ATDC Educate Equips Entrepreneurs with Tools of the Trade
Last week, we discussed why startups fail as part of the Customer Discovery Theory class in ATDC Educate’s Customer Discovery Badge Program. This week, we attended the second session in the program – Customer Discovery Tools.
Intended as a follow-up to Customer Discovery Theory, the intent of this course is to get new entrepreneurs ready to move forward in the discovery process. The first step? Actually interviewing potential customers!
Before that can happen, entrepreneurs must first understand and be equipped with the proper tools and tactics to tackle phase one of discovery. To address this, the two-hour class dove into specifics about why people buy; buyer/user personas; the benefits, use cases, and components of buyer/user personas; buyer/user persona examples; initial interview questions (the dos and don'ts); testing a sound hypothesis; and much more.
At the end of the session, attendees were able to share their business hypothesis with the class to get integral feedback and insight. If you don’t have a good, testable hypothesis, you truly can’t start this process.
DID YOU KNOW?
Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, who is recognized for developing the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement, has free tools of his own to share? In Blank’s videos, he goes into explicit detail about everything from the importance of conducting a proper interview for customer discovery to the four different types of startups – all easily accessible online!
What tools have helped you in your entrepreneurial journey? Let us know in the comments below.