Why did we decide to create this course?
We work with startups on daily basis within our accelerator (StartupAkademia) and we have noticed that despite the tones 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 other 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, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated in total 2 billion of 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, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 124 000 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 to 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 to 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 for 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
