Why did we decide to create this course?
Why did we decide to create this course?
We work with startups on a daily basis within our accelerator (StartupAkademia) and we have noticed that despite the tonnes of very good books on lean methods (i.e. Lean Analytics, Running Lean, etc.) startups have problems with applying this knowledge in practice. We have noticed also some consistent problems that we felt needed more pragmatic solutions. The first problem that we spotted was the fact that startups do not know how to do market research, spy on the competition, and analyze data. The second thing we have noticed is that especially first-time startups, do not really understand their business model (which is totally understandable). That's why it is very difficult for them to know what they should concentrate on. The third problem, which probably was the biggest source of failure, was not sufficient creativity when it came to acquiring customers. Startups have no problems with naming (not always applying efficiently) how to acquire customers through ads (Facebook, AdWords, display ads) but they would have problems with finding the right set of non-standard, yet very efficient moves that would work on their market (you can call them growth hacks, tricks or simply tactics)
The interesting thing was that those problems were pretty universal regardless of the industry, business model, or even whether they were run independently or supported by big corporations.
So one day, to make our life easier (repeating the same staff on and on is not that fun ;)), we have decided it is time to create a tool that will help our startups and any others to get going faster and more efficiently. We started with the do-it-yourself StartupAkademia (half of the info is available also in English so go and check that). We have seen that this is still not enough so we proceeded to make online courses supplemented with simple yet very powerful tools.
This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail I have carried out or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated a total of 2 billion in additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 224 000 students including people working in EY, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.
What will this course give you?
The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of simple tools that will help you significantly speed up your startup. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from our own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will know:
What your business model is about, what to concentrate on and what are the key KPIs for you?
How to research your market, competition, and your customers, draw conclusions from the data, and apply it in your business?
What Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to choose to test your business, and what it will give you, how much it may cost?
How to model your business in Excel
What growth hacks will help you grow your business
How the course is organized?
The course is divided currently into the following sections:
Market research - effective and cheap - advanced version. In this section, you will learn what kind of methods you can use to get to know better your customers and competitors
Startup Business Models. At the end of the section, you will have a good understanding of different business models, you will know what KPIs are important depending on the business and what you should concentrate on. You should also be able to guess which business model your startup has the biggest resemblance
What should be the MVP of your business? In this section, you will see some examples of MVP. We start with a reminder of what MVP is and then we move to examples of MVP for restaurants, online stores, offline stores, SaaS, books, and others
Financial modeling of startups. In this section, we show you how to model different online businesses in Excel. You will also get templates that will help you model your own startups
Growth Hacks. In the last few sections, we discuss different methods that will help you grow your business.
We will be adding also a section on growth hacks and tricks used by others, increasing the LTV of customers, and a section presenting business models in Excels so check our course regularly for upgrades.
You will be able also to download many additional resources
Links to free presentations and movies showing examples of research
Links to books worth reading
Excels with calculations showing you how you can do the market research
Excels with useful analysis showing you how you can draw conclusions
Presentations of different business models and MVPs
This will be a short introduction into the course in which I will show you what you will get out of this
Here I will show you what to do if a blurry image appears
Here I will show you how to find additional resources attached to the coruse like Excel files, presentations, links etc.
We start with a short introduction to the 3 groups of methods we will cover in this section: consulting, on-line and off-line
In this lecture you will get to know our favorite method for first rough estimation – the bottom-up method. We give you also 2 examples with Excel calculation how to use it.
Top-down is the little brother of bottom-up approach – not used that often but still very useful for resegmenting the market (niche an low cost strategy)
Reality still bites. Here you will be given short overview of the off-line research methods with suggestion what to be used when
In this lecture we show you how to conduct the off-line interviews, how to draw conclusions out of it and where to find respondents
In this lecture we show you how to map and read the daily life of your customer and how it can help your marketing efforts
Store Check come in handy whenever you are talking about B2C physical products, services and retail. This methods gives you solid facts on which you can build your business
Service level is time and again your opportunity to disrupt markets. Therefore, check on your own the customer experience with mystery shopping
On-line research is cheap and insightful. We will go through all nice methods how to get to know the market, customer and competitors
Facebook Audience Insight is the perfect tool to check different segments without the necessity to do any interviews. For first estimation it is the perfect tool
Facebook allows you to have a look at social profiles of your potential customers. If you want to understand them better have a look at this as well
You want to know what do your competitors do? Where they get the traffic from? Check this lecture on SimilarWeb.
Google is so nice to tell you through search results where is the market. Use the Keyword Planner to see whether you are able to make money on your ideas and how much you have to spend to get the trafffic
Google is nice but Youtube and Slideshare are the places to go if you look for more advance info faster. Check this lecture to know what to use when.
Mobile is the new black ;). Even if you are not into mobile applications check the markets for applications to see what are the worries of people and what they like
In this section we will discuss in detail modeling of businesses in Excel
In this lecture we will explain you how e-commerce business model works and what you should concentrate on
In this lecture we will explain SaaS business model works and what you should concentrate on. We will show you many examples of this business.
In this lecture we will explain how 2-sided market business model works and what you should concentrate on. We will show you many examples of this business.
In this lecture we will explain how media site business model works and what you should concentrate on. We will show you many examples of this business.
In this lecture we remind you what is MVP and are the characteristics of perfect (for us) MVP
We start with showing you how you can test the restaurant concept. We provide you 6 different MVPs, show you how much it would cost to build and how much time it would take you. We show you also what hypotheses / features you can test with them and when to choose which MVP
We present you what kind of MVP you can use to test webpages earning from ads
We go to on-line shop and show you how you can test whether you will be a successful on-line retailer. The MVPs we present can be done with very small budget
Having discuss the on-line shops we check what can be done to test the off-line shops
If you are into SaaS you will learn he what MVPs are at your disposals and what do they give you
We give you some tips how to prepare to write a good book and earn money at the same time
In this lecture I will show you how you can build the model in Excel and what conclusions can you draw from it.
In this lecture I will show you how you can build the model in Excel and what conclusions can you draw from it.
Here I will explain you the basics about Pirate Metrics (AARRR approach) that we will use in the course to show what the metric influences
I will show you how you can motivate others to do what you want them to do. By building proper referral program, loyalty scheme or customer on-boarding you can change totally your business
In this lecture I will show you how Dropbox is using behavior contract in referral programs as well as customer on-boarding. Dropbox was also offering additional space if you performed actions that increase his reach and help Word of Mouth. It had its referral program – you could get up to 1 for referring your friend. They have also defined tasks that made you more likely to stay with them and that they were showing you how to use the product
Bobby Burger is a chain of slow burgers that has used behavioral contract to grow their chain rapidly. Bobby Burger was giving discounts and rewards for actions: Contest on facebook, Discount for check-ins, Discount for events organized at their site, Free products for first customers in new place
Next section will show you how, in innovative way, you can promote your business without spending much on advertising
I show how Spotify was creating non-standard advertising space. In 2011 Spotify has struck I deal with Facebook that enabled them to grow via referrals and Word of Mouth
We will show how Piktochart is using non-standard advertising space
Kekemeke is a SaaS software for managing brand loyalty programs (based on collecting stamps) for restaurants. Kekemeke has bee using its partners to promote its programs. I will explain you how they achieved this
PowToon is a freemium SaaS for creating animation movie that was very creative in putting their logo in front of the potential customers
Udemy is using every opportunity to cross-sell courses: course langing pages, emails, purchasing process. I will show you how it works in practice
In fifth section you will learn how to leverage 3-rd party platforms to get fast and cheap access to crucial resources (i.e. market)
Airbnb has written a script that was uploading automatically to Craigslist profiles of the available rent I will show you want was the impact of this on the business.
Brand24 is a software for social listening (you can check who and what was talking about you in social media). Brand24 has been leveraging small communities
You can grow your customer base or increase retention of current ones by removing barriers between you and the customer. I will show you on examples how you can remove those barriers
Uber has been consistently removing barriers on the supply and demand side. I will show you details of how they did it
Fitness clubs and dance schools use nice tricks to convince people to join them. I will show you in this lecture what they were doing this
Dropbox has used the freemium method. They are offering 2 GB of free space on the cloud
Here I will talk about how Audioteka has tried to make it easier for consumer to use its product
One of the most important things is to create barriers between your customer and potential competitors. I will show you with examples how to do that
I will show you in this lecture how Facebook is protecting it s territory from competitors
Apple has created many barriers to protect its products from any competition
In this section we will talk about how you can change your business by changing the model in which you claim the money from the customer. The choice of revenue streams also defines the selling model
In this lecture on the example of milk based business I will show you how your business model may differ depending what revenue streams you will choose
Here I show when you should use the specific revenue streams. Different revenue streams are perfect for different businesses . By introducing new revenue streams you can totally disrupt your industry
Here I show when you should use the specific revenue streams. Different revenue streams are perfect for different businesses . By introducing new revenue streams you can totally disrupt your industry
Raynair has been also very creative on the revenue side. Here I will show you what revenue streams they have
Here we show what made Sandwich Video so successful as a producer of ads for startup
Legimi is a e-book reader bit similar to Kindle. They have been very innovative in the way they generate revenue streams
Dollar Shave Club was one of the first companies to use subscription model in FMCG
Most businesses that are successful start in a small niche where they can in peace work on product-market fit and on their business models. I will show you examples of very successful companies that have applied this hack in practice
Tesla had a well thought and quite well executed master plan where the end-game is self-sustainable system of electric self-driving cars fueled by clean electric energy from renewable sources
Uber has started as limousine rides provider in San Francisco. The end game is the whole short run transportation market
Square started as a credit card processing software. Square wanted to take a piece of the payment and cash till market. It started from small independent restaurants and now has moved into being integrated POS system
Yelp has started as a service only concentrated on restaurant in San Francisco. It has grown is business to include other cities and businesses
Twitch started very broad but then tried to pick the most promising niche and concentrate on it - gaming. Once they mastered the niche they went deep and global with it
Postmates has intentionally neglected some of its customers (restaurants) to deliver the right customer experience to other group
Zappos has decided to join Amazon not to be crushed but also to get access to strategic resources
Here I show How Dropbox has leverage strategic partners to grow their business
Showroom is a marketplace for independent fashion brands. They are present in Poland and Germany and were acquired by Burda
10x the standard can help you build a drastically growing business
I will show you here how Udemy created much higher standards for both teachers and students and how this worked for them
Tinder has changed totally the customer experience in dating: mobile first & local; easy intuitive to use product; introduced gamification; used Freemium model. User experience was also drastically improved: All important information visible at first glance. The have also used true identity fed from Facebook and Instagram
We have a separate section on community and its role for business. In many business models (esp. on-line business) customer come for the product but they stay for the community.
In this lecture I will show you how Yelp created a community supporting their business by introducing: Real identity of reviewer, Elite Squad, Growing city by city, Spam and false reviews management
Reddit is a community based comment and link sharing platform. Reddit has created subgroups (sub-reddits), they take care of super users, they apply clear policies and rules and use gamification elements
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