WORKSHOP IN DENMARK: a Lean Approach to Building Your Business

Nine out of ten attempts to launch new products into the market fail. Most venture capitalist funds get their return on investment from a tiny minority of portfolio companies. In this workshop you’ll learn how to significantly improve the odds that one of those companies will be yours.

Turning a startup into a real business is a hard thing to do. The management disciplines practiced by large companies and taught in MBA programs consistently fail to produce results in startups . Big companies are executing on a known business model while startups need to discover a business model that works. Traditional “MBA” tools like business plans, income statements, sales forecasts, financial projections, just don’t work at the early stage. An MBA degree is almost counter-predictive to startup success.

This workshop is not about how to write a business plan or create a value proposition. It’s not about putting together a glitzy investor presentation with all the right slides but no real business behind it. You will be learning a new toolbox targeted at finding a business model that works. The toolbox is based on the Osterwalder Business Canvas and the LeanLaunchLab SaaS platform for entrepreneurs.

You’ll articulate your company’s business idea using the business model canvas, and you’ll learn practical tools to get outside of the office to test against real customers. Doing that fast and effectively is the single most important thing you can do to eliminate the really big risks to building a successful company.

At the end of this workshop you will have created a business model canvas describing your business. This is your “best guess” at this point in time at a business model that will work - in one of the worlds biggest and most competitive environments - Silicon Valley. You will have identified the key assumptions behind this plan, prioritized the risks, and created a test plan to “debug” your business model in practice.

This workshop will be divided in to 4 stages:

1. Learn the Lean methodology and prepare your self

2. Map out Your Business Model. Use the Business Model Canvas and the LeanLaunchLab tools to clearly describe your business model.

3. Identify the Risks - What are the most dangerous, unproven aspects of your plan? What are things that make you fail, if you are wrong about them.

4. Plan your test - what do you need to learn when you get to Silicon Valley. How will you test? On whom?

The tools learned in this workshop will help you build better company - regardless of whether your ultimate future lies in Silicon Valley or home in Denmark.