Test Your Business Idea with Real Customers Before Launching Your Small Business

Posted by Jim Smith on June 14, 2011

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I read this article written by Carol Tice yesterday in Entrepreneur http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219772 and it made so much sense that I had to blog about it here. Not only should it be taught in business schools like Stanford where it made it’s debut but it should be a staple part of all small business education at the SBDCs and at SCORE.

photo credit: DLR_de

This particular course called Lean Launchpad was developed and introduced at Stanford this past spring by Steven Blank, the serial entrepreneur and Stanford lecturer who created the course. The program is designed to allow the budding entrepreneur to fail over and over, quickly, until he/she discovers a working model. This ensures that the business will more likely succeed upon launch.

Lean LaunchPad: The Week-by-Week Course Outline

1. Introduction to all the parts of a business model

2. Come up with your business idea or hypothesis

3. Define your value proposition — what problem do you solve?

4. Determine who the customer is for your product

5. Find what activities will keep and grow the customer base

6. Develop a theory of what channels you would sell through

7. Create a revenue model

8. Learn about resources needed and develop an expense model

9. The teams presented their business plans to the class

For the complete article please see Lean LaunchPad: A Crash Course in Startup Success

Republished with author's permission from original post by Jim Smith.

Jim Smith

Jim Smith mentors entrepreneurial start-ups and counsels small to mid sized companies that are looking to expand or are under performing or under capitalized.

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