It is the nature of startups that most will fail. Startups are hard. They fail for many reasons: wrong product, wrong price, wrong distribution channel, weak marketing, and so on. Part of what we teach in Lean Startup (also known as Evidence Based Entrepreneurship) is how to reduce the risk of failure. Statistics have shown […]
Author Archives: Brandy Stanfield Nagel
Teaching entrepreneurship:
Curriculum and classroom activities Here’s a classroom activity I’m itching to try: Set the teams up to begin customer discovery. Once they’ve done 20 or more interviews, ask the teams to trade. The team exploring “an app to help cat owners find their runaway cats” can take on the customer discovery for the team working […]
What’s the value of customer discovery?
What’s the value of customer discovery? Every serial entrepreneur I’ve ever talked to (except Sanjay) recognizes the value of customer discovery. (We’ll talk about Sanjay later.) My buddy Jeff declared: If we had spent the first three months doing discovery, we would have known what to spend money on. Yes, exactly. Three assets the entrepreneur […]
So, if we don’t teach students to pitch, what should we teach them?
So, if we don’t teach students to pitch, what should we teach them? I’ve said before the we shouldn’t spend time teaching students to pitch. Pitching is a high-stakes game at best and an exercise in futility for most. But we should teach students to present. Isn’t pitching the same as presenting? No. Pitching is […]
More on “Should we teach undergrads to seek investment?”
I was talking with a buddy of mine over burritos, and the ethics of encouraging undergrads to seek investment. My point is that it is high risk behavior – and the risks are seldom well understood. Jeff nodded and mulled it over. “Think of it like this,” I said, dipping a chip into the fresh […]
Should we teach undergrads to seek investment?
Should we teach undergrads to seek investment? No. Almost never. It is irresponsible and it may be unethical. The failure rates for startups in the first year are well over 50%. Less than 10% of all startups go on to raise any money. Less than 1% of all the U.S. startups ever receive investment from […]