The Entrepreneurial Edge

Entrepreneurship is more than just a game of luck and genius; it can be taught! This module helps participants develop a better understanding of the skillsets and mindsets require of prospective entrepreneurs. It also offers a brief overview of foundational frameworks and concepts to help structure thinking, such as:

• Business model canvas
• Intex framework
• The causatory venn
• 7 Domains
• Lean canvas
• SWOT analysis
• PESTLE
• Causation vs. correlation
• Survivors’, confirmation and availability biases
• Critical success factors

One of the biggest reasons that start-ups fail is “No market need”. No business can survive if it does not attract customers with a need waiting to be satisfied, no matter how good the idea is, how brilliant its technical accomplishments, or how clever the founding team may be! This module covers topics such as:

• Why customers buy
• Identifying customer problems & pain points
• Real needs vs. perceived needs
• Significance of the pain point
• Addressing flaws & gaps in the existing solutions
• Determining key attributes
• Switching costs
• Understanding value and pricing

It is essential to align founders’ objectives, and those of team members, investors and suppliers, with what is actually happening in the market. To understand “How big can this actually get?”, we need to analyse current trends and timing. This requires identifying, calculating and forecasting the appropriate market size. Is the market opportunity you are pursuing large enough to satisfy your own ambitions as well as the objectives of your investors? Investors tend to be very sceptical of the rosy pictures that many entrepreneurs paint. A realistic market sizing estimate, on the other hand, lends credibility and seriousness when communicating with external stakeholders. Key concepts include:

• Defining the market
• Where to find data
• Timing – why now?
• Calculating TM, TAM, SAM & SOM
• Opportunity costs for entrepreneurs
• Why scale and growth matters to investors

Given the cost and time required to develop and launch new products and services, it is imperative to test concepts and validate key assumptions through market research. Mistakes can prove fatal, and false-positive results are all too common among inexperienced entrepreneurs. Subjects includes:

• Primary vs. Secondary market research
• Survey and interviewing techniques
• Formulating questions
• A/B testing
• Analysing responses
• Sample bias and statistical reliability

Creating value for customers is not enough, unless the overall proposition is fundamentally more attractive than your competitors'. Analysing and visualising the competitive landscape helps identify which attributes you need to compete on to establish relative attractiveness. Subjects include:

• Porter’s 5 forces
• Representation techniques such as value curves, spider graphs, 2 by 2s, heat maps, bubble graphs, etc

Despite rumours to the contrary, entrepreneurship is in fact a team sport. Research tells us that businesses founded by teams will generally do better than businesses founded by individuals. Key elements of your people strategy should include:

• Roles and responsibilities of founders and other key team members
• Team skills and chemistry
• Entrepreneurial leadership and forming company culture
• When to hire
• HR legal considerations
• Leveraging your network
• Mentors, advisors and coaches
• Team equity distribution vesting

It is very tempting to grab market share by simply subsidising customers by selling at a discount. But such a strategy is unsustainable. A start-up needs to generate cash and make a profit as soon as possible. Early decisions about revenue and cost structure will determine not just whether the business will survive, but whether it is a business at all. Subjects for this session include:

• Profitability and unit economics
• Revenue models
• Cost structures
• Outsourcing and partnerships
• Understanding your business metrics “at the margin”
• Gross & net profit
• The reality of cash and the importance of breakeven

Drawing exponential hockey-stick graphs is easy. But ensuring sound, well-documented assumptions sit behind a viable bottom-up financial model is what distinguishes the pros from the amateurs. A good model will indicate the critical drivers needed to support growth, whilst identifying how much investment is needed and why. Topics include:

• Growth drivers and “bottom-up” forecasting
• Marketing costs & CAC
• PL, cash flow working capital
• Capital expenses
• Effect of churn, retention  repeat rates
• Creating spreadsheet models  analytics
• Calculating investment requirement (if any)

Mastering the legal aspects rarely causes a startup to succeed success, but it can easily cause its’ downfall. Founders must attend to a host of regulatory and corporate details to protect their ownership interests, ensure regulatory compliance, protect intellectual property (IP) rights, and avoid punitive investment terms.

• Corporate structure
• Directors’ and shareholders’ roles and responsibilities
• Constitutional documents
• Key thresholds, power and decision making
• IP protection (including trademarks, patents, copyright, trade secrets, confidentiality, etc.

Angel investment and venture capital often fuels the growth many new startups need. This module explores which investors to approach when, as well as covering many of the necessary concepts and terminology to structure the right deal for the founders and the company:

• Debt and equity
• Types of investors
• Alternative financing methods, including convertibles, crowd-funding and
• ICOs
• Finance rounds and milestones
• Dilution
• Cap tables
• Valuation

Pitching to investors is a crucial step in the stage of most high-growth startups. This highly interactive module highlights the essentials of crafting killer pitch decks including:

• The importance of the narrative, and knowing your audience
• What investors want to see, traction and the use of funds
• Term sheets due diligence (legal, technical and commercial)
• Investment terminology and types of shareholding rights
• Key contract terms to demand and avoid
• Subscription letters, shareholders agreements, changing the constitution, and other documentation required for a successful finance raise