TEAM
TEAM FORMATION
| Use team canvas to facilitate team alignment, resolve conflicts and build productive culture, fast. |
| Be mindful of conditions to create a high-performance team. |
| Use icebreakers to know each others better: Super-Power or Two Truths & A Lie |
PRODUCT & SERVICE
PROBLEM FRAMING
| Watch the Techstars MasterClasses (Part. 1 – 6) for a general overview of How-to-understand-the-customer. |
| Use Empathy Map to guide your interviews and help you identifying the pain points of your customer. |
| Find common traits and needs of your customers using Persona Canvas. |
| Understand the context of your initiative, using the Context Canvas. |
| Define the problem that you want to work on, using the Challenge Canvas. |
IDEATION
| Brainstorm to explore for solutions to the problem you are trying to solve, using creative approaches and rapid-ideation approaches. |
| Select the best idea using the Impact-Effort Matrix. |
| Do a competitors analysis. You can find more details in here about how to conduct this type of research and analysis. |
| Work on defining your Value Proposition. |
| You are now ready to define your product, using Product Canvas. |
BUSINESS MODEL
| Work on defining your Lean startup model. |
| Go deeper and work on your Business Model. Watch this video to have a better understanding of the model and consult this resource to learn how to use the canvas. |
PROTOTYPING & VALIDATION
| Define the future customer journey, especially for your best customers (see personas that you’ve identified earlier in the process) |
| Define the expectations of the prototype so that when results come back there’s a clear understanding of what needs to be improved in the next iteration. |
| Start prototyping your product or service by using rapid-prototyping techniques (Lo-Fi), based on the customer journey that you already identified. |
| Receive feedback from potential users on your first prototypes. Once you start to have a better view on the functionalities, start prototyping using a wireframe(Hi-Fi). We recommend Balsamiq or Figma. |
| Validate your prototype with potential users. You may use interviews, observation sessions, heatmaps and more. |
| Based on the feedback start working on your MVP. |
IMPLEMENTATION
| Iterate and improve the Product-Market Fit |
| Continue experimenting and validating to keep improve your product & service. |
| Prepare pitches (different versions depending on your phase of development and audience). Find the resources from Founder Institute, Techstars and MarsDD to help you prepare. |
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PLAN ACTIVITIES, MILESTONES & ATTRIBUTE TASKS
| We recommend that you plan your activities during the Cooperathon. This will help you achieve the milestones and respect the timeline. |
| Start by using a simple Project Canvas |
| Afterwards, you may identify each team member tasks and follow the progress. We recommend using one of the following tools: Asana or Monday. |
STARTUP
OPERATIONS
| Company Formation & Fundraising & Legal & Operations & more |
SCALE-UP
INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION
ECOSYSTEMS
QUEBEC
Montreal ecosystem.
ONTARIO
Toronto & GTA ecosystem.