A brief history of entrepreneurship.
Hello everyone,
As many of you know, I have started a new stage in my life, that of entrepreneurship, which I began with the fear and the faith of someone taking the first steps towards a place he has never been, like Indiana Jones on that invisible bridge towards his dreams.
I am currently founding a startup, which aims to revolutionise the world of education, preparing talks for the Innovagogía congress, while developing web projects in a work team of young entrepreneurs.
These years 2011 and 2012 have brought great changes to my life, from the beginning of 2011 when I met my girlfriend, with whom I happily share projects and a great passion for life, enjoying discoveries, travelling and building ventures.
In the field of my training, in 2011 I took part in a leadership programme with the Impacto 8 Itaca cohort; currently, in 2012, I am a collaborator at 4mar, a company of emotional intelligence and leadership, where I continue my training.
At the same time I am enrolled in Harv Ecker’s programme for entrepreneurs, which is made up of several parts. In October I took part in the «Train the Trainer», facilitated by Blair Singer, in which we developed skills for teaching, creating talks, lectures, training programmes and developing marketing methods. At the end of November I will go to Rome as part of the «Guerrilla Business Intensive», whose results I will apply to transform the development of our startup.
Back to our startup. Let me tell you a story.
Last year I found out that two courses sponsored by Stanford University were starting: Technology Entrepreneurship by Chuck Eesly, and The Lean Launchpad by Steve Blank. That was when I began to learn the term «Lean Startup».
The first of them took place at the beginning of 2012 and I happily enrolled together with some friends to discover how a company is set up in the Silicon Valley style: market studies, surveys, presentation, team meetings. Our project at the time, Megagenda, ended up postponed at the end of the course. For my part, my commitment to my current startup and my inability to get an answer from the team about what our long-term objectives were left the project parked. Later on, when our company has scaled enough, it is my intention to pick it up again and perhaps give it a new twist.
In the middle of 2012, Steve Blank finally announced his course on Udacity, which I am currently following. The concept being used, «Lean Startup» or Agile Company, is inspired by the agile development of technology projects and applies it to new companies. According to this interpretation of business, startups are a temporary organisation designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
Currently our team also takes part in another Stanford course: «Startup Boards: Advanced Entrepreneurship». Thanks to professor Clint Korver from Stanford University we have come into contact with other entrepreneurs and companies from all over the world to make effective decisions that take our company to the next level in the next 2 months.
Well, where does all this lead us? For you, dear reader, something will be becoming evident, and that is my interest in the development of my current companies as well as in developing the capacity of the entrepreneurs of our country in my community.
It is 4 November 2012, and I see an ad on Steve Blank’s page: http://steveblank.com/2012/10/30/10000-startups-startup-weekend-next/
It is an ad from 30 October in which the largest entrepreneur programme ever launched is announced: Startup Weekend Next (http://swnext.org)
The programme is possible thanks to the joining of Startup Weekend (startupweekend.org), Startup America (www.s.co), TechStars (www.techstars.com) and Udacity (www.udacity.com).
Startup Weekend Next is a 4-week version of the «Lean Launchpad» classes with the collaboration of instructors and mentors, and it will be carried out in hundreds of cities around the world. Steve Blank is partnered with four large organisations to run the programme. The class is organised, directed and carried out by Startup Weekend, a global non-profit organisation that teaches entrepreneurs how to launch their startup in 54 hours. Its objective is to scale what they have done so far and reach the founding of 10,000 startups. They are now looking for other partners around the world to make this a worldwide success outside the United States.
The first of the 4-week classes will begin on 28 November and its cost is low and varies depending on the city (from 140 to 299 dollars).
How it works:
We now know how to «crack» the entrepreneur’s code by creating an entrepreneurship API, a basic standard language for entrepreneurs. When you finish the classes, you will know how to think about your startup in this new standard «language» of the «business model canvas» (http://www.udacity.com/view#Course/ep245/CourseRev/1/Unit/144005/Nugget/312001 ).
You will understand the customer development process (http://www.udacity.com/view#Course/ep245/CourseRev/1/Unit/473001/Nugget/235004) used to test those hypotheses and you will learn how to iterate or pivot when that hypothesis has to be changed. You will also learn how to build a minimally viable product (http://www.udacity.com/view#Course/ep245/CourseRev/1/Unit/473001/Nugget/376003) to get customer feedback early and often.
This is how the classes will work during those 4 intense weeks:
- You will form a team and come to the class with an initial idea.
- Your team will come with an initial «Business Model Canvas». The reading before the class is to watch the first lessons of «Lean Launchpad» on Udacity. (http://www.udacity.com/view#Course/ep245/CourseRev/1/Unit/144005/Nugget/261002)
- You present your hypotheses and what you have learned in front of your colleagues and your mentors.
- Your team gets coaching and advice from the swnext.org mentors.
- You will take the suggestions they give you in the meeting, and you will get out of the building to talk to at least 10 customers a week.
- You will refine your business model by iterating or pivoting your product, your target customers, the price, the channels, the partners, and so on.
- Repeat for four weeks, and all this while working with the volunteer associated mentors of your Startup Weekend, Startup America and TechStars, serious entrepreneurs and experienced investors, to see whether your business idea was really a vision or simply a hallucination.
Startup Weekend Next represents something new, a pre-accelerator, where there is no physical space for the startup, and the startups come in and out of a programme of a determined duration. The main difference is that Startup Weekend Next commits to you with a formal curriculum. We believe we know what a startup needs to learn and we focus on teaching you that. Instead of guest speakers, you will get out of the building and learn by doing. Like the best accelerators, you will have experienced mentors, coaching and introductions. Unlike in accelerators, there is no funding at the end of the programme. But you will finish knowing much more about what building a company is about beyond a powerpoint presentation for an investor (VC) pitch.
My name is Juan Manuel Méndez Rey. I am an entrepreneur and I am looking for the support of a lead Facilitator and other organisers or auxiliary facilitators, as well as a Coach and Mentors for the programme’s teams, in order to run it in Seville.
- The ideal main organiser is someone who has already organised one of these weeks before, or an educator who has taught Steve Blank’s Lean Launch Pad curriculum.
- A lead facilitator is someone with experience in startups and who has experience in customer development and agile development.
- You have to make sure that the programme can be hosted from the week of 27 November and that it ends on 14 December.
- There will be online training meetings with Steve Blank and Bob Dorf that the organiser or the facilitator must be able to attend. On 12 November or 13 November.
- There must be a place to host 20-40 people. There will be a class in the middle of the week between 6 and 9pm and one at weekends from 10am-2pm every week. Large conference venues or small event venues are fine.
You can contact me at mendezr@universidadquantum.es