Last week we announced our new 12-week program structure and our teams are off and running. We kicked things off with our first module delivered by Pascal Finette, Mozilla’s Director of Open Innovation, providing guidance on developing an effective strategy. This is critical for startups, who can (and do) get pulled in various directions as they flesh out their way to a full-fledged business model. Rather than a stale piece of paper (or worse, 30-page “plan”), an effective strategy is short enough to digest and a living document that changes as founders learn from their customers and markets.
Pascal introduced us to a fantastic tool to buil a workable and useful strategy, the “Lean Canvas.” It’s a 1-page document that allows you to lay out the critical elements to develop a successful business. We encouraged our teams - and now, you - to check it out and better yet, DO it. Complete the canvas, conduct some experiments to validate it, and revisit it every few months.
To make sure your strategy holds up to the harsh reality of life include, embark on the adventure of Discovery-Driven Planning: ask yourself for every decision and assumption, what has to prove true for this to work?
For example: If your goal is to get to 200,000 users - what are the underlying assumptions which need to be true to get you there? This is by far the best litmus test to make sure you are on the right track and your plans can come true.
What are you waiting for? Try it out!
The Video Overview
The Tools
- Business Canvas Video
- Lean Canvas
- One-Page Strategic Plan from Verne Harnish of Gazelles (extra credit :)
- Book: Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
- Book: The Lean Startup
- Book: The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company
- Book: Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm
