Week 1 Recap: Bootcamp videos, decks & templates

Getting started

Last week, we covered a lot of ground in our 3-day entrepreneurial bootcamp. We will be adding video and presentation links to individual session descriptions on our website as soon as possible.

In the meanwhile, you can access the full collection of presentations and templates from the TVA 2022 landing page.

For your convenience, we have also prepared an Entrepreneurship Jargon Translator to help you decipher this strange new language. Enjoy!

Setting a baseline: Completing your first venture canvas

In our Entrepreneurial Workshop on Framing and Lean Canvas Overview, we went over common innovation and startup frameworks. Depending on the type of venture and your progress, you may find one more helpful than another.

• If you are just starting out, you may find the Lean Canvas (LC) the most helpful.
• If you have been in business for a while, the Business Model Canvas (BMC) would be the most helpful.
• If you are working on a social enterprise, especially if it is a non-profit, then the Mission Model Canvas (MMC) might be the most helpful.

You can find the LC, BMC, MMC and other templates in our Box Folder.

We strongly recommend every team to complete the canvas most helpful to you at the beginning of this week. This will serve as your venture’s baseline. We will prompt you to update your canvas twice: at the midpoint, and at the end. This process will help you gain true appreciation for all that you have learned and accomplished by the end of the summer

Introducing the “scrum”: A weekly accountability ritual

Starting this week, you will be doing Weekly “CEO” scrums. This is an accountability ritual borrowed from the 15-minute Daily Scrum or Standup based on the Scrum methodology, which came out of the Agile Software Development Process. (WHAT!)

If none of this makes sense to you, don’t panic. We are simply borrowing a software management practice – the “scrum” – to help you organize how you work. In our version, we do this once a week, at the start of the week. Each team takes turns sharing the following in 3 minutes or less.

• What we did last week
• What we will do this week
• Where we will need help

The weekly cadence is long enough for you to make progress, and short enough to let you course-correct without losing time. Sharing it with peers keeps you accountable and helps you find ways to help each other.

If you have other teams you can do it with, that’s awesome. If you are working on your own, try doing it with your own team (or with yourself!) to keep tabs on your own progress

Week 2 Focus: Market and customer

This week, you should review your market segmentation framework. Some of you may have jumped into a target market without considering alternatives. If this sounds like you, consider using MIT Professor Bill Aulet’s Segmentation Worksheet to help you create your first segmentation matrix. If you have done this already but have not updated your segmentation matrix in the past 4 weeks, review it now. You may find that you need to revise it based on new learnings.

Once you are happy with how you segment your market, it’s time to review how you chose your beachhead market. Take a few moments to review the selection criteria, and see if you have any new data that may change how you choose your target market.

Having finished your market segmentation and selection process, your next task is to estimate the size of your opportunity. Hubspot has a great article that explains the TAM, SAM, SOM alphabet soup. Browse the Market Sizing and Analysis section of our knowledgebase for pointers on how to do this quickly and without spending any money on buying analyst reports.

None of this can be done without talking to humans. Every venture builder should start by interviewing potential end users and / or paying customers. But that is just the beginning. Sign up for the Primary Market Research workshop to learn advanced techniques and get pro-tips.

Additional Resources

Here are additional resources that might help you get started:

• Self-Guided Learning Center, Module 2: This module ties everything together from segmentation through market research to personas.
• Knowledgebase section on Primary Market Research: This section of our searchable knowledgebase contains a lot of information on how to do PMR effectively.