Not Only Luck.
An essay by John Melonakos

What Do You Do With Your Startup Idea?

Over the past year, our team has developed new ideas that might become new startup opportunities for us. This summer we have brought onboard new team members to develop these ideas.

Today I was formalizing the initial email describing the things we will do when we begin working together. I think the email is a good outline for how to start working on a startup idea:

Here are some initial things for you to begin reviewing:

Start Learning about the Customer Development Process

Here is a series of videos that we’ll follow:  http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/#LeanLaunchPadVideos

  • Start with the “Customer Discovery” section
    • 1) don’t watch… just motivates Customer Discovery
    • 2) watch it… this is the crux of what we are doing
    • 3) don’t watch… just says that we need to narrow our focus on our ideas
    • 4) don’t watch… just says that we need to get out of the building. facts that will help us start a business exist in potential customer’s minds. we must go talk to them.
    • 5) watch it… good motivational stuff
    • 6 & 7) don’t watch… just more motivational stuff
    • 8) don’t watch… just introduces the next sections
  • Then go to the “Before Leaving the Building” section
    • watch all these. that is where the bulk of our effort will go initially

Become Familiar with the Business Model Canvas

We will be fleshing out this canvas as we investigate our idea and learn information.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Model_Canvas

Be Prepared for Focus, Execution, and Data

We are going to be relentlessly focused and become an execution machine. Read:  http://notonlyluck.com/2013/07/18/focus-and-execution  Also read the full Sam Altman article which motivated that post:  http://blog.samaltman.com/how-things-get-done

We are going to be data-driven. We are going to be scrappy in how we operate. We want to move fast. This presentation sets a good tone for the type of work we’ll do. We want to be hardcore focused on doing things that matter and avoiding things that don’t matter:  http://davidcancel.com/data-driven-startups

Start Thinking of a Name
Go ahead and start thinking of some name ideas. Requirements are that the .com domain and twitter handle each be available.

Up-to-bat For Later:  Georgia Tech Materials

We will probably review together some of the slides as refresher material when we start working together:  http://startup.gatech.edu/competition/ and http://flashpoint.gatech.edu/lessons-for-startup-engineers/.  No need to do any pre-preparation with these.

What else? What would you include in an initial email about working together on your startup idea?

 

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