Early Stage Boot Camp

Course description

We use the ClimateLaunchpad curriculum as the basis. It was developed in the past five years by a group experience startup trainers (including me), using some of the best startup instructions tools that we know. It addresses the founders dream as the heart of the startup and building a team around it, basic market analysis (deal, market segmentation, customer value proposition), basic financials, competitive advantage, the impact of the startup and how to do customer discovery. At the end of the boot camp teams have a new slide deck, that will be the basis for their work in the coming months.

Following this boot camp should be a process of around three months for the teams to do customer discovery. They should do 20-30 customer interviews to figure out the customer pain in different markets segments and see in which segments their solution is getting strong traction. It will be very helpful for the teams to get follow up coaching, partly to keep them focussed and deliver on their promises, partly to make them learn faster.

Course content

The boot camp consists of 8 modules:

1. The deal: what do you sell to whom and for what price? Startups are forced to think about their exact product (for many this is surprisingly difficult), their ideal customer (very often not well defined) and the price (very often unclear).
2. Market segmentation: what is your beachhead market? What is a beachhead market? Why do you need to focus on one market segment?
3. Value proposition: what benefit do you offer your customer? Why would he or she buy? How your value proposition can be something entirely different from your product characteristics.
4. Product: what is your product (or service)?
5. Financials: how do you make money in your beachhead market? And learn about market share, cost of sales, etc.
6. Impact: what is your impact in the EIT RawMaterials focus field?
7. Competitive advantage: how do you make this a scalable business? How do you stay ahead of the competition? Do you have IP?
8. Team & dream: who is on your team and what makes them tick?

Program Day 1

• Introductions
• Founder's Dream
• The Deal
• Market Segmentation
• Beachhead Market Selection
• Customer Value Proposition

Program Day 2

• Financials
• Competitive Advantage
• Impact
• Customer Discovery
• Pitching

Course format

The course combines classroom lectures and group work.

This boot camp is aimed at early stage entrepreneurs.