Launch Your Startup II

This course will enable you to optimize your product concept or MVP based upon iteratively produced customer input, in-class workshops, and mentoring. You will apply specific tools for conducting interviews and ethnographies. You will engage with your fellow students in small groups sparked by facilitated ideation and in 1:1 discussions with experts. In addition to course content that involves the full class, class sessions will be customized to meet individual students’ product optimization needs. To that end, the Professor will be joined in some class sessions by experts in areas directly relevant to your products. Over the six-week term, you will answer a wide array of questions that will enhance your marketplace readiness: Should the customer need you identified initially for your product be fine-tuned or more fully redefined? Is your product distinctive and compelling enough to win buyers? How should your product be improved? How do potential customers judge its value? How might your product be positioned effectively in the marketplace? Can you create a better name for your product? You will emerge from Customer Driven Product Optimization with a better sense of your target customers, a more marketable product, and fresh ways of thinking about how to convince customers to purchase it.