This week I had a super unpleasant time boiling down my idea from a 34-page detailed Publisher mockup to three sentences. You can see them at http://theocp.launchrock.com/.
The assignment coming up next is to provide a minimal version of your product/website and get responses from the public to validate your idea. You're supposed to see if your solution is matching with a problem that people are having.
First pass: I create a five-page website (super happy about that, since I bought the domain a year ago and hadn't posted anything on it) and three super long, detailed survey targeting three different customer segments. I'm gonna get me some FEEDBACK!
Mentor: Shorter.
Second pass: I create a three-page website with one long survey.
Mentor: Shorter.
Third pass: I create a one-page website with a shorter survey: email address and zipcode.
Mentor: Shorter.
Final draft: I create a three-sentence website with a survey consisting of "give us your email address."
Mentor: Good. Now add a video.
Well, shoot. Now I get to go figure out how to make a one-minute tutorial video. Preferably by tonight. But no worries, at least I now have a place to put all the information that was cut out of the five-page website, and I'm quickly becoming an expert in boiling things down.
Want to see the finished product? Visit http://theocp.launchrock.com/. It'll only take a minute to read it. Literally.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Exploding Eyeballs
I like to read, I really do. Luckily, I read pretty quickly because I have a neverending list of things I'd like to read. But right now, the list is growing exponentially and I'm a little concerned that my eyeballs may explode.
I just finished reading "The Chaos Imperative" by Ori Brafman, which gave me some really great ideas on the importance of the subconscious problem-solving process and on the power of mixing various disciplines together (science and philosophy, math and music, etc.) I love reading books like "Blink" or, really, anything by Malcolm Gladwell, "Contagious," "The Power of Habit," or pretty much any book that takes a bunch of research and weaves it into a powerful narrative.
But now it's time to get down to work. So I've started reading "The Startup Owner's Manual" by Steve Blank, recommended by my team mentor. Assigned, actually...an hour a day of required reading. Isn't it funny how I'll happily read for three hours and feel like it's a luxury, but if it's assigned it feels a bit like a burden?
And that's not the worst part...the problem is that it's the kind of heavy reading that requires slow consumption because I'm going to be actually applying it, plus I have to put it down every five minutes because I've thought of an idea for my website, or the Customer Discovery Survey, or the startup team, or the blog, or a part of the project that won't even be implemented for another five years.
To top it all off, the class lecture I watched today had even more great things to check out. Most of these are probably on the recommended reading list in the class syllabus, but I'm also making a list of them here just so I have some sort of plan for tackling them. This list also includes other sites I've flagged but haven't had a chance to devour yet.
http://www.startupgenome.co/
http://theleanstartup.com/
http://ycombinator.com/
http://steveblank.com/
http://humbledmba.com/
https://www.leanlaunchlab.com/
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-raise-a-seed-round-for-your-startup-2014-2#-1
http://redrocketvc.blogspot.com/2012/10/lesson-124-vesting-of-founders-stock.html
http://fundersandfounders.com/how-funding-works-splitting-equity/
It's a bit overwhelming really, especially if you stop by the Steve Blank website and look at the list of recommended reading. PERFECT. So in about ten years, when I get done reading all of those books, all the mistakes I'm about to make will just be that much more painful.
So here's my plan. I'm going to focus on reading the top book in each category and hope that I'll glean enough knowledge and wisdom that I can avoid the really HUGE mistakes and try not to worry too much about all the little ones from which it's totally possible to recover; that I will know enough to pick out the right business partners, employees, consultants and investors; and that I gain enough perspective to map out a plan that's super agile but has an eye to the future so we don't just wander in circles.
And on top of all this reading, I'm working on Customer Development, website design, and class projects, which likely means my DVR is going to overflow with unwatched shows and I'll have to hire a housekeeper so my floors don't become an obstacle course.
But don't worry, that's nothing: I know it will get far worse once we actually start working on this full time. I've been through this before when we made the first website and started the school to test it out. I see you, hundred hour work weeks. I see you looming out there on the horizon. And I'm coming to get you.
Bring it on, revamp.
I just finished reading "The Chaos Imperative" by Ori Brafman, which gave me some really great ideas on the importance of the subconscious problem-solving process and on the power of mixing various disciplines together (science and philosophy, math and music, etc.) I love reading books like "Blink" or, really, anything by Malcolm Gladwell, "Contagious," "The Power of Habit," or pretty much any book that takes a bunch of research and weaves it into a powerful narrative.
But now it's time to get down to work. So I've started reading "The Startup Owner's Manual" by Steve Blank, recommended by my team mentor. Assigned, actually...an hour a day of required reading. Isn't it funny how I'll happily read for three hours and feel like it's a luxury, but if it's assigned it feels a bit like a burden?
And that's not the worst part...the problem is that it's the kind of heavy reading that requires slow consumption because I'm going to be actually applying it, plus I have to put it down every five minutes because I've thought of an idea for my website, or the Customer Discovery Survey, or the startup team, or the blog, or a part of the project that won't even be implemented for another five years.
To top it all off, the class lecture I watched today had even more great things to check out. Most of these are probably on the recommended reading list in the class syllabus, but I'm also making a list of them here just so I have some sort of plan for tackling them. This list also includes other sites I've flagged but haven't had a chance to devour yet.
http://www.startupgenome.co/
http://theleanstartup.com/
http://ycombinator.com/
http://steveblank.com/
http://humbledmba.com/
https://www.leanlaunchlab.com/
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-raise-a-seed-round-for-your-startup-2014-2#-1
http://redrocketvc.blogspot.com/2012/10/lesson-124-vesting-of-founders-stock.html
http://fundersandfounders.com/how-funding-works-splitting-equity/
It's a bit overwhelming really, especially if you stop by the Steve Blank website and look at the list of recommended reading. PERFECT. So in about ten years, when I get done reading all of those books, all the mistakes I'm about to make will just be that much more painful.
So here's my plan. I'm going to focus on reading the top book in each category and hope that I'll glean enough knowledge and wisdom that I can avoid the really HUGE mistakes and try not to worry too much about all the little ones from which it's totally possible to recover; that I will know enough to pick out the right business partners, employees, consultants and investors; and that I gain enough perspective to map out a plan that's super agile but has an eye to the future so we don't just wander in circles.
And on top of all this reading, I'm working on Customer Development, website design, and class projects, which likely means my DVR is going to overflow with unwatched shows and I'll have to hire a housekeeper so my floors don't become an obstacle course.
But don't worry, that's nothing: I know it will get far worse once we actually start working on this full time. I've been through this before when we made the first website and started the school to test it out. I see you, hundred hour work weeks. I see you looming out there on the horizon. And I'm coming to get you.
Bring it on, revamp.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
University & Corporate Interest
So, today has been interesting! Today's topics are:
Last night I had my first international videoconference with David Tan from New Zealand. We were working on the Business Model Canvas, a one-page chart detailing nine aspects of the business plan. I had to go through the whole thing twice before I felt like the categories flowed together with any cohesiveness, and still wasn't fully satisfied with it. Luckily David had a whole book on how to use this structure and he's used it before, so he walked me through it. Also, just for the record, he's the only teammate who's been on the team from the beginning and has actually helped on any of the assignments, so if you're looking to hire a very bright and creative go-getter from New Zealand, I'd be happy to write a glowing recommendation.
Two ideas are also rolling around in my head a lot today. The first is to just focus on the Open Curriculum Project and get it working, and incrementally crank it up to full functionality before tackling the other two projects (or even really putting them out there). This has been the helpful advice from our team mentor, Santosh Rajan. (Also, I was super excited that he offered to mentor our team right away; it gave me a lot of encouragement!) Now, I know logically that just spinning up one project at a time is the way to go, but I have trouble doing that in real life for two reasons. First, having some experience in programming myself, I want to be able to give the programmers specs that have the end in mind so they don't program themselves into a corner and have to rewrite the whole thing later to incorporate the rest of the ideas. Second, my brain is just exploding with ideas and I really need to work on staying focused with what needs to be done first while filing away all the other ideas for later. Sadly, I cannot clone myself and work on a hundred things simultaneously! So for this weekend I'll work on re-doing the website mock-up to just focus on the OCP. I have the plans for every part of the website already drawn up; too bad I can't just push a magic button and have Publisher convert it into a decent website for me!
The other idea is this feature of having all the lessons available in any number of language translations. I had figured that each lesson writer would just add in a few translations willy-nilly as they needed them for their own students, with Spanish being the most popular second language here in the U.S. (Eventually, when we launch the Complete Curriculum Project, I'd like each lesson to be professionally translated into the top ten languages in the world, and then users can add other translations as desired.) But as I work on this project and see lots of interest from India, for example, I'm starting to think that the multi-lingual aspect just might be the "stand-out feature" that sets us apart from the pack and brings in a lot more customers from overseas. India in particular is going through such explosive growth, and has such a high demand for good English speakers, that being able to provide all the lessons in English plus Hindi and Bengali (for starters; there are MANY languages spoken in India!) would really let us expand into an international market quickly. However, after reviewing some of the other students' papers, I can see that there would be some challenges to overcome such as frequent electrical outages and a reluctance to use credit cards to order services over the internet. However, India is definitely on my mind right now; I've even been contacted already by a university department there about using our platform (though they wanted it to be rewritten as an add-on to the EdX platform) for science lessons.
Speaking of being contacted by interested people, I also just received a message this morning from someone at a huge international company that I very much admire; she's in charge of the "discovery" phase to find a way to expand their brand into education. So exciting! I am, of course, also a bit terrified. If we start small (i.e. me and a good web programmer) we could have a basic functional website up in a few weeks since the database is already ready. It could then grow organically, though probably with some pain and hiccoughs, but in a mangageable way that allows me to keep a lot of control over the project. On the other hand, if I decide to work with a venture capitalist or a large established company then I could, for all practical purposes, indeed clone myself and work on a hundred things all at once. Each stage of the project could roll out in a polished fashion with lots of attendant marketing and make a big splash. A whole team of people would be on hand to fix problems so quickly most users would never notice, and everyone would likely be paid in a timely manner. The downside is that I would ultimately own less of the company (though a smaller percentage of a big deal is probably still a good bet) and could find myself in a situation where the project goes in a direction I don't love. On the other, other hand...there's also the concern that a big company could just swoop in and take what I've dreamed of and worked on for twenty years and squash me in court (even though my patent lawyer is pretty fierce) and I could be left with nothing.
So. Plenty to mull over today.
P.S. And now, I just got an email from another person who has launched a successful start-up in the MOOC field and mentors NSF grantees using "lean startup" methodologies. That's really the direction I'm leaning so far, probably influenced by all the business books I've read lately. Back to mulling.
P.P.S. And today, 2/23, I was approached by someone from China (where stealing other people's ideas is an art form). I'm starting to think I need some serious business advice from someone who has been through something like this before and doesn't have any interest in developing this themselves.
- Most Helpful Teammate
- International Ideas
- Big Company Interest
Last night I had my first international videoconference with David Tan from New Zealand. We were working on the Business Model Canvas, a one-page chart detailing nine aspects of the business plan. I had to go through the whole thing twice before I felt like the categories flowed together with any cohesiveness, and still wasn't fully satisfied with it. Luckily David had a whole book on how to use this structure and he's used it before, so he walked me through it. Also, just for the record, he's the only teammate who's been on the team from the beginning and has actually helped on any of the assignments, so if you're looking to hire a very bright and creative go-getter from New Zealand, I'd be happy to write a glowing recommendation.
Two ideas are also rolling around in my head a lot today. The first is to just focus on the Open Curriculum Project and get it working, and incrementally crank it up to full functionality before tackling the other two projects (or even really putting them out there). This has been the helpful advice from our team mentor, Santosh Rajan. (Also, I was super excited that he offered to mentor our team right away; it gave me a lot of encouragement!) Now, I know logically that just spinning up one project at a time is the way to go, but I have trouble doing that in real life for two reasons. First, having some experience in programming myself, I want to be able to give the programmers specs that have the end in mind so they don't program themselves into a corner and have to rewrite the whole thing later to incorporate the rest of the ideas. Second, my brain is just exploding with ideas and I really need to work on staying focused with what needs to be done first while filing away all the other ideas for later. Sadly, I cannot clone myself and work on a hundred things simultaneously! So for this weekend I'll work on re-doing the website mock-up to just focus on the OCP. I have the plans for every part of the website already drawn up; too bad I can't just push a magic button and have Publisher convert it into a decent website for me!
The other idea is this feature of having all the lessons available in any number of language translations. I had figured that each lesson writer would just add in a few translations willy-nilly as they needed them for their own students, with Spanish being the most popular second language here in the U.S. (Eventually, when we launch the Complete Curriculum Project, I'd like each lesson to be professionally translated into the top ten languages in the world, and then users can add other translations as desired.) But as I work on this project and see lots of interest from India, for example, I'm starting to think that the multi-lingual aspect just might be the "stand-out feature" that sets us apart from the pack and brings in a lot more customers from overseas. India in particular is going through such explosive growth, and has such a high demand for good English speakers, that being able to provide all the lessons in English plus Hindi and Bengali (for starters; there are MANY languages spoken in India!) would really let us expand into an international market quickly. However, after reviewing some of the other students' papers, I can see that there would be some challenges to overcome such as frequent electrical outages and a reluctance to use credit cards to order services over the internet. However, India is definitely on my mind right now; I've even been contacted already by a university department there about using our platform (though they wanted it to be rewritten as an add-on to the EdX platform) for science lessons.
Speaking of being contacted by interested people, I also just received a message this morning from someone at a huge international company that I very much admire; she's in charge of the "discovery" phase to find a way to expand their brand into education. So exciting! I am, of course, also a bit terrified. If we start small (i.e. me and a good web programmer) we could have a basic functional website up in a few weeks since the database is already ready. It could then grow organically, though probably with some pain and hiccoughs, but in a mangageable way that allows me to keep a lot of control over the project. On the other hand, if I decide to work with a venture capitalist or a large established company then I could, for all practical purposes, indeed clone myself and work on a hundred things all at once. Each stage of the project could roll out in a polished fashion with lots of attendant marketing and make a big splash. A whole team of people would be on hand to fix problems so quickly most users would never notice, and everyone would likely be paid in a timely manner. The downside is that I would ultimately own less of the company (though a smaller percentage of a big deal is probably still a good bet) and could find myself in a situation where the project goes in a direction I don't love. On the other, other hand...there's also the concern that a big company could just swoop in and take what I've dreamed of and worked on for twenty years and squash me in court (even though my patent lawyer is pretty fierce) and I could be left with nothing.
So. Plenty to mull over today.
P.S. And now, I just got an email from another person who has launched a successful start-up in the MOOC field and mentors NSF grantees using "lean startup" methodologies. That's really the direction I'm leaning so far, probably influenced by all the business books I've read lately. Back to mulling.
P.P.S. And today, 2/23, I was approached by someone from China (where stealing other people's ideas is an art form). I'm starting to think I need some serious business advice from someone who has been through something like this before and doesn't have any interest in developing this themselves.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Lecture: Adoption Factors
Lecture Notes: Technology Lifecycles & Diffusion
In this lecture, there was a great graphic illustrating how
as an idea becomes more sophisticated, “invading” ideas come in. These invading ideas are initially inferior
to the performance of the now-established idea, but soon thereafter the performance
improvements of the original idea begin to taper off while the invading idea is
still going through its biggest improvement burst. (Of course, the invading idea eventually
follows the same curve, but the point is that the invading idea can end up with
higher performance than the original.)
Adoption Factors:
1.
Relative advantage (improvement over existing).
2.
Compatability
(easy to assimilate into life).
3.
Complexity (easy to use).
4.
Trialability (easy to experiment).
5.
Observability (visible among peers and personal
networks).
4. Compatability...nothing too exciting here, but it will work on any computer browser, tablet or smartphone.
5. Complexity is going to be a big deal. For example, you can create a lesson in EdX...but it'll take a long time just to figure out how to use it, and there are tons of options. Cool options, but it's a bit overwhelming. Ours is easy...if you can pop text into a spreadsheet and upload files (or use the page-by-page lesson uploader online) you're good to go.
6. Trialability is going to give us a nice advantage. Long before we're ready to launch the Complete Curriculum Project, we'll be running all kinds of deals for people to try out lessons in the Open Curriculum Project. We'll have a small market from homeschoolers and give out a lot of free samples to classroom teachers but it's all to ramp up to large adoption once we launch the CCP.
7. I like this "observability" feature. I've jotted down some ideas in the past to leverage social networks to improve visibility, but this will need to become more of a focus. I want to make it seamlessly easy for users to show others what they like about our platform.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Time for a Revamp
The back story:
About twenty years ago, I designed a new system of education, got my husband to create a website that served up interactive lessons from a database, and then started a lab school to try out the ideas on other people's children. I spent a very intense five years continuously refining the system...and then left the school (which closed shortly thereafter) to deal with some health and family situations. Academically the school was a HUGE success but it was never strong financially. The website has limped along since then with distance home school students and tutoring students but it's overdue for a major upgrade. A 14-year-old website is pretty ancient in internet years!
Today:
With my health on the mend and my kids up to school age, it's time for the website's revamp,. I've created detailed website mockups and gotten a database developer to create the new backend functionality. Now I just need a new web designer (we're upgrading from .ASP to .NET) to plug in the front-end functionality and we're in business!
Since I work really well with deadlines, I decided to take the 6-week "Technology Entrepreneurship" course at Stanford to work through my business plan and get some feedback from other people. With any luck, I'll also find a couple of super capable people who are interested in going into business with me, because if there's one thing I learned during the five years running the school, it's that one person shouldn't be the CEO, school principal, chief lesson writer, bookkeeper, and custodian.
Here's my invitation to join the team in the Stanford class:
This one engine will power three different vehicles, each with a different targeted customer base. In the Open Curriculum Project anyone can create a lesson about anything; lesson writers (typically classroom teachers creating custom lessons for their own use) will get free credits to use any lessons with their students, while most paying users will be home school students. With the Private Curriculum Project, lesson writers can restrict access to lessons (i.e. for employees or paying members) with a paid account or charge the public extra for premium content. Once we’ve used these two projects to work out all the bugs, we’ll launch the Complete Curriculum Project, where selected teachers will create assigned mini-units of exceptional lessons as part of our K-12 level Scope and Sequence in exchange for huge curriculum grants for their schools; all of these lessons will also be tagged for use with the Common Core and other state academic standards for use in public and private schools.
I will be looking for three specific start-up partners after this class, but you can also just join the team for fun. Specifically, we'll need a business manager, a technical lead and a chief lesson writer. Please note that this course is only intended to research the viability of the idea and make changes to the business plan; if you're a good match for one of those three positions and join the team for the class, this is your chance to show that you would also make a great business partner. But joining the team for the class is not a guarantee of a percentage ownership in the company, since the company is well past the initial idea stage. Please feel free to message me if you have more specific questions about this.
About twenty years ago, I designed a new system of education, got my husband to create a website that served up interactive lessons from a database, and then started a lab school to try out the ideas on other people's children. I spent a very intense five years continuously refining the system...and then left the school (which closed shortly thereafter) to deal with some health and family situations. Academically the school was a HUGE success but it was never strong financially. The website has limped along since then with distance home school students and tutoring students but it's overdue for a major upgrade. A 14-year-old website is pretty ancient in internet years!
Today:
With my health on the mend and my kids up to school age, it's time for the website's revamp,. I've created detailed website mockups and gotten a database developer to create the new backend functionality. Now I just need a new web designer (we're upgrading from .ASP to .NET) to plug in the front-end functionality and we're in business!
Since I work really well with deadlines, I decided to take the 6-week "Technology Entrepreneurship" course at Stanford to work through my business plan and get some feedback from other people. With any luck, I'll also find a couple of super capable people who are interested in going into business with me, because if there's one thing I learned during the five years running the school, it's that one person shouldn't be the CEO, school principal, chief lesson writer, bookkeeper, and custodian.
Here's my invitation to join the team in the Stanford class:
This team will be studying the viability of revamping an online education website that has been in use since the year 2000. The new system will allow anyone to quickly and easily create an online, interactive, multimedia, multilingual lesson with an accompanying hands-on lesson plan; or use any units or lessons. The old system was tested and continuously refined for five years in a private lab school plus several years with home school students; all that experience, along with hundreds of lessons, will be ported over to the new system. In addition, the new system will allow for greater flexibility and feedback for users, be platform independent, and add a few new features.
I will be looking for three specific start-up partners after this class, but you can also just join the team for fun. Specifically, we'll need a business manager, a technical lead and a chief lesson writer. Please note that this course is only intended to research the viability of the idea and make changes to the business plan; if you're a good match for one of those three positions and join the team for the class, this is your chance to show that you would also make a great business partner. But joining the team for the class is not a guarantee of a percentage ownership in the company, since the company is well past the initial idea stage. Please feel free to message me if you have more specific questions about this.
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