BNC Entrepreneur Event: Exploring Customer Development using Lean Startup Methodology

Reducing Risk and Time to Market

Do you have an idea for a startup? Did you know 90% of startups fail? Steve Blank, a veteran of eight startups and professor of entrepreneurship at Berkley and Stanford said "Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model." Because of this problem, Steve created a risk reduction methodology for startups called Customer Development. The first step in Customer Development is Customer Discovery, where one creates a business model, verifies they can identify who their market is, what the customer’s biggest pain points are and how they provide a solution to those pain points.

Bernhard Kappe, CEO of Pathfinder Development and organizer of the Chicago Lean Startup Circle, will walk through the customer discovery process and provide you with tools you can use to speed up your journey toward problem/solution fit. He will discuss how the UVP - Unique Value Proposition and the MVP - Minimum Viable Product are used in the Customer Discovery stage and what it means to “Pivot”. Join us and learn how you can reduce the risk of failure and gain traction sooner for your startup.

The ideal audience for this presentation is businesses that have a product, software product, software as a service or a unique service.

Presenter:

Bernhard Kappe is the founder and CEO of Pathfinder Development, which helps companies rapidly launch products. In this role, Bernhard works with startups and existing companies to create effective business models and product-market fit, position themselves in the market, create outstanding product design, utilize Agile development to build great products, and manage customer acquisition and retention.

As a veteran entrepreneur, Bernhard strives to make Chicago a technology epicenter by leading the Chicago Lean Startup Circle and the Chicago Product Management Association, organizer in the Lean Startup Machine and events such as this one, and mentoring startups to help them be successful.