Lean Startup

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Jason VandeBoom, CEO and Founder of ActiveCampaign, and Hisham Ibrahim, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, focused on the importance of leaning into your customers and learning from them in order to grow your business.

In Jason and Hisham’s conversation, they discuss:

- The importance of letting customer feedback guide the product development

- How to scale up while staying close to your customers

- The key lessons learned as Jason looks back on the startup story of ActiveCampaign

And much, much more…

When Jason VandeBoom launched ActiveCampaign in 2003, he wasn’t trying to start a business or grow a company. He was just trying to make some money to pay for college. All of his customers were small businesses and they all started wanting the same thing: to communicate with their customers. At the time, the options for small businesses to implement something like this was somewhat limited.

Instead of building one-off tools and products for each company, Jason decided to create a contact management package and sell that instead. “[I had] no idea of what that could be,” Jason says, “and then as someone bought it, I just glued onto them to learn as much as I could.”

In fact, for a while, Jason says he didn’t even care about the revenue he was generating. Rather, “all I cared about was the interesting work and ensuring I was providing a ton of value.” His focus on listening to the customers helped him learn a lot about what customers needed and how to add to ActiveCampaign’s product catalogue.

So much so that by the end of the first decade his company was up to eight products, all of which impacted a piece of the customer experience. “We learned a lot about each piece,” Jason says, “but the tool didn’t actually matter as much as moving data throughout their entire experience and making that feel like a unified experience.”

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted the first episode of a six-part webcast series we’re doing with Silicon Valley Bank. In episode one, Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, spoke with Theron McCollough, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Bank’s Early Stage Practice about the 2019 Startup Outlook US Report they just released.

You can read the report here: https://bit.svb.com/2GzYO4e

In Theron and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss:

- The challenges that companies are facing in finding and hiring talent

- The growing number of women in leadership positions

- Why some startups are finding it easier to raise funds

- The most promising new technology sectors

And much, much more…

In 2004, Theron McCollough joined a startup and never looked back. He has remained in the startup space ever since. Now, as the Managing Director of the Early Stage Practice at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), his main job is “just helping startups.” He gets to connect companies and people together and help make the introductions that specifically match with what startup founders are building. “It’s what makes me wake up every day,” Theron says, “and I’m excited to come to work.”

In his role at Silicon Valley Bank, one of the things Theron gets to work on is the Startup Outlook Report they release every year. The 2019 report was just released, and Theron was able to share some insights about what the report says about the startup world right now.

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Giovanni Rotondo, Film Composer & Editor In Chief at Film Scoring Tips, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, on how Lean Startup methodologies directly translates into working in the world of music and composition.

In Giovanni and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss:

- How Giovanni discovered The Lean Startup and began applying it to his work composing music scores

- How he applied the MVP concept to a Minimum Viable Cue

- How he uses A/B testing to submit work to directors

And much, much more…

As a film and television composer, Giovanni Rotondo is not in a line of work traditionally associated with startups or Lean Startup initiatives. That all began to change when he joined a startup in London called The Rattle.

“[The Rattle] is [both] a career incubator for artists and a startup incubator for musical startups,” Giovanni explains. Initially, he joined as an artist, but Giovanni was intrigued and inspired by the startup culture and started having ideas of his own that applied to the world of music. He shared his idea with the co-owner and co-founder of The Rattle, Chris Howard. Chris suggested the book The Lean Startup to Giovanni. As he was reading it, Giovanni could feel the connection between the startup world and his occupation.

“I really [dove] into my mind to see how to apply these concepts to my work,” Giovanni says, “and...I found quite a few ways.”

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a webcast conversation where Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, spoke with Aaron Levy, Founder and CEO of Raise The Bar about the need for better leaders, unlocking potential, and psychological safety in today's shifting marketplace.

In Aaron and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss:

- How leaders are made and not born, meaning good leadership is a trainable skill.

- The iteration process Aaron went through to develop a product focused on leadership development.

- Why an environment of emotional safety is so important and how to create this in your workplace.

And much, much, more…

Aaron Levy has always been intrigued by human behavior. Specifically why, when we [as humans] know better, why don’t we do better? “People don’t go from knowledge to action,” Aaron says, “and that’s always baffled me.”

This observation and led Aaron to study the science of behavior change and how it applied to the world around him. In work and in life, he constantly observed and studied people, both leaders whom he had an opportunity to work with and his friends — that is to say, millennials — who were figuring out their career paths in their respective industries. The latter group led him to notice a curious trend; no matter how much money they were making or how cool their company or office culture was, his friends were all either thinking about leaving their jobs or had left already.

After speaking with as many of these people as he could, Aaron got down to the “why?” of it all: that individuals aren’t achieving their best potential despite the fact that both they and their companies want them to excel and succeed. So even though there was an aligned vision between company and employer, there was a big gap, and it all came down to leadership.

“The core point of leverage in any organization is your manager,” Aaron says, “and unfortunately most managers suck.”

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Jessica Korthuis, Founder and Chief Brand Strategist at SOHUIS, and Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, to discuss how you can incorporate lean into your marketing and brand strategy.

In Jessica and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss:

- What companies should do before making the decision to rebrand.

- Tools and exercises that can help you execute a successful brand strategy.

- How to validate the brand strategy you implemented actually worked.

And much, much more…

Jessica Korthuis started her first company with her husband after her corporate dream job was eliminated. She didn’t have a ton of experience helping entrepreneurs brand themselves but she had a lot of experience in marketing communications and a can-do spirit. “We built this super-crappy website and then poof, we just started our first agency,” Jessica said.

The agency grew organically to include such clients as TED Women, Red Bull and Stanford University, but was completely bootstrapped. “It was this absolutely scrappy thing,” Jessica said.

Through the local business ecosystem in Orlando, Florida she learned about Lean Startup, which is where she got involved in helping entrepreneurs brand themselves using Lean Startup tools.

Jessica admitted that she was naive at that early stage of her business, but that was both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, she said, it helped not to know how much work was in front of them, but it was also scary. Her biggest takeaway from starting with so little knowledge is that sometimes the best thing to do is to, “Just start.”

Once she was deeper into the process, Jessica saw the value in Lean Startup methods and began to use it, suggesting founders should learn who your early adopters are going to be and determine your minimum viable product (MVP) as early as possible, but “Don’t try to slay the dragon all at once,” she said.

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member Elliot Susel, and Aviv Stern, Chief Data Officer at Social Point, a gaming company, to discuss using lean analytics in mobile game development.

Don’t have time for the full webcast now? Catch the webcast highlights and tips from their conversation in our companion blog below.

Aviv got started working for Fortune 100 companies in a corporate environment in data back when data analytics was called “business intelligence,” he said. No matter what you call it, Aviv said the goal of analytics is finding a way to use data to benefit a business.

Aviv praised the Lean Startup method for being intrinsically data driven, a good selling point when you’re trying to convince founders or a small product team to invest in data analytics. “Each of the stages, like build, measure, learn, has integrated into it [a] data-intrinsic approach,” Aviv pointed out.

Convincing product development teams to do A/B testing early on—in which you put out two versions of a product or service and see which version is better—can be a challenging battle, Aviv said, so Lean Startup is a great approach to take.

Aviv came to Lean Startup after what he called a typical startup experience, “the failing kind” that was also educational. After bootstrapping a data science app for about a year that “we were sure was going to change the world” only to have it fail, it led Aviv to ask how they were developing solutions.

“That’s how I found myself really shifting the approach I had…to be much more lean, really focusing very early on validating,” he said.

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Kris Newcomer, Executive Director at The Firefly Sisterhood, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, on using Lean Startup methods to launch a successful non-profit as well as make positive changes outside of the business world.

In Kris and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss:

- How Kris found The Lean Startup book and then used it to launch The Firefly Sisterhood nonprofit.

- How the methodology helped her move forward and make decisions despite not knowing all the information.

- How they used “Pivot or Persevere” as they were building their organization.

And much, much more…

Kris Newcomer is the first to admit that she became the Executive Director of Firefly Sisterhood — a non-profit organization that connects women recently diagnosed with breast cancer with inspirational survivors — by being in the right place at the right time.

The idea for the non-profit originally came from an internal competition at General Mills called “The Big Bold Idea.” Yoplait, a brand under General Mills, has always done work with breast cancer, so they pitched an idea called (at the time) “Big Sister, Bigger Sister” which won the contest. But after they got the money to actually begin to build the project, they realized that the idea was too big for them to do it justice internally.

That’s when Kris got involved. “I was working for another non-profit and got a call...and [was] asked if I could talk about starting a non-profit.” Those talks eventually led to her being offered the role of founding executive director of the project.

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted the third webcast episode of a mini-series we’re doing with Rhapsody Venture Partners on Lean Startup in the hard sciences where we spoke with Jason Whaley from Rhapsody and Chris Thoen, former CTO of Givaudan, the world’s largest flavor and fragrance company and former Managing Director of Open Innovation at Procter & Gamble. They spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty member Hisham Ibrahim.

In Hisham, Chris, and Jason’s conversation, they discuss:

- How to bring the small startup mentality to big corporations

- The importance of ambidexterity in leaders so they can maintain the right balance between managing the core business and continuing to innovate

- The importance of open innovation in order for companies to grow in today's fast-paced marketplace

And much, much more...

Chris Thoen spent nearly the entirety of his 32-year career working in science and innovation, and he’s done so while deftly balancing between working for large corporations and small startups - often finding ways to work with both types of companies at the same time.

When he was fresh out of college, Chris’ first job was at a small biotech startup in Belgium. It was not only a good transition from University life to professional life, but it was a great introduction to how young companies can really work. But after a few years, he wanted more of a challenge and the ability to continually innovate on new ideas, which led him to his next job at Procter & Gamble.

“Essentially every six months you [were] on a new project,” Chris recalls, “You’re doing something different, they’re stretching you as a scientist, or potentially as a manager.”

The fast-paced nature of the company suited Chris and he spent the next couple of decades of his career working on projects - big and small - for the company. One of the highlights of his career was working on what he describes as essentially a “startup within the corporation” called Clay Street. For 12 weeks, he and 11 other colleagues from different functions of the organization, worked exclusively on a single project. It’s something that Chris still thinks about fondly. “It was so empowering, so aspirational,” he says.

From there Chris went on to lead Procter & Gamble’s Connect and Develop Program - or what he calls their “open innovation program” - where he worked to stretch targets and figure out how to go outside of their own company walls to make new things happen.

Most recently, he was the leader of science and technology at Givaudan, the world’s leading flavor and fragrance house. While he was there, he became a founding partner of MassChallenge Switzerland, an accelerator that takes no equity and helps startups hone their business and prepare their pitches for investors. Because, according to Chris, it’s important for large companies to find ways to ensure they continue to re-innovate and reinvigorate themselves with new ideas.

“We wanted to link with startup communities to get that stimulus...that boost of energy for our own management team to really see….how other people develop new ideas and novel propositions and how you could work together to bring those ideas to the market.”

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Mark Graban, Author, Professional Speaker, and Consultant, and Marilyn Gorman, Faculty Lead at Lean Startup Co., focused on the importance of metrics and how visualizing data can help foster better learning and more improvement for your organization.

In Marilyn and Mark’s conversation, they discuss:

- Why you shouldn’t react equally to every uptick or downturn in a business metric.

- How to distinguish between signal and noise in metrics and respond accordingly, which includes not overreacting.

- How to use “Process Behavior Charts” to make better management decisions.

And much, much more...

The Lean Startup Conference 2018 is sold out but you can still catch all the keynote talks with our free live stream (Nov 14-16). Sign up here: https://lsp.formstack.com/forms/livestream_registration_2018

For the past twenty years, Mark Graban, author of the book "Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More" and senior advisor to the software company KaiNexus, has been paying attention to how companies and startups use and react to metrics. “Everybody’s got goals and objectives and targets and the action or reaction — or maybe overreaction — that occurs every time there’s an up and down in metrics,” he says, “people feel like they’re taking action, but it might not always be the right action.”

Mark believes that it’s important for companies of all sizes — from startups to big corporations — to take a step back and evaluate how they look at metrics. It can be easy for a company to look at the numbers and react to every uptick, downturn or minor change — something Mark likes to call the “noise” in a metric. But he thinks it’s important for companies and individuals to determine whether or not that noise is a meaningful signal or just a standard fluctuation around an average that doesn’t need to be addressed.

But, Mark emphasizes, it doesn’t have to be complicated. A lot of companies use metrics to hyper-focus on growth, but what they should be using them for is better learning.

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education

We recently hosted a conversation between Lars Lofgren, Senior Director of Growth at I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and Elliot Susel, Faculty Member at Lean Startup Co., about implementing lean product development into your organization and how to choose the right value proposition.

In Lars and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss:

- How Lars moved the company from a rigid waterfall product development process to a more lean approach.

- Why the most important part of the product development process is choosing the right value proposition.

- How to choose the right value proposition through customer interviews, surveys, and AB testing.

And much, much more…

When Lars came on to I Will Teach You To Be Rich, the company was engaged in a waterfall approach to product development where they released a bunch of courses at once and hoped they’d make “a bunch of money,” he said. The process had some hits, but just as many misses, and he knew it was time to make some changes.

As his role shifted from generating new leads to product development, he realized that it was important to drive new products to maintain the growth of the company but the process had to be significantly refined toward a lean approach. “I didn’t throw out the entire process,” he explained, “but I did throw out huge chunks of it. Now I’d say 80% of the cycle is completely different even than a year ago.”

Email us: [email protected]

Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

https://leanstartup.co/education