Business Model Canvas and Discovery Interviews

The heart of VentureWrench Launch! success, based on the Lean Launchpad methodology, is the process of fleshing out your business model canvas, which summarizes the key elements you need to succeed.

The path to this is the process of discovery interviews, which will allow you to test hypotheses, either confirm them, or help you pivot as needed to more successful directions. The point of the discovery interviews is to help you gain needed insights and there is an art to conducting them well.

Visit this page for some suggested sources to find people your discovery interviews.

Below are a set of videos, courtesy of the leaders in Lean Launchpad and Business Model Canvas, that will set you on a path of success.

Before your course:

Members of the VentureWrench Launch!™ cohort are asked to come to the Launch! course having already completed an initial draft of their business model canvas (BMC). This video was created by Alexander Osterwalder, co-author of Business Model Generation. Your initial draft will be full of hypotheses, which you will then test during the Business Discovery Interview Process.

Business Discovery Interviews – How-to Videos

To guide VentureWrench Launch!™ Teams on the Business Discovery Process, these instructional videos should cover the required planning, skills and tips for productive customer and Business Model interviews. It is essential that each team member engage with these videos during “Week 0” of the cohort. These videos are courtesy of Lean Launchpad and Steve Blank and are the same videos used by both Stanford’s course and the NSF I-Corps™ program.

Please note, you are embarking on a journey of discovery, your goal is not (yet) to demo your product or solution, it is to really get to understand what the customer’s problem is. Jim Collins has often said, you have to be your own customer, or you have to know your own customer SO WELL that you can think like them! This is your chance to get to know your customer that well. You will test all of the hypotheses in your Business Model Canvas through these discovery interviews. When you are done, you should have a strong understanding of all of the elements it will take to deliver a solution to many happy customers.

Pre-Planning Customer Discovery
Pre-Planning Pt. 1 – 100 Names (4:55)
Pre-Planning Pt. 2 – Do a Dry Run (3:25)
Pre-Planning Pt. 3 – License to be Pushy (1:29)

Customer Discovery Interviews
Interviews Part 1 – You are interested in their perspective (5:40)
Interviews Part 2 – Test your Hypotheses (3:49)
Asking the Right Question (2:37)

Outside the Building
Death by Demo 1 – Know your Customer (2:18)
Death by Demo 2 – Deep Understanding of Customer Problem (1:45)
Assuming You Know what the customer wants (1:56)
Understanding the Customer Problem (the wrong way) or Death by PowerPoint (1:42)
Understanding the Problem (the right way) (3:22)
Customers Lie (2:37)
The Distracted Customer (3:12)
Engaging the Customer (3:37)
Customer Empathy (2:25)
The User, the Buyer & the Saboteur (2:24)
Multi-Person Interview (2:03)
B-to-B to C (2:15)
Existing vs. New Markets (5:29)
Public Interviews (2:11)

Back in the Building
Extracting Insight from Data (2:59)
Getting the MVP Right (3:34)
Pay Attention to Outliers (2:16)
The “Other 85%” – Why aren’t they your customers? (2:32)

Course Materials

Books (These are optional and can be purchased online)
The Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank
Business Model Canvas – Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

Online references

Giff Constable, “12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews”
Steve Blank, “What’s a Startup? First Principles”
Steve Blank, “Make No Little Plans – Defining the Scalable Startup”
Steve Blank, “A Startup is Not a Smaller Version of a Large Company”
Petal Diagram

Strongly Recommended Resources from the Lean Startup Community

These books cover many elements of the Launch! process and are strongly recommended to you.

Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design: by Alexander Osterwalder
The Lean Startup: by Eric Ries
Testing Business Ideas – Alexander Osterwalder and David Bland
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Talking to Humans: Success Starts with Understanding Your Customers – by Giff Constable & Frank Rimalovski
Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies by Zenios, Makower, Yock, et al (great website here)
The Four Steps to the Epiphany:

Other Powerful Books for your Startup (and Growth) Library
If you haven’t read these books in the course of your career, they are strongly recommended, including by Steve Blank who refers to them as part of his work on Lean Entrepreneurship.

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital – Carlota Perez
The other side of innovation – Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble
The Innovator’s Dilemma & The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton M. Christensen
The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators – Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers – Geoffrey A. Moore
Inside the Tornado: Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley’s Cutting Edge – by Geoffrey A. Moore
Dealing with Darwin : How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution – Geoffrey A. Moore
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – Malcolm Gladwell
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by R. Mauborgne and W. C. Kim

Sample Presentations and Videos

The National Science Foundation conducts their I-Corps™ program. As inspiration, here are some example presentations by various NSF I-Corps™ Teams from the national cohorts which have prepared and shared their final Lessons Learned Presentation (10 minutes) and a 2-minute Lessons Learned Video at the end of their cohort.