6 Month Startup – The Kitsap Edition

StartupKitsap has partnered with Trajectory:Startup!

To jump into any of the virtual sessions and partner up with your Puget Sound fellow founders, head over to the Get Trajectory website.

When will Startup Kitsap put on an in-person program again? When the pandemic lessens and state guidelines permit us to. We miss our community! But that does not mean that startups have stalled. Check out other resources over at our Ecosystem page. Be safe but keep pressing on with your startup dreams - the world needs you!

What is it?  6 Month Startup is a monthly meetup that develops founders as they develop their business. Specifically, it helps aspiring and repeat founders, corporate innovators, transitioning veterans and their families, digital nomads and students:

  • Confirm that their ideas are worthwhile;
  • Find potential cofounders;
  • Add structure to corporate goals;
  • Meet potential employees who are excited by innovation; and
  • Learn process and structure for thinking about new ideas.

The program is the brainchild of Dave Parker, a Seattle-based tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist and board advisory member at dozens of companies.

About the program

Over the course of six months, you’ll define and refine your big idea, understand how to make money with it and make an informed decision about whether to leave leave your day job. The monthly 6 Month Startup Kitsap meetup format includes content, exercises, time to pitch, feedback from mentors and dinner.

You will have homework. The result of that homework will be the key to meeting with mentors at the next session. This is your startup and the pace at which you approach the homework is up to you, however, mentors require that you have a serious idea and are doing the work to merits their generosity of time and expertise.

View the program curriculum and learn more at 6monthstartup.com

Where are the sessions held?

All session are held at Vibe Coworks in Poulsbo WA.

What time are the sessions?

Early Evenings - see registration details per session

What is the cost?

The cost per session is $35 for founders and a discount code is available for students.

Are dinner and drinks provided?

Yes, as part of your fees, we will cover dinner and non-alcoholic beverages.

Who is it for?

6 Month Startup is designed to help founders who have an idea and want to eventually get it to market.  It is also meant to be a proving ground that investors, community leaders, and other champions can encourage and promote the startup ecosystem.  Working on your idea side by side with your colleagues may very well result in a relationship that leads to financing or a future business partner.  The program is built for entrepreneurs across the board, not just technology startups.  See the program curriculum to see if your idea might be a good fit.

Community members are also invited to participate who are committed to growing the startup ecosystem on Kitsap - with the express intent to give back, support, and encourage.  Investors and sponsors are always welcome as well.

Do I have to attend all six sessions?

You will be strongly encouraged to attend all six sessions as each session builds upon the previous ones.  The work required by you is for your benefit to move your idea forward.  We encourage you to not take your own personal time for granted nor the fellow founders and mentor time.  If you have to miss a session, that is understood, but the expectation is that you come to learn and put the work in to succeed.

Who is leading 6 Month Startup Kitsap?

Technology and business executives who have startup experience will be leading the program in Kitsap.  The leadership team (Brett Eddy, Alanna Imbach, Ed Hallda) are in close contact with Dave Parker and the Seattle 6 Month Startup team.  They will be calling upon startup and business colleagues to provide leadership throughout the sessions, including Ideation & Research, Business Models, Marketing, Target Audience, Intellectual Property, Pitches and Fundraising.

To learn more about the program, visit www.6monthstartup.com

 

 

6 Month Startup - Ideation to Revenue and Fundraising

While startup founders at the beginning of their journey will get the most out of this program by attending each session 1-6 in order, you are also welcome to come to any individual sessions!

Here's an outline of the program:

  • Month One - Ideation, Research, Markets and Telling Your Story
    • What makes a good idea anyway? Passion is important but not sufficient! If you're looking to scale your idea into something that is fundable or can create a lifestyle to support you and your family. There is a lot you can learn about what makes both good and bad ideas - and don't believe the quote, "Ideas don't matter, only execution matters." That implies that you have a good idea in the first place.
    • Research - How do you do research to see which companies have come before you, where have they had success and/or failure, and what you can learn from it?
    • How should you think about your target customer and target market? Is it big enough? How will you get to it and do you have the runway to make it successfully?
    • Telling Your Story - it’s not a pitch at this point, but a structure to tell your story and make sure you cover the basic check boxes of information
    • Note about startup success: This is a Journey!
    • We will discuss as an encouraging, honest community how and when to endure and when to take your ideas and put them on the shelves.  While you will be doing the work, it is all about being honest with yourself, surrounding yourself with great people, and achieving success.
  • Month Two – Customer Development, Competitive and Awkward Co-Founder Discussions
    • Customer Development is the process of systematically interviewing potential customers for feedback that will inform your product priorities and decisions. When you complete this section, this will be a method you take forward and use in every idea and company that you launch. You will learn to be an expert in Customer Development.
    • How do you look at the competition – Bezos is right, you should focus on your customer first, and before you start your company you need to know what current features meet or exceed the market’s needs as well as the current pain your customer is feeling.
    • Awkward Co-Founder Discussions is the talk about commitment, equity, and contribution of time and capital that you need to have before you incorporate. It will never get easier to have these discussions.
      • Founder Interview Questions
      • 73% of teams will of split equity in the first 30 days without knowing what journey they face (link)
  • Month Three – Value Propositions, Testing your Hypothesis, Product Features, and Benefits
    • Now that you have some customer feedback, you should start to get your Value Propositions clearly laid out. What is the “lede of your story,” how do you tell your story and get “the first things” to be the first thing? For Starters, we tend to clutter up all of the current and potential value propositions in our head and it’s tough to be clear to our target customer – we’ll help with that process
    • Testing, testing, testing – it’s good that you have a hypothesis, but it’s just that until you have actual data. We’ll outline a process for you to test messaging, advertising and conversion ratios to get DATA to inform your theory.
    • It’s time to begin to identify the features and benefits of your product for both the Launch and the Scale of your startup. Scale and vision are great, but you have to survive long enough to get to scale. Narrowing your focus for launch is key – you only have so much in terms of resources, time, engineering, and capital. Remember, constraints are actually a good thing.
    • OFFICE HOURS – you’ll have the opportunity for office hours with a few of our mentors and sponsors.
  • Month Four – Making Money, Revenue Models, Pricing and Marketing 101
    • You have the cost to build your product, the cost of selling the product and a need to return a profit to you or your shareholders – many products can be made, but this helps answer the question “should I make it?”
    • There are 14 revenue models – this will confirm how you make money. We’ll outline them in order of difficulty. Your startup is unique, but your revenue model isn’t unique! For example:
      • Services
      • Subscription
      • Marketplace
    • Marketing 101 – you need to start building a customer list and target customer(s) before you ship your product. This month you’ll nail down the basic tasks required even if you’ve never been schooled in the dark arts of marketing.
    • SELLING: there are four ways to sell your product – pick one! Again, not unique. You’ll need to pick your best option and begin testing how you will sell the product. You can build a great product, but if you can’t sell it you’re going to have a problem.
  • Month Five – MVPs, Product Development & Specifications, Product Market Fit
    • Minimum VIABLE Product or MVP has the emphasis on Viable not minimum! What are you required to ship to provide a useful solution to your customer? What one thing do you want to prove with your MVP? If the product was going to fail, why would it fail?
    • Product Development and Specifications are what’s required for an engineering team or offshore development company to build your MVP. This will include design. It may be as simple as a powerpoint deck that looks like a mobile app or website and it may be an enterprise software solution.
    • What is Product Market Fit and how do you know you have it? Product market fit is when you have mapped your minimum viable product to the customer needs that you have discovered and you have fulfilled that value promise.
  • Month Six – PITCHES + LAUNCH, Revenue, Scaling Up (Turning Off), Fundraising
    • Product Launch represents the previous five months of work to get something in front of your customers. Based on the complexity of your product, this may be as simple version 1.0 of a more complex product offering. In any case, you’ll have a roadmap to launch and to follow based on customer feedback.
    • Revenue – will your customers pay for your product? What other key metrics should you be tracking? Don’t get lost in vanity metrics, there is a set of Key Metrics that matter for each of the revenue models. You’ll need to know how to get traffic to the site, registered users and people who will give you $$ for your product. These are the same metrics that investors will be asking you for when you ask for cash.
    • Scaling Up or Turning Off is the point of decision – should you pursue this idea and project, should you pivot in another direction with the same market or should you put this idea to rest and go after a new idea?
    • OFFICE HOURS – you’ll have the opportunity for office hours with our sponsors.

Bring your idea, let’s get going! Looking forward to meeting you there!

 

Founder Development is the process of helping early and first time founders through an experiential process learned from serial founders, MBA Entrepreneurship programs and investors. Unlike academic programs, it’s about launching and scaling a company first, there are no grades or credits. This takes take to do the work and won't’ likely fall into an academic quarter semester. Accessible programs are all about pricing that doesn’t preclude underrepresented groups from participating, it also means not filtering people out based on a bias or GPA. That’s why I decided to launch the @6MonthStartup program.

By accessible, I mean a reasonably priced program with reasonable frequency. Let's face it, if you are a "Starter," you need to spend resources on proving your idea not paying for things you don't need (at least yet!). Also, you shouldn't be leaving your day job until you prove the idea is worth your time and effort.

Founder Development is all about you and how you think. The process will confirm that you have a solid idea and have talked with enough potential customers to have validated that idea. In most cases, this is before you incorporate, before spending any money on trademarks or divvy up any equity. There are some great programs for company building and product development - most of those programs also invest in your startup if you have a team, product, and traction.

Who should attend?

  • Founders or Starters - if you're an aspiring Starter and want to confirm if your idea is worthwhile before you leave your day job. Can you go faster than 6 months? Of course, but it will likely still take you some time to validate your ideas and work through the process - we're here to support you, either way, whether you have just the glimpse of an idea or if you already have product and revenue.
  • Potential Co-Founders - do you want to join a startup or are you looking for potential co-founders? You'll likely find them here.
  • Corporate Innovators - if you're looking to put some structure to your corporate goals - plus get to meet potential employees who like innovation.
  • Students - if you want to learn a process and structure to think about your ideas or the ideas of companies, you might consider joining in the future! Just know that your first idea may not be the idea you’ll ultimately launch. Killing bad ideas quickly if great, failing fast is dumb.

@6MonthStartup program is designed for you. You'll take the next six months to define and refine your idea, understand how to make money and make an informed decision if you should leave your day job or not. The monthly meetup format has content, exercises, time to pitch, feedback from mentors and dinner. You will have monthly deliverables - the result of that work will be the key to meeting with mentors at the next session. This is your startup and the pace at which you approach the work is up to you, however, mentors require that you have a serious idea and you're doing the work to get their time.

Past Events:

June 6, 2018 - Special 6 Month Startup Kitsap Launch + Keynote with Dave Parker