- Modifying the business model based on the results
- Repeating the process until you discover your market
Croll discussed his method recently in a video interview with Software Advice – a free resource for software buyers. Check out the video to hear how companies like Flickr, AirBnB.com and Twitter used this new business strategy and found out that they will come if you build it.
Want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth? Register for our Lean Workshop and join Alistair, Ben Yoskovitz (co-author of Lean Analytics), Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits (co-authors of The Lean Entrepreneur) on July 10th as they tackle the challenges of building a business head-on.
