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href="https://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/">Startup Tools</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-62"><a href="https://steveblank.com/secret-history/">Secret History</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-68"><a href="https://steveblank.com/books-for-startups/">Books for Startups</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-11025"><a href="https://steveblank.com/slides/">Slides/Videos</a></li> <li class="page_item page-item-25609"><a href="https://steveblank.com/raising-money/">Raising Money</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div>  <div class="narrowcolumnwrapper"><div class="narrowcolumn"> <div id="content" class="content"> <div class="post-17634 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-business-model-versus-business-plan category-customer-development" id="post-17634"> <h2><a href="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/31/born-global-or-die-local-building-a-regional-startup-playbook/" rel="bookmark">Born Global or Die Local – Building a Regional Startup Playbook</a></h2> <div class="postinfo"> Posted on <span class="postdate">October 31, 2014</span> by steve blank </div> <div class="entry"> <p>Entrepreneurship is everywhere, but everywhere isn’t a level playing field. What’s the playbook for your region or country to make it so?</p> <p> </p> <p>———-</p> <p><span style="color:#000000;"><a href="http://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments-don’t-get-startups/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Scalable startups</a> are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. They grow into companies that define an industry and create jobs. Not all start ups want to go in that direction – some will opt instead to become a small business. There’s</span> nothing wrong with a business that supports you and perhaps an extended family. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year.</p> <p>With 317 million people the U.S. has a large enough market that most U.S. startups ignore the rest of the world until they scale in their own country. Outside the U.S. a rough rule of thumb for scale is a local population greater than 100 million (and language, cultural and/or regulatory barriers to delay or keep out U.S. entrants.) China, Russia, Brazil, India, Indonesia all meet those criteria. (Obviously this depends on industry and application.) However, most countries don’t have sufficient population to support scale with just their local market and ultimately need to be global players – from day one.</p> <p><strong>Regional Ecosystems<br /> </strong>I’m in Australia and just spent time with some great entrepreneurs in Melbourne.</p> <div id="attachment_17644" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/img_2889.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-17644" data-attachment-id="17644" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/31/born-global-or-die-local-building-a-regional-startup-playbook/img_2889/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/img_2889.jpg?fit=3264%2C2448&ssl=1" data-orig-size="3264,2448" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"2.2","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 5s","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1414421247","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.15","iso":"32","shutter_speed":"0.0014388489208633","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="IMG_2889" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="<p>Bay of Fires Tasmania</p> " data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/img_2889.jpg?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/img_2889.jpg?fit=468%2C351&ssl=1" class="size-medium wp-image-17644" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/img_2889.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1" alt="Bay of Fires Tasmania" width="300" height="225" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-17644" class="wp-caption-text">Bay of Fires Tasmania</p></div> <p>One of the groups I spoke to was the <a href="http://astn.com.au" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Australian Sports Technology Network</a>. This group realized that Australia has a great reputation as one of the world’s best sporting nations. They realized if they could develop and promote a well-coordinated sports technologies industry, they could capture their unfair share of the $300 billon sports consumer market. So they put together a sports technology ecosystem – gathering sports startups in apparel and footwear, protective wear, equipment, nutrition, wearable devices, data and video analytics, and web and mobile solutions and brought them together with investors, retailers and distributors, universities, research centers and national sporting organizations.</p> <p>Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry.</p> <p>However, in meeting some of the sports startups one of the things that struck me is that most of the founders who said they wanted to grow big hadn’t given much thought about how they would go about building size and scale.</p> <p>The trap most of them fell into (common almost everywhere): they were reading the blog posts and advice of Silicon Valley-based companies and believing that it uniformly applied to them.</p> <p>It doesn’t.</p> <p><strong>Born Global or Die Local<br /> </strong>The biggest mistake for most of these startups was not understanding that optimizing their business model for the 24 million people in the Australian market would not prepare them for the size and scale they needed to get to <span style="color:#333333;">big.</span></p> <p><span style="color:#333333;">Instead of beginning with just a focus on Australia, these startups needed to use the business model canvas and articulate which of their hypotheses should be tested locally and what would require getting on an airplane to test by watching someone’s pupils dilate face-to-face.</span></p> <p>For example, one of the critical business model hypotheses they could test locally is Product/Market fit – the connection between their Value Proposition (what product or service they were building) and the Customer Segment (who they were building it for.)</p> <p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/business-model-globals.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17636" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/31/born-global-or-die-local-building-a-regional-startup-playbook/business-model-globals/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/business-model-globals.jpg?fit=1024%2C724&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1024,724" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="business model globals" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/business-model-globals.jpg?fit=300%2C212&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/business-model-globals.jpg?fit=468%2C331&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17636" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/business-model-globals.jpg?resize=468%2C330&ssl=1" alt="business model globals" width="468" height="330" /></a></p> <p>Further refinement of Product/Market fit could be done locally by using <a href="http://bit.ly/1ywxfPc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Value Proposition Design</a>.</p> <p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17586" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/bus-model-and-value-prop-map/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?fit=1731%2C1118&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1731,1118" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="bus model and value prop map" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?fit=300%2C194&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?fit=468%2C302&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17586" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?resize=468%2C302&ssl=1" alt="bus model and value prop map" width="468" height="302" /></a></p> <p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17587" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/value-prop-map/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?fit=1785%2C688&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1785,688" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="value prop map" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?fit=300%2C116&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?fit=468%2C180&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17587" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?resize=468%2C180&ssl=1" alt="value prop map" width="468" height="180" /></a></p> <p>But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore<span style="color:#0000ff;">. <span style="color:#333333;">For example,</span> <span style="color:#000000;">many</span></span> of the Australian sports tech business models shared common elements. They intended to get scale for their business by growing in the U.S. while building their products in China. And their branding and demand creation activities were going to occur primarily outside of Australia. This meant they would need U.S. channel partners and Chinese manufacturers and customer acquisition and activation programs outside their home country.<i> </i>And as good as the Australian angel investors have been, there still is dearth of serious follow-on funding in Australia. This means that most follow-on rounds of tens of millions of dollars, if needed will likely come from outside the country.</p> <p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/step-2-figure-out-what-needs-to-be-tested-globallys.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17640" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/31/born-global-or-die-local-building-a-regional-startup-playbook/step-2-figure-out-what-needs-to-be-tested-globallys/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/step-2-figure-out-what-needs-to-be-tested-globallys.jpg?fit=1024%2C723&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1024,723" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="Step 2 figure out what needs to be tested globallys" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/step-2-figure-out-what-needs-to-be-tested-globallys.jpg?fit=300%2C212&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/step-2-figure-out-what-needs-to-be-tested-globallys.jpg?fit=468%2C330&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17640" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/step-2-figure-out-what-needs-to-be-tested-globallys.jpg?resize=468%2C330&ssl=1" alt="Step 2 figure out what needs to be tested globallys" width="468" height="330" /></a></p> <p>While the network was very helpful getting these startups together and introduced to investors, it wasn’t clear how and when these startups tested their “going global” hypotheses.</p> <p><em>No one had written the playbook</em>.</p> <p><strong>Building a Regional Startup Playbook<br /> </strong>What’s been missing from regions outside of Silicon Valley is a “playbook.” In American football a playbook contains a sports team’s strategies and plays. It struck me that <em>every region needs its own industry playbook on how to compete globally</em>. For Australian sports startups, a playbook might lay out in detail the following steps:</p> <ul> <li>Build minimal viable products and test product/market fit in Australia</li> <li>Identify activities/resources/partners locally and then globally</li> <li>Get seed funding in Australia</li> <li>Trip 1 to China to understand manufacturing landscape, potential partners and rough cost of goods</li> <li>Trip 2 to the U.S. to understand distribution channel landscape, potential partners and rough cost of customer acquisition</li> <li>Test product/market fit in the U.S.</li> <li>Trip 3 to China, pick manufacturing partner, start low volume production</li> <li>Test channel and demand creation activities in the U.S.</li> <li>Trip 4 to the U.S. Establish U.S. sales office</li> <li>Trip 5 to the U.S. to get Series A funding in the U.S.</li> </ul> <p>Each industry in a region should develop a playbook that expands and details the strategy and tactics of how to build a scalable startup. When a playbook is shared t<span style="color:#333333;">hrough regional collaborations (like the <a href="http://astn.com.au" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Australian Sports Techn Network</a>,) entrepreneurs can jumpstart their efforts by sharing experience instead of inventing the wheel each time a new startup is launched. Now all they need is a playbook. </span>As markets mature, and investors and the ecosystem become collectively smarter, the playbook will change over time.</p> <p><strong>Lessons Learned</strong></p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>A scalable startup typically requires a local population >100 million people</li> <li>If your country doesn’t have that you need to be born global</li> <li>Your country/industry needs a “go global” playbook</li> </ul> </blockquote> <iframe loading="lazy" width="100%" height="66" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F174984019&width=false&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=false&show_comments=false&color=false&show_user=false&show_reposts=false"></iframe> <div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-official sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share this:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-print"><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" data-shared="" class="share-print sd-button" href="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/31/born-global-or-die-local-building-a-regional-startup-playbook/" target="_blank" title="Click to print" ><span>Print</span></a></li><li class="share-email"><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" data-shared="" class="share-email sd-button" href="mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Born%20Global%20or%20Die%20Local%20-%20Building%20a%20Regional%20Startup%20Playbook&body=https%3A%2F%2Fsteveblank.com%2F2014%2F10%2F31%2Fborn-global-or-die-local-building-a-regional-startup-playbook%2F&share=email" target="_blank" title="Click to email a link to a friend" data-email-share-error-title="Do you have email set up?" data-email-share-error-text="If you're having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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Alexander Osterwalder wrote it. Buy it.</p> <p>——</p> <p><a href="http://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything/ar/1">The Lean Startup</a> process builds new ventures more efficiently. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products.</p> <p>This week the author of the business model canvas, my friend Alexander Osterwalder, launched his new book <a href="http://bit.ly/1ywxfPc" target="_blank">Value Proposition Design</a>, the sequel to his million copy best seller, <a href="http://bit.ly/Zk2Jso" target="_blank">Business Model Generation</a>.</p> <p>His new book does three things:<br /> 1. Introduces the Value Proposition Canvas<br /> 2. Tells you how to design new ventures with it<br /> 3. Teaches you how to use Customer Development to test it.</p> <p><a href="http://bit.ly/1ywxfPc" target="_blank">Value Proposition Design</a> is a “must have” for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions.</p> <div id="attachment_17583" style="width: 478px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-design.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-17583" data-attachment-id="17583" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/value-prop-design/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-design.jpg?fit=538%2C388&ssl=1" data-orig-size="538,388" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="Value prop design" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-design.jpg?fit=300%2C216&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-design.jpg?fit=468%2C338&ssl=1" class="wp-image-17583 size-large" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-design.jpg?resize=468%2C337&ssl=1" alt="Value prop design" width="468" height="337" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-17583" class="wp-caption-text">Product/Market fit</p></div> <p><strong>Product/Market Fit<br /> </strong>If you’re familiar with the Lean Startup you know that the Business Model Canvas is the tool to frame all the hypotheses of your startup. Of all the 9 boxes of the canvas, the two most important parts of the business model are the relationship between the Value Proposition (what you’re building) and the Customer Segment. These two components of the business model are so important we give them their own name, “Product/Market Fit.”</p> <p>The Value Proposition Canvas functions like a plug-in to the Business Model Canvas and zooms into the value proposition and customer segment to describe the interactions between customers and product more explicitly and in more detail. This keeps things simple by giving you the big picture at the business model level and the detailed picture at the “product/market fit” level.</p> <p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17586" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/bus-model-and-value-prop-map/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?fit=1731%2C1118&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1731,1118" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="bus model and value prop map" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?fit=300%2C194&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?fit=468%2C302&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17586" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bus-model-and-value-prop-map.jpg?resize=468%2C302&ssl=1" alt="bus model and value prop map" width="468" height="302" /><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17587" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/value-prop-map/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?fit=1785%2C688&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1785,688" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="value prop map" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?fit=300%2C116&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?fit=468%2C180&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17587" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/value-prop-map.jpg?resize=468%2C180&ssl=1" alt="value prop map" width="468" height="180" /></a></p> <p><strong>Integration with Customer Development and Lean Startup</strong><br /> Alexander and I met after he published Business Model Generation. We both realized that we had each invented one of the two parts that define the Lean Startup. In his new book he’s integrated Customer Development with the Business Model and Value Proposition Canvas and added some new tools to the mix.</p> <p>Now an integral part of Value Proposition Design, several of his new tools help with testing and validation of hypotheses. These testing tools match the first two of the four steps of Customer Development. The diagram below is one of my favorites of the book and provides a simple overview of how to conduct customer discovery and customer validation in combination with the Business Model and Value Proposition Canvas. You start by extracting and prioritizing your hypotheses, then design your tests with Test Cards and finally, you conduct your tests and capture your learning. To make this all actionable Osterwalder added an Experiment Library to the book that equips you with ideas on how to test your assumptions.</p> <p><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17589" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/3_value_proposition_design_testing_process/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3_value_proposition_design_testing_process.png?fit=1200%2C499&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1200,499" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="3_Value_Proposition_Design_Testing_Process" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3_value_proposition_design_testing_process.png?fit=300%2C125&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3_value_proposition_design_testing_process.png?fit=468%2C195&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17589" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3_value_proposition_design_testing_process.png?resize=468%2C194&ssl=1" alt="3_Value_Proposition_Design_Testing_Process" width="468" height="194" /></p> <p><strong>Tracking Customer Development with the Value Proposition Canvas</strong><br /> With Customer Development you’re constantly talking to customers and partners and conducting a ton of experiments to validate and invalidate your hypotheses. All these activities, the evidence of what works and what doesn’t, and your progress towards finding a successful value proposition and business model need to be tracked. In Value Proposition Design Osterwalder shows how to do this with the Progress Board, a tool that includes a version of my <a href="http://steveblank.com/2013/11/25/its-time-to-play-moneyball-the-investment-readiness-level/" target="_blank">investment readiness level</a> thermometer to track progress.</p> <p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5_value_proposition_design_progress_board.png?ssl=1"><img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="17588" data-permalink="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/24/17577/5_value_proposition_design_progress_board/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5_value_proposition_design_progress_board.png?fit=1200%2C499&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1200,499" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="5_Value_Proposition_Design_Progress_Board" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5_value_proposition_design_progress_board.png?fit=300%2C125&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5_value_proposition_design_progress_board.png?fit=468%2C195&ssl=1" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17588" src="https://i0.wp.com/steveblank.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5_value_proposition_design_progress_board.png?resize=468%2C194&ssl=1" alt="5_Value_Proposition_Design_Progress_Board" width="468" height="194" /></a></p> <p><strong>Online Tools</strong><br /> Doing all the above together with your team is not easy when you “just” use poster-sized Canvases, sticky notes, and PowerPoint. There are simply too many Canvases you will design and trash (after rejecting and pivoting from your early tested ones), too many experiments you will conduct, and too much evidence you will produce. Keeping track of all this requires software support.</p> <p>So the Value Proposition Design comes with a series of exercises that you can complete online with assessment tools that show you how you are using the Value Proposition Canvas. And last, but not least, you get access to a whole series of checklists, templates, and incredibly awesome posters that you can immediately use in your work.</p> <p><b>Lessons Learned</b></p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>The Value Proposition Canvas describes the details of how the value proposition and customer segments interact</li> <li>It integrates the Customer Development process in the book</li> <li>Product/Market fit now has its own book. 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rel="bookmark">Watching My Students Grow</a></h2> <div class="postinfo"> Posted on <span class="postdate">October 3, 2014</span> by steve blank </div> <div class="entry"> <div class="quoteText" style="text-align:center;">“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”<br /> Galileo Galilei</div> <div class="quoteFooter"></div> <p>One of the great things about teaching is that while some students pass by like mist in the night others remain connected forever. I get to watch them grow into their careers and cheer them on.</p> <p>—</p> <p>Its been three and a half years since I first designed and taught <a href="http://steveblank.com/category/lean-launchpad/page/12/" target="_blank">the Lean LaunchPad class</a> and lots of water has gone under the bridge since then. I’ve taught hundreds of teams, the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps has taught close to 400 teams led by our nations top scientists, and the class is being taught around the world.</p> <p>But I still remember a team from the first class, one which wanted to build a robotic lawnmower. It’s now been over 3 years since the team has left my classroom and I thought I’d share with you what the two founders, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden, learned then and what they’re doing now.</p> <p><strong>The Autonomous Lawnmower<br /> </strong>They called their company Autonomow. And they were absolutely convinced what the world needed was an auto-driving lawn mover for institutions with large green spaces.</p> <p>You can see their first slide deck in class below (and <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomowwk2" target="_blank">here</a>)</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7157991' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Like in all our Lean Launchpad classes we teach a combination of theory coupled with intense and immersive experiential learning outside the classroom. Students need to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.</p> <p>The next week they came back in class and presented <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomowweek3" target="_blank">this</a>:</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7157994' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Each week we’d teach them about one more part of what makes up a business model. All teams struggle with finding product/market fit.</p> <p>By week four their presentation looked like <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomow-week4" target="_blank">this</a>:</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7157999' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Notice something different about the cover slide? Massive pivot. Like all great Silicon Valley companies they started with a technology and guessed who the customers will be. They’re almost always wrong. They could have never figured this out sitting inside a classroom writing a business plan.</p> <p>At week five (see <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomowweek5" target="_blank">here</a>) they were actually getting into farm fields wearing hip boots and overalls. Now they were figuring out how to create demand.</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7161012' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>The Customer Development process, this relentless drive to turn hypotheses into facts is what makes this learning so rapid.</p> <p>At week six they were trying to figure out their distribution channel (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomow-week6" target="_blank">here</a>) after another pivot. They got their minimal viable product (a machine vision platform) up and running in the lab.</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7169509' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>At week seven (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomow-week7" target="_blank">here</a>) another pivot happened when farmers taught them about how to price their product. Instead of an of selling hardware they were selling a service.</p> <p>BTW, notice that they were now dragging their machine vision platform through the farm fields! If there was ever any question of whether a minimal viable product can work for hardware, see what they say in their video below.</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7169526' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>By week eight they were learning who they needed to partner with (see <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/e245-autonomow-week8" target="_blank">here</a>). Most importantly they found a customer who taught them while weeding carrots was nice, thinning lettuce was where the money was.</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7169537' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>After 9 weeks their final presentation looked like this.</p> <iframe src='https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/7856260' width='468' height='384' sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen></iframe> <p>When I teach in universities I’m not running an incubator. What I’m trying to do is to get students to learn a way of thinking about new ventures that will stick with them for life. And I try to do by having them teach themselves, rather than us teaching at them. Whether they start a company or not, I don’t keep score.</p> <p>But some teams remain connected forever. I get to watch them grow into their careers and cheer them on. This was one of those teams. After class they took this idea and formed a company – <a href="http://www.bluerivert.com" target="_blank">Blue River Technology</a>.</p> <p>Over the last three years they turned their vision and PowerPoint slides into real hardware that solves real customer problems. And with 3 rounds of funding, including a grant from the National Science Foundation, they’ve raised $13 million.</p> <p>Take a look and see what they’ve done.</p> <p><iframe loading="lazy" title="Startup Founder Testimonial: Blue River Technology" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/107807251?dnt=1&app_id=122963" width="468" height="263" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write"></iframe></p> <p>If you can’t see the video click <a href="https://vimeo.com/107807251" target="_blank">here</a></p> <p style="text-align:center;"><em>“The customers had way more insights then we had. They had been thinking about their own problems for so long…If you just go out and try to sell maybe you’ll find some buyers, but you won’t be learning about what you should be doing.”</em></p> <p style="text-align:center;">Lee Redden – Blue River Technology</p> <p>——</p> <p>I’m off next week on the next great adventure. 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</div></div> <div class="sidebar"> <ul> <li><h2>Calendar</h2> <ul> <li><table id="wp-calendar" class="wp-calendar-table"> <caption>October 2014</caption> <thead> <tr> <th scope="col" title="Monday">M</th> <th scope="col" title="Tuesday">T</th> <th scope="col" title="Wednesday">W</th> <th scope="col" title="Thursday">T</th> <th scope="col" title="Friday">F</th> <th scope="col" title="Saturday">S</th> <th scope="col" title="Sunday">S</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan="2" class="pad"> </td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td><a href="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/03/" aria-label="Posts published on October 3, 2014">3</a></td><td>4</td><td>5</td> </tr> <tr> <td>6</td><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>9</td><td>10</td><td>11</td><td>12</td> </tr> <tr> <td>13</td><td><a href="https://steveblank.com/2014/10/14/" aria-label="Posts published on October 14, 2014">14</a></td><td>15</td><td>16</td><td>17</td><td>18</td><td>19</td> </tr> <tr> <td>20</td><td>21</td><td><a 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