Startup MVPs and Value Propositions

This meetup is Month Three of the 6 Month Startup Kitsap program. While startup founders at the beginning of their journey will get the most out of this program by attending each session 1-6 in order, you are also welcome to come to any individual session. The program is offered by Startup Kitsap, with the support of Vibe Coworks. 

MVPs, Value Propositions, Testing your Hypothesis, Product Features and Benefits

• Minimum VIABLE Product or MVP has the emphasis on Viable not minimum! What are you required to ship to provide a useful solution for your customer? What one thing do you want to prove with your MVP? If the product was going to fail, why would it fail?
  
  
• Now that you have some customer feedback, you should start to get your Value Propositions clearly laid out. What is the "lede of your story," how do you tell your story and get "the first things" to be the first thing? For Starters, we tend to clutter up all of the current and potential value propositions in our head and it's tough to be clear to our target customer - we'll help with that process
  
  
• Testing, testing, testing. It's good that you have a hypothesis, but it's just that until you have actual data. We'll outline a process for you to test messaging, advertising and conversion ratios to get DATA to inform your theory.
  
  
• It's time to begin to identify the features and benefits of your product for both the Launch and the Scale of your startup. Scale and vision are great, but you have to survive long enough to get to scale. Narrowing your focus for launch is key - you only have so much in terms of resources, time, engineering, and capital. Remember, constraints are actually a good thing.
  
  
• OFFICE HOURS: you’ll have the opportunity for office hours with our 6 Month Startup Kitsap mentor, John Dorsey.

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Founder Development is the process of helping early and first-time founders through an experiential process learned from serial founders, MBA Entrepreneurship programs and investors. Unlike academic programs, it’s about launching and scaling a company first, there are no grades or credits. This takes take to do the work and won't’ likely fall into an academic quarter semester. Accessible programs are all about pricing that doesn’t preclude underrepresented groups from participating, it also means not filtering people out based on a bias or GPA. That’s why the @6MonthStartup program was born.

By accessible, we mean a reasonably priced program with reasonable frequency. Let's face it, if you are a "Starter," you need to spend resources on proving your idea not paying for things you don't need (at least yet!). Also, you shouldn't be leaving your day job until you prove the idea is worth your time and effort.

Founder Development is all about you and how you think. The process will confirm that you have a solid idea and have talked with enough potential customers to have validated that idea. In most cases, this is before you incorporate, before spending any money on trademarks or divvy up any equity. There are some great programs for company building and product development - most of those programs also invest in your startup if you have a team, product, and traction.

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Who should attend?

• Founders or Starters. If you're an aspiring Starter and want to confirm if your idea is worthwhile before you leave your day job. Can you go faster than 6 months? Of course, but it will likely still take you some time to validate your ideas and work through the process - we're here to support you, either way, whether you have just the glimpse of an idea or if you already have product and revenue.
• Potential Co-Founders. Do you want to join a startup or are you looking for potential co-founders? You'll likely find them here.
• Corporate Innovators. If you're looking to put some structure to your corporate goals - plus get to meet potential employees who like innovation.
• Students. if you want to learn a process and structure to think about your ideas or the ideas of companies, you might consider joining in the future! Just know that your first idea may not be the idea you’ll ultimately launch. Killing bad ideas quickly if great, failing fast is dumb.