2014-12-05
Trevor Owens and the Lean Startup Machine
Lean Startup Machine
Our session will be focused on helping attendees identify key assumptions of their idea and (in)validating them via effective customer interviews.
Lean Startup Machine is a for-profit social enterprise with the mission of advancing the science of entrepreneurship to better utilize human potential. They aim to bolster jobs through innovation and prevent the world’s smartest people from wasting time building things nobody wants. To date they have run 50 workshops in 35 cities, across 5 continents.Their team of 30 aspiring world-changers hail from NYC, Madison, Toronto, & Austin.
The Lean Startup is a term coined by Eric Ries, which describes a process involving rapid, iterative prototyping to test assumptions and to develop a product that customers actually want. Practiced during intensive three-day workshops, the process promotes a problem-centric approach to business ideation. By continuously validating or invalidating assumptions, teams are forced to pivot their solution (and even problem) toward a true customer pain; rather than creating a solution and after-the-fact seeking customers with a problem.
Their events culminate with each team pitching its new solutions and its experience using the process. In this competition the winning team is not selected based on who has the best idea, but instead on which team honors the process and gains the most insights through its pivots.
