1. MBA 848B Launching the Venture | Feasibility Week 2: Competition
Patrick Vernon
Clinical Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
Executive Director, Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
Kenan-Flagler Business School

2. Most of you have pretty fuzzy ideas – they are not fully formed
Most of you have pretty fuzzy ideas – they are not fully formed. There are a lot of unknowns.

3. Pivot
Create
Your supposed to take that loose idea, figure out a specific mockup of it, and test some specific hypotheses. It is a balance of broad discovery and quantitative data collection to answer specific questions. All teams will have this balance.
Test

4. Be careful: you are not validating anything if you have not carefully created a “mockup” that you are testing.

5. Specific mockup to test specific hypothesis
Pivot
Create
Specific mockup to test specific hypothesis
Minimum viable product.
Test

6. At least 1-hour team meeting per week.
Pivot
Create
At least 1-hour team meeting per week.
Minimum viable product.
Test

7. Business Model Generation BMG Canvas Template
VALUE
PROPOSITION
Guess #1
Guess #2
CHANNELS
CUSTOMER
RELATIONSHIPS
SEGMENTS
REVENUE STREAMS
COST STRUCTURE
KEY
PARTNERS
RESOURCES
ACTIVITIES

8. Prioritize Value of information Ease of attainment
How critical is the info?
How unknown is it?
How dependent is your success to it?
Ease of attainment
Design and execution of concept test

9. What is the most important thing you need to know? How can you find out?

10. Peer Feedback = Crowdsource
Help teams prioritize their time
Specifically word a hypothesis or a concept test
Try not to ask questions or provide general critiques
Think of it as crowdsourcing knowledge and strategy.
The purpose of peer feedback in the Google Docs is to crowdsource our strategies.

11. Team Performance Team leaders must keep order
All individuals are accountable

12. Video Face-Off

13. Startup Forensics

14. “Value Network” Partner Competitor You and Customer Customer Partner
Co-Founder
Partner
Customer
You and
your idea
Customer
Customer
Supplier
Customer
Competitor
Your
Startup
Idea
Service Provider
Y o u
Partner
Competitor
Partner
Customer
Customer
Supplier
Competitor
Competitor

15. Value Network Industry Market Customer Competitor Competitor Customer
Partner
Competitor
Customer
Customer
Customer
Customer
Customer
Service Provider
Supplier
Our goal is to become experts in our value network so that we may make informed decisions about who will be our customers, suppliers, partners, etc.
Customer
Competitor
Customer
Customer
Customer
Competitor
Competitor

16. Next Step: Due Sun. Midnight
Startup Forensics Challenge
Keyword cloud
Thought leaders
Competition
Assignment on Canvas

17. Keywords
Google Adwords instructions

18. Thought Leaders Industry Research
American Society of Association Executives Gateway
Twitter

19. Launch Coaches

20. Competition Examples

21. 2x2 Matrix Nature’s Tavern Cost Savings
Sustainability of Supply Chain and Products

22. PRODUCT POSITIONING CoolGard 3000 Portable Not Portable
Rapid Rate of Cooling
Slow Rate of Cooling
RhinoChill
Arctic Sun 5000
Accutrol
OUR SOLUTION

23. PRODUCT POSITIONING

24. Effectiveness/Impact
Who and what is our competition?
Comprehensive
Ease of Use
Value
Effectiveness/Impact
Business as Usual
DIY Assessment Solution
Cartographer + ArcGIS
Community Commons
Childhood Obesity GIS
COUNTER TOOLS
Counter Tools Competitive Analysis
Counter Tools offers comprehensive and cost-effective solution.

25. Industry Landscape: Poor Support for Collaboration
TerraHub
Google Maps Premier
Google Earth Pro
OpenGeo Enterprise
ESRI ArcOnline
Secure
Realtime Collaboration
Cloud-based
Simple
“Getting Arc and its ilk to display data to the public is incredibly difficult unless you have dedicated IT.” September 17th, Amanda Henley, GIS Librarian, UNC Davis Library

26. Upcoming Challenges