Entrepreneurial Exercise - MUST BE IN CLASS

NOTE for this Assignment, you will be working in your business simulation teams and that only one video per team is to be uploaded to Flipgrid. 

Entrepreneurs use the customer discovery process to understand people’s needs and desires to avoid creating solutions that no one wants. Today you’ll look for evidence of people’s needs or desires before coming up with your own business idea and pitch. As a team, brainstorm ideas about how to help certain groups or solve certain problems. Then find ways to understand the challenges of current solutions by looking for evidence via research, interviews, surveys, forums, websites, etc. so you know how to build something unique and wanted. After you've come up with an idea that solves someone's problem create a 60 second pitch articulating your vision. Imagine your are pitching to investors. Your pitch should include a description of the problem you are solving, who or how many people have this problem (everyone is never right-who will buy it first?), what your unique solutions is and how/what people will be willing to pay for (usually because they are already spending money or effort on an less awesome solution).

Finding Evidence

Your first customers are usually those who are called early adopters and are characterized as someone who experiences a pain or desire and is actively seeking a solution. Ways to find these early adopters include looking for complaints and strong reactions or you can find what people are searching for. You can find reviews on most product sites like Amazon or Apple/Google Play app store. What do the 1 or 2 star reviews have in common? How many are there? Can you find other forums (e.g. Reddit r/CrappyDesign) or blog posts about this problem or pain? Google “[the name of the product] sucks”, are there lots of responses? 

You can also use tools like Google Trends (Links to an external site.) to see if there is an increasing or decreasing demand for a solution. Type in what someone would search for if they were looking for a solution and it will show you relative historical data. You can also use the power of the hashtag on social media sites like Twitter or Instagram to see how many people are talking about something.

You could also identify people that you think are likely to have the problem and interview them over a video call.

Watch the following 3 videos prior to starting your research so you know what to look for and say if you happened to be interviewing:

• Steve Blank- Customer Discovery:
• Steve Blank: Acting on Customer Discovery (Links to an external site.)

• David Kelley, IDEO- Field Observations:
• Tom Kelley: Field Observations with Fresh Eyes (Links to an external site.)

• Justin Wilcox -Customer interviews:
• Customer Discovery: What Do You Ask, with Justin Wilcox (Links to an external site.)

Now that you’ve seen who has what kind of problems, see if you can come up with a solution that people would be willing to pay money for. You will be creating and uploading a 60 second video pitch quickly describing the problem or opportunity, who has it, and what unique solution you think those people would pay for. Use or upload your pitch to the following URL with your vt.edu to login:

CRN 87798 / 10:10-11:00am Links to an external site.

CRN 91918 / 11:15am-12:05pm Links to an external site.

Have fun!