I went to Lean Startup Machine Seattle and it was, without a doubt, worth it. When LSM comes to your city, I highly recommend going.

There are a couple reasons I typically don’t participate in workshops/conferences:

1. I don’t trust that the people talking know what they’re talking about
2. I can learn what they’re teaching somewhere else (e.g. book, blog, etc.)
3. I’m cheap and I don’t think it’ll be worth the money

Here’s how LSM mitigates those risks.

For Founders, by Founders

The guys running LSM are founders. They know what it’s like to start a company, and they know what it’s like to see it fail.

They’ve used those failures to figure out why they failed. They’ve consumed Blank, Reis, and Maurya’s ideas, distilled them, and produced a process that teaches the most fundamental principle of lean – how to identify our riskiest assumption and test it with an experiment.

This isn’t junk, it’s not bs, it’s not some guy talking to hear his own voice.  It’s stuff I think every founder should learn, provided by other founders.

LSM is an Experience – you can’t read it

The goal of the weekend is to change the way we think.  Instead of being execution focused, lean startups need to be testing & learning focused – but after years of hearing “first to market advantage”, and “those that ship win”, it takes more than reading books and blogs to rewire our brains.  We have to learn by doing.

LSM is learn by doing.

We probably spent less than an hour being “taught” how to walk through the LSM Canvas (different than the business model canvas).  The rest of the time, we were identifying our assumptions, prioritizing them, and testing them…over, and over, and over again, until our brains started to rewire themselves.

You can’t “read” an experience, you have to do it.

Not Going is a Waste of Time

If we agree that doing is a more effective way to learn than simply reading, we’ve got two choices re “doing:”

1. Applying the lean startup techniques we read about to our own startups and over the course of months/years, we’ll have this stuff down cold
2. Learn it in a weekend

It’s really that simple.  LSM is specifically designed to teach the essence of Lean in 54 hours.  Our startups on the other hand are designed to be businesses, not teaching tools.  Using them as such is possible, it’s just not an efficient use of time.

In terms of the amount of time and energy the weekend saved me, I’d say I’d pay $500 for it.  It doesn’t cost that much, but they could charge it and I’d still recommend it to people.

Conclusion

If you’re reading this, I highly recommend you go to an LSM.

Justin

PS – Suggestions for the Future

While the weekend was absolutely worth it, there were a couple things that could be improved:

1. The “mentors” didn’t know lean.  While a couple did, there were certainly a few people walking around and giving advice that really didn’t know process we were trying to learn.  It would be great to require the mentors take a crash course in the techniques beforehand.

2. Cut the speakers.  There were a handful of speeches throughout the weekend, but I wasn’t really sure why.  They killed our momentum and they didn’t have anything to do with Lean – they were just startup oriented talks.  Imo, we can get that stuff elsewhere, make the speeches lean-oriented or cut them.

3. The “pitch” competition at the end wasn’t a good use of time.  Not only did it emphasize the wrong thing (results, as opposed to learning), the judges didn’t have a clue what it really meant to be Lean.

   I’d suggest doing something like a “Lean Tournament” as a finale instead.  Two teams at a time are pitted against one another and given a customer hypothesis, a problem hypothesis, and a solution hypothesis.  The two teams have 1 minute to identify the riskiest assumption and design a test for it.  Lean-educated judges pick the winner and it continues bracket-style until there’s a winner.  A high energy way to end the weekend that emphasizes learning, not execution.

Btw, don’t let these suggestions dissuade you, they comprise maybe 5% of the weekend.  I’m including them for completeness sake.

Join the Experiment – Want to save more time learning lean? Follow along with us via Email or RSS.

Lean Startup Machine is like a Startup Weekend, except exclusively focused on business model validations as opposed to product building.  It’s coming to Seattle next weekend and I’ve decided to go.

Here’s why I’m going (and why you might think about doing the same):

My name is Justin, and I’m Addicted to Writing Code

I love building things. It’s why I became a developer. It’s a rush, it’s a high, it’s nerd cocaine, and I’m addicted.

Combine that with years of mantras like, “Those that ship, win!” and “code, code, code” and as developers, we’re taught to code first, and worry about who will buy this thing, never.  “Developers code, let the business guys figure out how to sell it.”

Of course, now that I do my own startups, I think I’m that business guy, but subconsciously my inner addict is likely running more of the show than I’d care to admit. To be truly lean though, and to increase the likelihood of my startup’s success, means I need to focus not on coding, but on learning:

Deadly Startup Sin #4: Emphasizing execution instead of testing, learning and iteration – Steve Blank, 9 Deadliest Startup Sins

The fastest way to lessen the impact of my addiction, is to immerse myself in learning Lean processes.  Lean Startup Machine feels like rehab for those of us who are addicted to coding.

The First Time, is the Worst Time

Whether it’s the first pancake off the griddle, the first version of a product, or the first time following a process, my first time is always my worst time.

With that in mind, why should I subject Bounce, a business I’d really like to succeed, to my first time practicing Lean Startup processes end-to-end?  At Lean Startup Machine, I can practice Lean techniques on other people’s business models, and take what I learn and apply all the good stuff to my own.

I got a Discount

I’m cheap. Truth is, I feel genetically predisposed to not spending money, and while it’s handy to be a frugal founder, I worry sometimes that I miss out on opportunities like Lean Startup Machine because they cost $.

Luckily, I didn’t have to pay the full $299 price…and if you’d like to go, you won’t have to either.  You’ve got two choices re discounts:

1. 30% off courtesy of John Sechrest – http://bit.ly/LH62we
2. Lean Startup Machine + Startup Weekend Bundle – http://bit.ly/LH6b2s

While financially, they’re essentially the same deal, that second one is particularly interesting if you’re wondering about how Lean Startup Machine compares to Startup Weekend – the Lean Startup Machine team will pay for your next Seattle Startup Weekend.

That means you can validate your business model at Lean Startup Machine, and then build it at a Startup Weekend.

Conclusion

I’ll be at the Lean Startup Machine next weekend, breaking my coding addiction by learning Lean processes on someone else’s business model.  You should come too.

Join the Experiment – Can’t make to Lean Startup Machine but want to hear how it went? Get updates via Email or RSS.

Last year I was hanging out on OkCupid and realized online dating is another startup, replete with landing pages, copy optimization and “filling the funnel.” The only difference is that we’re selling ourselves instead of software.

Hoping to up my conversion rate, I wanted to figure out what style of messages OkCupid members respond to the most, so I did a little a/b testing with four types of messages:

1. “Hi” – Fairly lame, but simple and says, “look at my profile”
2. Generic, short message – Same as above, but not quite as lame as the word “hi.” Something like (literally), “look at my profile.”
3. Personalized positive message – Prove that I’ve read her profile, “Canceling Arrested Development was a travesty, but I take solace in watching It’s Always Sunny while huffing paint.”
4. Personalized Negative Message  – Nice guys finish last…“You’re wearing the same shirt in 3 of your photos.  Don’t get out much?”

Care to guess which performed best?

From one of the respondents:

It’s interesting that I replied to this right away even though you basically insulted me twice.

So how can we apply this to  customer development?  What if we tried the same experimentation when contacting our customers?

Requesting Customer Interviews

First off, I won’t be (intentionally) insulting any of my customers.  That said, I have the email addresses of a couple thousand people who have requested the iPhone version of Bounce, so we’ve got an ample size to run some a/b tests.

For this experiment, I’m looking to do some customer interviews to answer questions like:

• Why did they give me their email address?
• What do they expect Bounce to do?
• How much would they pay for it, if it did what they wanted?

Now let’s see which of the following emails results in the most interviews:

Vanilla

Simple (and boring) but to the point

Chocolate

Trying to add a bit more flavor

Rocky Road

Like the Chocolate version, but a little extra puppy killing

What’s your Hypothesis?

I sent 75 emails out this morning, time to place your bets.  Which one do you think will perform best?

Will the puppies live?

Join the experiment – get notified when the results are in via Email or RSS.

Customer Development Made Easy…

What to test
+
How to test =

Now offering the...

FOCUS Framework

Since different businesses require different approaches to customer development, I want to make sure we have a wide range of startups on here sharing their stories.  With that, I’m very excited to introduce Mark Horoszowski.

Mark is CEO at MovingWorlds, a B2B social enterprise that’s in the midst of its validating it’s business model.  He’ll be contributing a 3-part series on discovering, engaging, and converting his customers.

Most innovative startups, by definition, are innovative. This means that their products (or services) doesn’t always have a clearly defined market (or even if one exists, the founders are likely to think otherwise). This was (is?) certainly the case for us.

In fact, one of our biggest challenges thus far has been clearly defining who are customers are, and then getting in the room and speaking to them before we built our product.

To be fair, while we have done a lot of things wrong, we did one very important thing right – develop market need and potential customers before we started building.

So how did we do it? Or rather, what did we fail at, learn from, and then get right?

First, some background on MovingWorlds. We’re creating a matching site that connects professionals that want to change the world to companies already changing it. It’s like a match.com where for-good companies go to find professionals eager to donate their expertise in exchanging for a life-changing travel experience (and vice-versa). Originally, we were going to create a white-labeled solution to sell into large corporations so that they could offer “meaningful” sabbaticals, retirements, and vacations as part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. Some early advisers also told us companies would eat it up as part of employee engagement, learning and development, and recruiting programs

When we started Nimbus Health, we knew we were making some assumptions, but there were a few things we knew too:

1. A launch customer is ready to use our product
2. We know how much they’ll pay
3. There are 50+ companies just like our first customer
4. Our first customer is influential and will refer us to those customers

Of course, each of these things that we “knew”, turned out to be assumptions as well. Bonus! They were all wrong.

1. Our customer was ready to use the product, but it wouldn’t matter.  There was another decision maker involved (their customers) who would make the final call.  Almost none of them did.
2. “Our pricing isn’t just cheaper than your existing solution, it’s easier to understand!” They didn’t want cheaper or “easier to understand” – they wanted “easier to pass onto their clients.”
3. That the 50+ other companies “understood” the pain we were solving was true.  That they felt is so badly they’d be willing to pay for a solution was not.
4. Referrals, HA! Half the other companies are competitors and those that aren’t don’t really get along that well anyway.

So, wtf? How are we going to be able to do anything if even the things we know to be true, turn out to be false? Enter the Lean Canvas.

Lean Canvas = Assumption Destruction

Lean Canvas is technically a morphing of Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas by Ash Mauyra, but what really matters is that it is a single sheet of paper that makes it obvious which of our assumptions are wrong.

I haven’t filled one of these out before, so we’ll be learning together. Here’s how I’m thinking it’s going to work (btw, you should follow along fill one out for your business too):

1. We fill out each of the section of the canvas
2. Recognize that every single thing we’ve written down is a hypothesis
3. Call out each of the experiments we’re doing to test these hypotheses
4. Iterate on our canvas until we’ve got a business model we’d bet our mother’s retirement on

Like you, I don’t have a lot of time to waste on documentation, so I didn’t.  Here’s what I come up with in half an hour for Bounce:

If you want to see how I went about filling it out:

Fwiw, the most helpful thing so far was to really call out my problem statement. That has really helped to drive a lot of clarity into my customer value proposition. Now I’m looking forward to coming up with experiments to test these hypotheses.

What’s Next

Join the experiment – subscribe: Email | RSS