Academy: How to turn an idea into a promising business
A four-day workshop that teaches the steps needed to go from an early idea to a profitable business in practice. This is not a lecture or a simulation, participants will work on a half-baked business idea, find actual customers, try to make a real sale, and then create an action plan for a steady income stream.
This course is useful both for participants who already work on a business idea and are in their early stages, or for experts in their fields who will learn the exact steps they need to make to turn any future idea into a business.
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
This course teaches the skills, steps and strategies necessary to turn any idea into a business. It is meant as an answer to a simple question: I have an idea for a business, project or a product, but I don't know how to do it. It is meant to be fully practical.
The course is meant as an answer to the question of employability of students who gain excellent theoretical knowledge in their subjects but do not know yet how to apply it in practice.
It is an »entrepreneurship course« that goes beyond the scope of business, including key skills necessary for future success, like:
how to cultivate a network of connections necessary for career opportunities,
how to find opportunities for new products or services in your field of study,
how to communicate your value and present your skills,
how to approach companies and master the process of job applications,
how to launch your own business,
how to be successful in fundraising, seeking sponsorship or attracting investments.
This course is meant as a complement to the core subjects in the field of study of every student and is aimed at preparing future experts to start a fruitful and successful career. It is 100% practical and has no exam at the end. Instead, students are going to »get their hands dirty« and try everything for themselves. They will be expected to actually try and make a sale, approach a recruiter, propose a project to a potential funder an will end by creating a personal portfolio that will be immediately useful for a future career. After the course, students are expected to have the mindset, skillset and confidence to take full advantage of a business opportunity they might stumble upon in the future.
The quick and simple process of starting a business participants will learn in this workshop
WORKSHOP LOGISTICS
This workshop consists of four sessions lasting three hours each. As a practical course, a lot of the activities will take students outside in direct contact with their potential customers. They will be tasked to find, approach and attempt to close their first sale for the prototype company they are setting up, which will demand at least an additional 5-10 hours of individual work (as a homework assignment between sessions 2 and 3).
As a 100% practical workshop, the number of participants is strictly limited to 25. Participants should only attend this workshop if they are committed to actually try out a business idea – ideally, they are just starting to work on one of their own, otherwise they will be given a real micro business idea to attempt. The participants will complete this course in teams, formed around their business ideas. Full participation is expected.
Participants will receive a booklet with all the steps taught during the workshop – a step-by-step guide on how to start a business from zero.
Participants will also be presented with a certificate of completion, attesting to their skills of launching a new initiative and, if appropriate, recommendation letters from the facilitator.
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
This workshop will convene in four sessions, each lasting three hours. It is typically scheduled on consecutive days or twice per week, with a gap between the third and fourth session to allow time for deploying the business in real life.
SESSION ONE: INTRODUCTION & FROM THE INITIAL INSPIRATION TO A WORKABLE IDEA
Participants will learn the fundamental theory of business creation – the steps every business, big or small, takes to start earning revenue. Then, they will consider the first important part of a company, their business idea. Is it good enough or not? They will learn the steps to test and iterate their initial concepts by directly approaching real customers and seeing if they are interested.
INTRODUCTION:
All businesses are created in five steps
The process that goes from the first inspiration to a business that is stable and profitable is always the same. These steps should be understood, but more importantly, nobody has a crystal ball to know how a business idea will work ahead of time. The best approach therefore is to try something quickly and cheaply, probably fail at the first attempt, and then to try again and again by iterating. This bottom-up approach is very effective.
LECTURE:
How to go from an unclear business idea to something actionable
To have an idea that makes sense, the first step is to understand the need behind a business proposition. An idea must be crystallized into knowing what benefit are we selling, who is the best customer for this and what kind of a story do we tell so they buy. This is done by being very critical of the initial assumption and working with real potential customers to prove we are on to something.
ACTIVITY:
Assessment of a business idea
Participants will be led in an activity where they will need to decide if their business idea is promising and iterate it until it makes sense. They may do this with their existing idea, or test-drive a number of sample business ideas provided to them by the facilitator. At the end of this activity they will either prove or disprove it, and also know how to continue if they need to change their idea to make it work.
SESSION TWO: FROM THE BUSINESS IDEA TO THE FIRST CUSTOMER
Participants will learn the key steps to find the ideal customer – the person to who it is easiest to sell their offering. They will try to create a persona of such a customer then learn the actions needed to find such people. Instead of looking at broader market analysis, they will see the value of going bottom up – finding a small number of ideal customers then making a guess of which segments are promising for them.
LECTURE:
How to go from an idea to the first customer
A very quick way to get to the market is searching for the one perfect customer that needs our product so much they do not need much persuasion to buy. If we find one, chances are more similar people exist. By engaging with such people, we will quickly be able to understand our initial segment – and be in a good position to make sales immediately.
SIMULATION:
Mission impossible team simulation
This is a simulation teaching the skills needed for executing on a business, in particular how to approach potential buyers and making the first sales. It puts participants into a high-stress situation where they must complete a complex assignment in a short amount of time. The facilitator will lead a detailed debrief of the activity, pointing out how this applies to the professional and business environments one will encounter when starting a new venture.
SESSION THREE: FROM THE FIRST CUSTOMER TO MAKING THE FIRST SALE
Participants will learn how to put together a convincing sales message that will persuade an early customer to buy from them. They will write a complete sales letter (or sales website, sales call) that can be used immetiately to solicit a sale. They will be provided with templates and guidance for this. An important part of this is that participants do not need to have a product fully developed for thisas it is very possible to ask for a preorder. Then, they will be expected to approach customers and see what happens.
LECTURE:
From the first customer to the first sale
Participants are shown how to present their product in the form of a »one pager« - a sales brochure, letter, simple listing on a website, etc... This is a method that helps them clearly define their offering and consider how a future business will work. Then, they will learn how to approach a customer and try to sell. This enables them to get immediate feedback on their business proposition and forces them to learn very quickly. They also learn it is nearly always far better to get quick feedback from the market before they develop their final solution (prototyping) than spending a long time researching and developing a solution that too few customers need.
DOING IT FOR REAL:
Writing the first sales proposal
Participants will work with the facilitator to create a written proposal for a first sale (or a preorder) for their future business. This is not a classroom assignment that will be graded – instead the proposals will be sent to the initial small group of ideal customers they identified in the past in order to see if there is interest on the market. Students will be asked to send this out and then they will be given time to follow up with meetings to see if they can make sales (their business proposition has been objectively proven) or if not (they need to iterate and try again). Through this process they will learn how to iterate to success any business idea.
*This session concludes with participants actually reaching out to prospective customers, and time is given to them to follow up these conversations, meet up with them in person or wait for their response. Participants are expected to do this step seriously as it is the most important learning opportunity of the entire workshop.
SESSION FOUR: FROM THE FIRST SALE TO A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS & CONCLUSION
Participants will put the previously learned steps needed to launch a new business together and look at the bigger picture. They will learn how to take success from a single sale and turn it into a stable revenue stream by repeating sales, systematically reaching out to more customers in the desired segment and consider the economics of their future business – pricing, costs and operations.
DEBRIEF:
Did we make sales?
The facilitator will lead the participants in a discussion about their first contact with customers. The biggest emphasis will be on what to do if no sales were achieved and how to collect useful and actionable feedback to try again and succeed next time.
LECTURE:
From the first sale to a sustainable business model
After proving sales can be made, the next question is how to make it repeatable and how to organise work withing the small company to attract enough customers. The key focus is on activities that generate revenues and a discussion of priorities to bring the early businesses to the most important milestone – becoming profitable. Participants will learn how to create a realistic action plan and a timeline of steps to achieve this as soon as possible.
ACTIVITY:
Preparing an action plan for the young company
Participants will work with the facilitator to create an action plan for the future of their business proposition by (1) calculating the economics of their business, the pricing and potential revenues, (2) creating a realistic sales goal and (3) listing all the activities that are required to achieve it – all in order to know precisely what needs to be done to launch this business venture.
CLOSING:
If you do this once, you will know how to do it again in the future
Participants will reflect on the lessons learned and discuss how to apply these activities for any future business they might decide to attempt in the future. They will be presented with a handbook on rapid business creation prepared specifically for this course and will be awarded certificates of completion.
**The participants will be invited to briefly present the progress made on ventures they have been working on during the workshop, and this may be an informal showcase attended by external guests.
OPTIONAL EXTRA SESSION: THE INVESTOR'S PERSPECTIVE,
or how to get funding for your business venture
It is possible to extend this workshop by including an additional 3-hour session that covers the question of financing a business idea where participatns learn how an investor looks at a new business. This covers (1) the way investors make decisions to finance a company, (2) how to find and persuade investors to get funding, and (3) how an investor can be a valuable reality check for any entrepreneur starting out. The purpose of this extra session is for participants to learn how to find funding for their businesses and know how to persuade investors.
LECTURE:
1. How an investor looks at a new company
A very quick overview of the calculations an investor makes when he/she decides to invest in a company. The facilitator will explain the business model of an investor and show how profitable a company must be to become investable. This serves as a reality check for participants considering starting a serious business venture.
2. How to attract funding
An overview of the landscape of funding opportunities and a practical strategy to get interest from various funding sources by showing you have an effective team and impressive traction.
3. How to find and be connected with a funder
A practical overview of things anyone can do to meet and connect with funders. Participants will learn how to make a list of potential funders and solicit introductions to them.
ACTIVITY:
Crafting a persuasive pitch
This will be a practical workshop during which participants will take the business proposition they have been working on and create a simple pitch with a request for funding. They will learn the standard template for such a presentation and will understand which things are most important to present. They will learn that the two basic things to communicate are their potential to generate revenues, proven by existing traction, and the formidability of their team. As this is a practical session, participants will also be shown basic steps how to design a beautiful slide deck and given pointers on public speaking in a pitch setting.
**The pitch training will be practical and every team will be given an opportunity to present on stage. It is possible to organize this session so that outside guests or the general public are invited to view the final presentations.
FACILITATOR OF THE WORKSHOP
This workshop will be hosted by Matija Goljar, an experienced facilitator who spent 15 years working as a mentor, lecturer, consultant and programe director of an international business mentorship organization, Ustvarjalnik. His workshops have been used as inspiration for a prime-time TV show about starting businesses in his native Slovenia. He is an experienced founder who started his first company in high school and exited successfully at age 22, becoming an investor. He currently works for a regional venture capital fund, Silicon Gardens as the head of mentorship. He holds a masters degree in Applied Imagination from Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London.
