In case you missed a weekly webinar - no worries. Here is a recorded version along with questions asked and resources identified for this week.
WEEK TWO:
WOW! Is this a good time to pivot?
RECORDED MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2020 (56 minutes)
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RESOURCES FROM WEBINAR:
Guy Kawasaki's 10 points:
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Beware anecdotes
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Sales fixes everything
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Assume you’re on your own
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Marathon/decathalon not sprint
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Cash is king—not your image
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Cut deeper than you think
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Ask “Therefore, what?”
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Make something unique and valuable
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Do business direct
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Perfect digital skills such as email and videoconferencing
Adaptation -vs- Survival - James Morin, Co-owner and COO of Flowfold
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Adaptation vs survival?
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The first thing to understand is to the WHY behind the pivot. Did you discover something during the creation of your MVP that is potentially more valuable than the product you were originally trying to design? Or is your business model broken or has the economy/market shifted to the extent that you couldn’t survive without a pivot.
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Sometimes I suppose it could be both. If you look at Slack, for example, it was originally an integral tool that they used to help them make a game called Glitch. But they also realized that the game company wasn’t going to work so they pivoted to the launching Slack.
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Flowfold Example is the later. It’s about Survival.
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Check your ego at the door:
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Admittedly this is easier if you’re pivoting due to survival. But all the same. People and their ideas are sticky. You HAVE to admit that you brain shield, your great idea is either
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not that great
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great but there’s something greater of
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great but there’s a god damn pandemic.
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There is also a financial component to this. You need to be able to look at your books. The books didn’t care how much I wanted to stick to making outdoor and lifestyle gear. The books told me a story. If we didn’t pivot, we were letting people go. We had no choice but to check out ego at the door
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Self-Awareness
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If you pivoting, It’s VERY important to understand three things
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What YOU are good at
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What YOUR TEAM is good at
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What YOUR BUSINESS is good at
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Flowfold example
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Technical equipment
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Proof of Concept
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MVP
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UI/UX Feedback.
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Scale
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Operations
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Source new raw materials
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Create SOPs - in our case
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MOQs
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shipping practices
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Training materials
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Production
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Find new partners
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Contract manufacturing
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Legal- Last on purpose (beg for forgiveness than ask for permission)
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Insurance: Are you still insure?
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Fine Print: “As Is” statement”
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Changes to the operating agreement?
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Insight from Professor Alex Cowan of the University of Virginia:
What’s a strong visual plan that I can use to keep the team foster focus, shared understanding, and discussion related to that?
Alex recommends starting with an Agile Team Charter that anchors in job-centric/user-centric view of what the firm is focused on during a given iteration/pivot of the firm.
What’s a pivot? What’s Lean Startup?
Alex’s Lean Startup Intro: This short tutorial will introduce you to the fundamentals of Lean Startup and get you started applying it to your own projects.
How do I apply Lean Startup? How does it relate to product design/design thinking?
Alex’s Tutorial on Hypothesis-Driven Development: This tutorial will help you unpack your ideas into testable pieces and apply the right testing to the right pieces. For example, it will step you through:
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Solving the Right Problem: finding out what’s on your customer’s A-lst
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Finding the Right Solution/Demand-Wise: testing whether your proposition is better enough than what your prospective customer has now and whether they’ll act.
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Finding the Right Solution/Usability-Wise: taking a focused, disciplined, but user-centric view of how to articulate what’s important on the user journey and iteratively test it to make it better.
For even more detail, see Alex’s course by the same name: Hypothesis-Driven Development (online course).
I’d like to hear more about using consulting as a concierge vehicle to apply Lean Startup.
Here’s a talk Alex did for the Lean Startup Circle-SF: B2B Hacks: Getting from Consulting to Scalable Products
Who in the world is Alex Cowan?