pitch your idea like a rockstar!

Vision to Version

Work Central Singapore, 11 May 2016

Pitch like a rockstar

• Meet and mingle

• Greetings & introductions

• How can you improve your elevator pitch?

• How can you strengthen your vision?

• Brief introduction to V2V Labs

Event schedule

Let’s all stand up!• Who has been thinking about their project for more than 2 weeks?

• Who has done some web research on their problem?

• Who has spoken to potential users?

• Who has already built a demo?

• Who has spoken with any potential investors/funders?

• Who has received payment from customers for their product?

OK, thanks! That gives us an idea of what you’ve done so far.

Let’s hear some more about you

THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS

TO LEARN FASTER THAN

ANYONE ELSE

ERIC RIESAuthor, The Lean StartupGET BETTER REALITY

Guy Kawasaki Author, Reality Check

How can you articulate your vision better?

V2V Labs: hyper-productivity in bringing ideas to reality

1. Keep your main pitch to 60 seconds

2. Use the Start with Why approach (next slides)

3. Practice, practice, practice

4. Systematically get feedback on your idea

5. Strengthen your idea

5 simple tips

Start with why are you doing this when you pitch

Why is not about your motivation or interest

Investors and customers don’t care much about that

What they care about is what problem you are solving and for who

Too many entrepreneurs fall in love with their solution

You need to fall in love with a real customer problem first!

Start with why

(Social purpose example)• There are many elderly people in Singapore

• It can be dangerous for them boarding the bus

• Especially when the driver isn’t aware they need extra time to board

Start with Why you are solving this problem and for who

(Social purpose example)• We plan to develop a device that can alert the driver that a special

needs passenger is boarding or getting off the bus

• The driver will know to allow the passenger extra time

• This will reduce the risk of passengers falling over or missing the bus

Explain How in a way your grandma could understand

(Social purpose example)• The solution we are developing uses NFC or Near Field

Communication

• It fits on the wrist of the passenger like a FitBit and has a simple button

• A receiver on the bus near the driver alerts him with an alert tone

Explain What the solution is, keeping jargon to a minimum

(B2C example)• Carla is Singaporean women who loves to shop but has little free time

• It can be hard to find that perfect little black dress

• Even online, it’s difficult and time consuming


(B2C example)• Our platform aggregates content from many e-commerce websites

• It allows the user to do keyword searches for what she wants

• Carla can see little black dresses from more than 20 websites


(B2C example)• We have relationships with many vendors

• They allow us to catalogue their content and list prices

• The content is tagged to allow easy searching


(B2B example)• Joe is Singaporean guy who is very entrepreneurial

• He has spent more than $40,000 developing his MVP

• He hasn’t got funding, and he is running out of money


(B2B example)• Our program helps people like Joe save time and money

• Joe can build a marketable prototype with us in 4 weeks for $5,500

• If he decides part way to stop, we only charge him pro rata


(B2B example)• We test many of your assumptions before you spend on build

• We then make sure you only build what you absolutely need to build

• We have negotiated deals with quality vendors who build at low prices


1. Why am I doing this

Articulating my vision

(Elevator Pitch Practice)

2. How am I doing this?Give a brief non-‐technical explanation of your solution that even your grandma can easily understand.

3. What am I doingExplain who you are helping and what problem your are solving for them.

Finally, give a brief explanation of what the solution is, but remember to keep any jargon to a minimum.

Feedback I’ve received on my pitch

3 DOT POINTS 3 DOT POINTS 3 DOT POINTS

How can you strengthen your vision?


Eric Ries on startups

Startup success is about doing the boring stuff well

A startup creates something new under extreme uncertaintyIn the early days of any idea, it’s impossible to distinguish between brilliantand crazy

The only way to find out is to test those ideas empirically

Will customers engage in a behaviour - is it valuable for them to do so?How can I learn whether the vision is true with minimum effort?

Acknowledge what we don’t know & have a plan to find out those things

THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS

TO LEARN FASTER THAN

ANYONE ELSE

ERIC RIESAuthor, The Lean Startup

Victor Alexiev: V2V lab founder

• Founder of Vision to Version (www.vision2version.com)

• Serial entrepreneur (Innovator, Newstag, Obecto, TheSocks,

Hacker.works, SoTexy, The Pilot Project…)

• Has run 15+ digital product teams in EU, Asia, and USA

• Extensive background in digital innovation management

• Masters degrees in Decision Sciences (LSE), System

Dynamics Modelling (UiB) and Model-based Policy Analysis (RBU)

• Originally from Bulgaria, based in Singapore since 2013

Has run 15+ digital

product teams in the

EU, Asia, and USA

At one point in my career, I nearly burned out. I founded V2V so that entrepreneurs can succeed without burning too much energy, time and money.


Let’s do a simple testing framework that can help you test & strengthen your idea, (even before you spend any money!)


1. Technological complexity: Assumptions about technical difficulty of offering the value prop

2. Behaviour:Assumptions about how users will engage with the value proposition

3. Value proposition/framing : Assumptions about the perceived importance of the value prop

4. Scalability : do all the other assumptions hold at scale

What do you need to test to strengthen your idea?

Creating your personal checklist of what you need to testYou will use the A3 printout version of the table below to document your next actions

1. Technicalcomplexity

2. Behaviour 1. Value prop/framing 4. Scalability

Let’s look at a simple example


What you need to test:You will use the A3 printout version of the table below to document your next actions

1. Technicalcomplexity

2. Behaviour 1. Value prop/framing 4. Scalability

Assumptions about the technical difficulty for offering that value proposition

It’s technically possible forme to offer a back rub to my colleague.

Consider also other constraints, e.g. legal, policy

It’s appropriate under HR policy to offer my colleague a back rub.

Assumptions about how the users will engage with the defined value proposition

My colleague will accept a back rub.

Assuumptions about the perceived importance/value of the value prop given its framing

My colleague is feeling cranky. A back rub would improve his mood.

Which of all thoseassumptions hold true at scale?

It would be practical for me to give all of my colleagues a back rub.

Customers will pay $200/month

LOW impact if your assumption is wrong

Prioritizing assumptions for testing

HIGH impact if your assumption is wrong

LOW cost to test

HIGH cost to test

Let me share some of the challenges of the startup journey (and how V2V Labs helps entrepreneurs quickly overcome them)


VS.

The plan The reality

Building digital innovation: the tough reality

• Entrepreneurs are optimists

• We have a loose understanding of how things work

• Consumer research findings ≠ real customer behavior

Things rarely work out as planned. Why?

• Never built (never go beyond concept)

• Never launched (run out of steam before the big day)

• Over-engineered (bigger than necessary)

• Mis-targeted (miss the market)

Many great products fail because they are:

Three distinct entrepreneurial journeys I have seen

Bootstrapping entrepreneurs

Resourced entrepreneurs

Large organizations

Typical pitfalls

Mistime their move and run out of ‘juice’

Burn bridges & limit their learning opportunities

‘Boil the ocean’ (or just play it safe)

Want to build a high fidelity, market-‐validated digital prototype in just 4 weeks?


1. Production innovation is about solving a problem (create access) and increasing the ease of use (expanding access)

2. Product Innovators are not good at predicting reality – the only way is to ‘probe’ reality with tests and prototyping

3. If you solve a problem for 5 people you can scale it to many, but you can’t solve a problem without thinking small first

4. Product Innovators need to Learn fast + Learn Early= Learn cheap

5. Most entrepreneurs try to do too much: reducing distraction and focusing on what you need to focus on is essential

Takeaways

V2V Labs is a group of Agile practitioners with Engineering,

Product Management, Design Thinking, and Marketing

backgrounds, performing an experiment in maximizing human

productivity in the early stages of digital innovation

Who we are

Our Partners

YOU?

How V2V helpsNext V2V starts 24MAY – still 2 vacancies!

How V2V helps—continued Next V2V starts 24MAY – still 2 vacancies!

4 scrum-based sprintsNext V2V starts 24MAY – still 2 vacancies!

Program services:Next V2V starts 24MAY – still 2 vacancies!

The basic 4-week program covers:

Contact us if you

Fail to dedicate sufficient focus towards validating &

releasing a product

Tend to test only a few product hypotheses before going ‘all-in’

Need a lean and mean product

machine!

• Do I need to attend full-time for the full 4 weeks?

• What if I don’t have coding skills?

• Can more than one person from my organisation attend?

Frequently asked questions

Q&AStick around if you’d like to know more!


Contact details

[email protected]

pitch your idea like a rockstar!

Small Business & Entrepreneurship