Full-Course Wrap (LTV, Wednesday, Week 13 [Q4])
launching-technology-venturesyear-twoMy very last class at HBS.
Honored to have as incredible instructors as Tom Eisenmann and Jeff Bussgang...
Takeaways from listening to two really smart FIELD teams present:
-- Balsamiq is a pretty excellent tool for wireframing.
-- Good technique: do some customer interviews, make wireframes of five possible features. Then ask people to allocate 100 "points" among the five features. Figure out what people really want (because they want everything, but they probably don't want everything equally).
An easy interface that integrates several different types/sources of data in a fairly superficial way is often a very valuable thing. -- Jeff Bussgang
-- One channel to consider/CAC to measure: in-person sales. Send a guy with an iPad to the customer; show the customer a mockup; ask for an e-mail address.
"It's very inexpensive to build a brand as a first-mover. It's very expensive to build a brand as a second-mover." -- Jeff Bussgang
With a Little Help from my (Random) Friends: Success and Failure in Post-Business School Entrepreneurship, Lerner and Malmendier (2007):
Only 13 percent of HBS startups ('97-'04) succeed by any measure. And the number of real "successes" is a lot lower.
But most founders end up in interesting places regardless.
"Entrepreneurship is a career path. What you're doing right now is what you'll be doing in 10 years." -- HBS Alum, Class of 1999