# Startup academy notes

These are the collected notes of all startup academy talks and workshops
Zoom-Link: https://zoom.us/j/93182897967

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# Startup academy- 18.11.2020

Prof. Dr. Nils Högsdal
https://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/home/hoegsdal
E-Mail: [e-mail]

## Business plans and model

- Business plans can change
- Definition: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model
- Startups fail because they confuse "search" with "execute"
- A startup will experience 3 major pivots in average
- Buchtipps: handbuch für startpos, business model generation
- customer discovery <-> customer feedback

### The three fits to a working business model
1) problem solution fit
-> value proposition and customer segments
-> what is the real problem? understand the customer
2) product market fit
-> value proposition and customer segments
-> think of the first version of the prototype and find the people with the biggest pain
-> customer creation and company creation
-> customer relationships and channels (be creative with channels, e.g. conferences, social media, )
[2.5) depp dive traction: asap-bw.com]
3) business model fit
-> key partners, key activities and key resources
-> cost structure and revenue streams: key metrics and the financial models

- create value with you product and try to fit that into the point of sale
- which partners could help you and support your startup?

## Sidenotes

video tipp: clay christensens milkshake marketing
business model bulls eye map
investment readiness model

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# Startup academy - 25.11.2020

Wolfgang Vogt - Senioren der Wirtschaft

## Who's your target audience? And why do you care?

### First steps
- Don't work on too much target audiences, but focus on a few and create an order:
-> Wage opportunity size vs. ease of access and choose the easiest accessible options with the highest revenue
- Add relations between the potential customers - this can help to find easier entries to the market
-> Are the any mediates to the target group or mulitpliers?
- Don't generalize the target audiences (e.g. hospitals - rather into privat, public or even more detailed like doctors...)
- How can you reach them? Find organizations, where only your target audience is active (e.g. Verbund der Zahnärzte)
- 3 main aspects: Buyers, Users, Whom is your product used on?
-> Buyers: define the companies by sub industry and company size and the size of opportunity and ease of access

### Further specification
- Decide in which region you want to be active/start - focus with one or a few

**Enterprise/B2B**
- Specify an industry, the company revenue and the company size for your target group
- Smaller companies are often easier to approach, bigger companies need more effort, but also offer bigger deals
- Target the right people (or departments in bigger companies) to talk to and who could make decisions
- Get in touch as discussion, not a selling process: "I am working on my master thesis and stumbled upon your company...."

**Customer/Buyer/User/Persona**
- Age and gener, marital status
- Education and job
- Social situation and income
- Lifestyle and personality traits

## What do you want to know?

- Will they buy your offering / will I earn enough to survive
- What is important for them? Write down their top three priorities
- Does my offering solve their problemes?
- What are they willing to pay?
- Are you better than your competition?
=> Focus on their motivation, don't approach them with "look at my offering" (say: "i've listened to your feedback, would that thing that I developed help you?"" instead of: "I've developed a solution for your problem")
=> Focus on objective feedback rather than applause

### Value proposition canvas
- 80/20 rule: 20% of the reached target audience/customers result in 80% of the outcome/revenue - don't focus too much on the details
- Value proposition: Products&Services, Gain creators and pain relievers
- For each pain, create a pain relievers - for the gains equally
- Customer segments: gains, pains and customer job(s)
- Check for the problem-solution fit
- s. https://digitaleneuordnung.de/blog/value-proposition-canvas/

**Remember:** 50% of the gain is emotionally (number made up)

### Empathy map
- What does she think and feel? (what really counts)
- What does she see? (environment, friends, marked offers)
- What does she hear? (friends, type of offering)
- What does she say? (attitude,...)

## How do you ask?

Listen more and don't pressure with the solution.

**What to ask to validate the problem**
- From a customer point of view, start with her priorities, what are your big goals right now
- stay away from details
- Ask easy, short and simple questions
- Make clear that you are in the early stage of the process
- Look for the problems, wants and needs, fears and hopes
- Do not ask for the solution, develop ideas for the solution and ask again

**Get out of the building and ask!**
- One on one:
- write an email to introduce you offering and ask for meeting or call
- talk to the target audience directly: buyers, users and costumers of your customers
- talk to mediators and mulitpliers
- call
- Observe the customer working
- At networking events
- Sending out questionaires, e.g. survey monkey
- Prepare the questions and document the results

This might mean: you have to update your business plan and pivot - never ending process: feedback loop

It's not about satisfaction, it's about enthusiasm: if they are happy with it, they will recommend your product - enthusiasm generates more enthusiasm

Performance - CustomerExpectation = CustomerSatisfaction
-> So, never promise too much

### Competition

Even if you don't have the feeling, that you have competition - the customer will not think that way.
-> Who are your competitors from a customer point of view? Solve it e.g. with: Service, Hardware or other Software

## The customer journey

Accompany your customer in every step and post in the related fields:
- Satisfaction assesment
- Understanding the problem
- Selectiong a solution alternative
- Searching for offerings and asking for proposals
- Selecting an offering
- Buying
- Delivery and implementation
- Usage

Check which information is searched for about a competitor? Fears, ...? And where are they looking for information? -> this is area where you want to be active. This leads to enthusiams and returning (revenue)

- If you understand a problem, you will place yourself as an expert in that area and people will may come back later.
- Only if customers are interested and aware, they will by your product.

**Social media side note:** Make sure to check out the groups and read the contents your customers are interested in. Use self-created content or re-post stuff that is also relevant from other sources. Both approaches will justify your expertise.

When selling: give them the feeling that it's not about you, it's about them. Try to approach with the possibility to save time/money (over a specific period of time).
-> See [Value Proposition Canvas](https://www.businessmodelsinc.com/about-bmi/tools/value-proposition-canvas/)

### Marketing basics

- Not only one tactic, but a combination
- Selecting the right social media platform
- A good website: Structure, SEO, Google places
- Email or snail mail? What will trigger a person to open your email? Spend a couples of hours on this one
- Catching phrases (jep, we should hire someone here)

# Startup academy - 02.12.2020

Dr. Dinah Murad on Market Analysis - MedTech Startup School

## The market

Also check out steve blank and some of his videos: https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+blank&tbm=vid

- Who are you building you valuie proposition for?
- What jobs do the customers want to be done by YOU?
- Customers aren't there for you - you are there for them
- Who are "they"? = archetypoes & persona(e)
- From qual to quant
- Segment
- mass segment: not a lot of customization
- nieche market: very specific requirement
- segmented: segmentation e.g. on customer profiles, related segments
- diversified: a lot of unrelated segments
- multiplatform: like diversified but with an interdependence

## Market analysis

First try to understand what you want to research and where you want to start

Solution approaches can be:
- Directly act and respond to the problem
- Find a out of the box solution
- Wait and follow: no need to find a solution
- always consider that there are other solutions. what is already existing
- Consider pros and cons for every alternative solution (from competitor's) and consider your own advantages in comparison with them

**Application in the visuvio case**
What is the pain we want to heal?
- If you work in aviation, automotive or mechanical industry at all, there is a need for vibration analysis, so further pain is...
- ...to make hardly noticable and small vibrations visible
- ...to make issues visible that wouldn't be recognized with prior approaches and would lead to failing of projects
How can you treat this pain without your solution?
- Are there already existing solutions?
- Yes, kind of. There are e.g. mechanical based solutions for this, e.g. accelerometers
- For the cases above also e.g. the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method
- Are there creative other options?
- place the mechnical sensors on various places and play around with them
- do macro recordings of the testing setup instead of recording the whole testing scene
- Pros/Cons of our solution?
+ Cheaper, faster and more flexible
- For now, we don't offer a out of the box solution

### Qualitative Market Research
- Qualitative market analysis comes first: know your customer. Always stay in connection with your customers, they can change.
- Do your customer journey! This provides insights where the pain really is and if it's a pain worth solving. This could also provide new touchpoints.
- What do your customers want to get done and where is the pain in that? If there is no pain there is no Job for you
- Who is currently solving that pain?

### Quantitative Market Research
- How to get from qualitative to quantitative? e.g. tam (total demand for your product)-sam (based on you current business model)-som(based on the practical limits of your business model)
- Where do you gather these numbers?
- market research reports
- press releases - also from competitors
- library, in healthcare: pubmed, epidemiolocial data, review with nbumbers of patient data
- internet research: speciality clinics, hospitals, number of phzsicans, specialists
- numbers from healthcare insurance companies
- Look at what you be providing and look at the price, then decide where to start: Decision maker, econimic buyer, business/sales layer or customer?
- Check for influencers and gate keepers: pick people with a lot a influence in your area of application, even if they would not be the final consuments of your products
- Don't contact directly, but find a story to wrap it around you question or questionaire.

### Product market fit

Problem-Solution fit < product-market fit < business-model fit
- s. first session under "The three fits to a working business model"
- Usually, it is not enough to say, that you've got a solution
- Market is envolving: make sure that you always have a right market-fit: invest in e.g. sales team

# Startup academy - 09.12.2020

Project Managment - Entrepreneurship Essentials // VS Consulting
Nadine Westermann und Henriette Seitz

Tools:
- Interactive voting: a
- Digital whiteboard: https://miro.com/

## Why project managemnt?
"Project management is the shortest distance between concept and completion."
- Reducing risks: Identify them
- Establishing an efficient organization for a limited period of time: Setup a team an structures
- Define a goal: Directing all activities towards the common goal
- Coordinating these activities
- Improving the flow and exchange of information
- Planning step

Benefits
- Efficency and effective: do the right things and do the things right
- Tasks should be controllable: targeted project management
- Planned: increase adherence through professional planning
- Transparancy: improved transparency thorugh documentation and communication
- Improve leadeship skills and knowledge building

Three major standards for settings basic standards and overall same understanding of the definition:
- Germany: IPMA & GPM - also a DIN norm 69901
- USA: PMI
- GB: Prince2

## Project Managment Process

Five basic phases:
- Initiating: First idea
- Definition: Look at the goals and aims of the project / analysing e.g. risk managment and stake holder managment
- Planning: Planning people, resources and costs / what do you need?
- Performance and Control
- Closure and evaluation

## Project Environment Analysis

"Screening" of the actual situation:
- What was the trigger for the project?
- What characterizes the current situation?
- Where is need for optimization?
- How does the managment/sponsor/investor view the project?
- What happened before the project? What should happen afterwards?

Screening the context:
- Identify all possible

Screening of the environment: factual, social, internal and external

### Risk Management
- Identify potential risks
- Evaluate risks
- Define strategies to dealk with the risks
- Determine counter measures
- Communicate the risks
- Monitor the risks

Try to get rid of them or at least try to control the influence of it.
Use a risk management matrix to evaluate the impacte (moderate, major, critical) vs. the likelihood of appearance

### Stakeholder

- Stakeholders are indiviuals, groups or organizations taht are involved in or are affected by a project (staff, client, customers, suppliers, society)
- They have different interests in the project
- Can influence your project positively or negatively

Questions asked:
- Which stakeholders should be considered?
- What influence do they have?

You can also use a graph here: on the one axis the influence on the project (low-high) and on the other axis the attitutes towards the project (opposes-supports)

## Detailed planning
Basically: smart goals, project order -> milestone plan -> phase planning -> work packages -> plan of procedure -> time plan -> resource plan

Work packages
- The amount of work that has to be done is devided into work packages.
- Typical structure would be the name, number, content, requirements needed, target date, estimated effort (min, real, max), needs to be done before milestone.
- Scheduling of work packages: based on the target date, dependencies and relationship of to other packages. also relies heavily on the available resources

### Resource and time planning
- Project needed resources: can be time, staff, facilities, ....
- Best way is to have serveral experts do an estimate and then compare the results

### Cost estimate (Aufwandschätzung)
- Attention: Cost vs duration - could differ since the duration includes pauses (e.g. due to external input)
- Required to: work effectively, make the project a sucess and be able to allocate various resources
- Scrum poker: a gamification technique for estimation (https://scrum-poker.org/)
- Multiple iterations of discussions and votings could improve an estimation

### Project communication and steering
- Communication and team dynamics are vital
- 57% of all projects fail because of lacking/bad communication
- You are communicating all the time. Communicate clever and use your mediums correctly

# Startup academy - 16.12.2020

Wolfgang Vogt - Senioren der Wirtschaft - Business Model Canvas
senioren-der-wirtschaft.de

## Business Model Canvas
- Updates over time, should be looked at regularly
- Should cover 80% of businessplan but less complicated
- Structured model to think about most important areas

### Customer Segmemts
- Try to do B2B and B2C
- Charge different Segments against each other. Which one first, which one leave?
- Are segments in the hands of customers?
- Define personas eg www.businessmodelgeneration.com

### Value Propositions
- if price is higher than competition, does that mean you have the higher quality?
- Important need: Reduce Risks!

#### Pains!!!1
- is the software solution on its own enough to satisfy the customer or does he/she needs also hardware (support)
- provide service if they run into problems?
- think about what else the customer needs that comes with your solution
-> ask questions and validate your results - repeat

#### Product market fit
- Check Pain relivers and gains with customer

### Channels
- If customer is used to buy similar product in a shop, distribute your solution in a shop
-> Whats the customers natural behaviour
- Where are they active thus where should you be active - don't force the users/buyers into a field, start where they are already active
- Cost efficency?
- B2B: Whats the usual way for integrating a product, whats the normal way
- After Sales
- NEVER overhype your product
- In our case: we shouldn't give them to much details about how exactly we can measure things (like that 3 floating point values bla). Undersell a little bit (we still generate trust by having ESA and Airbus behind us). Then when being in contact with them (or when they have the product?), show them what we are really able to.
- Recommendations work best as a channel. In our case, close contact to ESA as recommendation source -> probable to get in contact with other bc of meetings they organize from people in the field
- RESELLERS? Todo: Look at the possibilities

### Customer Relationships
- Communities? Forum etc, Users help users
- Product: Do we develop OR do we create together with the user
- Also possible with pilot customers
- we are going this road atm
- Try to get deep into a relationship with a customer "They really know what they are doing"
- Why should a investor/buyer should invest in an startup?
- Small team size, not a lot of expertise/unexperienced, not a lot of validation of the sold product
-> Don't talk about your product, talk about everything around it - but only bring it to the plate if the relationship is ready for it
- When customer akss questions, ask why he asked them: Try to understand what is really behind the questions asks
-> Ask five times why and you really know the anwer

### Key partners
- Make sure what you can do and what you are good in
-> Then outsource stuff you're not good in, like accounting - you're not good in accounting

=> Resulting question: Can we make money and grow our company?

Memo:
- https://www.businessdesigntools.com/resources/
- https://www.designabetterbusiness.tools/tools
- https://www.strategyzer.com/

# Startup academy - 13.01.2021

Financial planning > Financing > Controlling - Lothar Schubert & Thomas Römer
[e-mail]

# Part 1: Financial Plan (Lothar Schubert)

***What is the right time for the first financial plan?**
At first it is not possible: too much unspecified aspects. With the first BMC: you can create the first plan. You have the first fixed premises, which helps to set the boundaries and focus points, to define a timetable, the scalability of the plan and helps to specify different scenarios. The scenarios must be plausible; this results in the original plan being good. Believe in your plan, otherwise work on the plan which fits you.

> financial plan = business plan in numbers.

*Note:* The right plan for you is the plan which matches your style or working and your characteristics (ambitious, cautious,...).

## Control Parameters

**Profitability:**
- is the company profitable?
- remains a profit at the year-end?
- profit or loss according to financial accounting
- fiscal (steuerliches) year
- Will be good, if you deliver your orders. Does not determine "if you have money"

> Revenue/Sales (Umsatz) - Cost of Sales = Gross Profit (Rohertrag)

**Liquidity**
- startups often have problems with liquidity
- preview for the next 4 months?
- If your customer pays in 3 months thats good, but you have to pay in between as well

### Content of financial planning

#### What do we have to plan (for the year)?
- revenue/sales
- investments
- operating costs
- (cost of private living)
- finance livelihood with startup?
- transparency about private cost of living (income and expenditures im Überblick?)
- Equal conditions in the team?

#### What are your revenue streams?
- What is the customer paying for? (price list!)
- Concret premises: number of customers, order quantities, average price, advance payments
- What are you offering? Products, projects, services, sales channels
- What type of offer/customer? regular customer, occasional customer, one-time customer
- Plausiblity and transparency of the revenue deployment, must be transparent: Where does every number come from.
- Invoice written does not mean having received payment
=> What is the decision making process of the customer? e.g. the stages of the B2B sales process: https://www.cognism.com/blog/8-stages-b2b-sales-process

#### Financial Planning Tool (Senioren d Wirtschaft Excel)
- First year monthly, the rest annually
- Investments: What do you have to invest to get your first planned revenues (including initial starting and setup costs of your startup)

#### Planning Operating Costs
What are the main cost drivers?
- Don't forget side costs such as insurances, taxes and assiciation fees
- Operational costs are often the biggest expenses you'll have. Calculating them will offer a good overview
- Cost structure
- sales-dependent costs (depends on number of sales)
- fixed (don't change regardless of revenue = rent, room, staff), needs good transparency
- event-related
- unexpected (washing machine broken), Geld für die "hohe Kante"

### Part 2: Financing (Thomas Römer)

Best approach for success: Orientation > planning > execution

### If you're a banker
- trust ist the name of game: the investor at least wants his money back
- all securities serve to secure the risks associated in planning an in unforeseeable events

### Options of financing
All options are described in more detail in the slides
- Active partnership
- Participation (Unternehmensbeteiligung)
- The inventor and the investor are involed in the startup
- no participation of the investor in operational managment
- loss sharing: proportional to the shares
- non regularly repayment, exit through sales of shares
- Silent participation
- mezzanine- or subordinated loans
- participatory loans
- crowdfounding

- Set up meetings early
- agree on who participates on both sides of the meeting
- ask which documents are needed in prior
- First impression counts
- Take care of your outer appearance. This includes personal hygiene and your clothing
- Choose something you feel comfortable with -> authenticity
- Be punctual and plan for some additional time
- leaves an impression and is polite
- gives inner calm and the meeting is not "under pressure"
- Look like the professional you are
- Think about your goals of the meeting
- carefully prepare your "performance"
- practice big conversionsations with a sparring partner
- Take care of form, content and presentation of your documents
- they are the personal business cards
- compentent impression if there are of good quality and content
- Master your emotions
- be enthusiatic about your company and your plans
- stay cool, even if it is sometimes not that easy
- if you feel treatet unfairly: don't threaten your counterpart, be constructive
- Build up a relationshop of trust
- Regulary inform your financing partner(s)
- Communicate openly and avoid (negative) suprises
- Be honest: lost profits can be restored, lost trust not

Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks

## Part 3

### Early detection
- Plan (guessing) != forecast (adjusted to actual current state)
- Profitability should be done monthly (+ forecast for rest of the year also monthly)
- Overwrite your own forecasts for liquidity assesment
- Do the forecast for about 4 months. Brand new calculation of the future with the premises of today

# Startup academy- 20.01.2020

Elke Butchereit / Rolf Hecker

## Legal right // What for?
patent and utility model // (technical) innovation
registered design and design patent // external appearance
trade mark // distinctive identification of produts or services
copyright // original creative or artistic forms
trade secrets // valuable informations not known to the public

## Trademark
500 Euro for 10 years

# Startup academy - 10.02.2021

Prototyping - Ralf Allrutz // https://allrutz-consulting.de/

- https://www.amazon.de/Brand-Gap-distance-business-Whiteboard/dp/0321348109/ref=asc_df_0321348109/

## Pretotyping

Validating the market appeal and actual usage of a potential new product by simulating its core experience with the smallest possible investment of time and money.

> make sure you are building the right it
> before you build it right

- 90% of mobile apps don't earn money
- 80% of new products fail
- Use the law of failure for your advantage: Prototyping -> Pretotyping
- Smaller, earlier executed tests, e.g. more ideas, lead to smaller but steadier success

### The issue
There is a big problem with ideas: When we imagine ideas we are in dreamland. We talk about them, we get a lot of opinions (opinions are always biased! -> the mum test).
It's a pitty, when an idea is flagged as a false negative. -> Leave thoughtland fast: put ideas into pretotypes and opinions into data!

### Examples:
- innovatores beat ideas
- pretotypes beat productypes
- building beats talking
- simplicity beats features
- now beats later
- commitments beats commitee

You want to change a potential "would" into a "will" if it affects topics like "is the customer buying my product?"

## Vision vs. Hallucination
You want to distinguish between the level of success of you

RPO = Learning (Pro)/Learning (Pro) X Cost (Pro) / Cost (Pre)

Take into account the ROI of the prototype and how much money you save with a pretotype
ILI: initial level of interest
OLI: ongoing level of interest -> development over time

# Usability

- Iterative improvements on the design BUT people have habits
- Gebrauchstauglichkeit nach ISO 9241

## Efficiency and Effetiveness

- Efficiency: Do the right things
- Effectiveness: Do the things right