A bit about Sal Canadian Tech entrepreneur, now London-based. Started 5 businesses - tech startups, IT providers, ecommerce Created the Digital Marketing department of a major agency. Founded Leancamp. Salim Virani [email protected]@SaintSal I’m an entrepreneur with both technical and marketing backgrounds, I founded 5 tech startups, all of which sought and found revenue from the outset. And I founded Leancamp. Around The Corner was my last startup and biggest failure. a) because I didn’t go for revenue first a) because I didn't kill it fast enough when it wasn’t working b) because I didn't have to since i was funding it myself (One of the risks of bootstrapping is your stick with a bad idea and keep dumping your own money into it. Outside funders aren’t so forgiving.)
Transcript
A bit about SalCanadian Tech entrepreneur, now London-based.
Started 5 businesses - tech startups, IT providers, ecommerceCreated the Digital Marketing department of a major agency.
I’m an entrepreneur with both technical and marketing backgrounds, I founded 5 tech startups, all of which sought and found revenue from the outset. And I founded Leancamp.
Around The Corner was my last startup and biggest failure.a) because I didn’t go for revenue firsta) because I didn't kill it fast enough when it wasn’t workingb) because I didn't have to since i was funding it myself
(One of the risks of bootstrapping is your stick with a bad idea and keep dumping your own money into it. Outside funders aren’t so forgiving.)
This is the start of Leancamp. It’s an unconference format, which promotes participation...
... conversation, discussion ...
and relevant personal connections.
It’s partly a conference that combines entrepreneurial, Design and management topics.
But adds a lot of organised peer to peer discussions.
And workshops of all sizes run by leaders and peers.
(That’s DHH of 37 Signals in a small workshop with 12 entrepreneurs last year.)
It’s optimised for you individually to learn what you need. It’s where different disciplines go to learn from each other and about Lean and Lean Startup. This is the session schedule, which gets filled out on the day based on what the participants attending what to learn and discuss.
Learn from the world’s leading Lean, Agile and Design-led businesses
Typical Schedule
10:00About LeancampVisual Poster Session
11:00 Sessions, talks and workshops
12:20 Lunch!
1:00 Sessions, talks and workshops
5:00 Closing!
Invited speakers & experts are scheduled throughout the day, alongside sessions led by the participants.
We start with a poster session, so everybody gets a chance to describe what topics they’d like covered, and everyone has a chance to vote on them. Anyone who has anything to contribute can do so. Anyone who wants certain experts to cover a specific topic can make it happen! Then, we schedule those to run as half-hour sessions in 3-5 parallel tracks throughout the day.
It gives everyone a chance to bring their current challenges. This is Joel Gascoigne when he was working on his last startup, One
Page.
It brings up some really interesting subjects and ideas and sparks new connections, tools and new approaches. We’ve seen the emergence of Lean UX, Customer Development with the Business Model Canvas, and leaders of various communities come together at past Leancamps.
There’s a lot we can learn from each other. Leancamp is an atmosphere designed for exactly that, which makes each Leancamp lead with the strengths of the city it’s in. Each one is unique and creates unique opportunities for the hosting city.
around the corner
Idea first - it came from looking at my strengths, experience and opportunities I discovered in my previous businesses. The
Business Model followed. It was a multi-side market model with a long sales cycle in two of those markets. Lesson learned: First
attempt business models that can be bootstrapped, don't try to bootstrap a non-bootstrap model.
Buffer App is Joel’s company. Business Model first. Idea followed. He was asking himself, “Which idea should I pursue?” “Which
one is most suitable for a Lean Startup approach?”
Lean Startup basically says - think about what you’re doing, and do things in the right order. If the biggest risk is that nobody will
buy your product, test that now, rather than in 3-6 months. Test it before writing a business plan, building a product, opening a
bank account or quitting your day job. That’s what Joel Gascoigne did after One Page.
He started with the top page - and put that out to some tech community websites. He wanted to see if people would click the plans and pricing page, demonstrating their intent to buy. (This is better than asking them, which tells your their stated intent, not actual intent.)
When they were clicking on that, he knew there was intent to buy, but at what price? So he tested that too. Joel went from idea to first paying customer in 7 weeks, working on Buffer in his evenings and keeping his day job as a coder. (Notice that he wasn’t coding BufferApp, just testing the market!) A few months later, he was making enough to pay himself and bring in his co-founder, Leo.
Is your business model good for bootstrapping?
Do you earn before you spend?How short sales is the sales cycle?Can you validate the sales funnel first?Can you cheaply repeat the awareness channel?Can you access the beachhead market for free?What costs can you cut out or delay to a later stage?
Salim Viraniwww.SaintSal.com @SaintSal
Thanks.
Learn from the world’s leading Lean, Agile and Design-led businesses
More Leancamps coming.Sign up to the mailing list to have first access to tickets!
@leancamphttp://leanca.mp
If you want to learn more, we run Lean Startup meetups every month. And Leancamp unconferences around Europe, which are expected to sell out fast. They get announced to the mailing list first so sign up at http://leanca.mp. For more info on this story, check out Joel’s blog at http://joel.is and also check out Patrick Vlaskovits’ presentation: Customer Development Hacks at http://leanca.mp/?p=616194422
