The LEAN Community

Jen Du, winner of Lean Startup Machine NYC in April 2012, just launched a crowdfunding campaign for the same product she won with. The solution is called Before Elixir and it's a pre-game beverage that prevents the flushing and hangovers caused by alcohol consumption. Jen spent the last two years researching and testing to come up with a natural formula using amino acids. The drink also comes in a cool form factor, something that you wouldn't be embarrassed to drink at a party with your friends. Check out the testimonials below from real customers who have used the drink. World wide, hundreds of millions of people avoid social situations involving alcohol because of "Asian Glow."

Jen attended LSM in April 2012 as a way to validate a solution to a problem she has dealt with her whole life. The idea began to take shape on the streets of Manhattan when she and her team surveyed over 100 New Yorkers and learned what type of solution people wanted. “It was absolutely exhausting,” recalls Jen. “Try approaching 100 strangers in Manhattan. It’s not easy!”

But the work provided invaluable feedback. Though she initially figured the solution would be a convenient pill people could take, her testing revealed that people disliked pills and prioritized health.  After a few quick pivots,  she knew what to create - a pre-gaming drink infused with vitamins, amino acids, and antioxidants that would prevent the flush before it started. See the full case study below.

Right now Jen is a team-of-one spearheading the crowdfunding campaign by herself while holding down a full-time job. So let’s show a fellow LSM alumni some love!

Tell your friends who get "Asian Glow" about the project on facebook (share link). You get six, 8 oz bottles of Before Drink for $39. Not a bad deal! You can also order more or get it shipped internationally. Even if you don't get "Asian Glow" this is a great gift for a friend or you could just support this hard working entrepreneur and let the karma come back to you!

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Joy just finished organizing her first LSM workshop in NYC and 8th workshop globally. From Vancouver and Toronto in Canada to Sydney Australia, she decided to lead one at home, where it all began: NYC. Joy has been the longest tenured coordinator on the LSM team and has grown with us while helping entrepreneurs globally with their ideas.

She has organized a few workshops remotely while also traveling to these cities and building communities. According to Joy, "One of the benefits of being at the same city multiple times is that you can really build relationships with people while seeing the community grow. Besides, promoting the brand is always best." Joy identified some great speakers early on and built partnerships with sponsors, mentors and co-working spaces that have helped make LSM become a main stay in the ecosystem and easier to organize in the process. Her relationships have been so strong that Joy has been able to pass on the responsibilities to the team on the ground while hnot having to travel.

Joy says that even though she has organized a ton of other events outside of LSM in the past, she doesn't do it for the "I'm in charge" ego boost but for building relationships and pulling people together. Joy states, "In general, I'm always putting people together that can help each other. I also love to solve a problem and come up with multiple solutions and be calm in a crisis. There will always be people who will complain about their experience at the workshop. You have to make them feel good even if you're ignoring them and I'm great at that!"

Joy is organizing the upcoming workshop in NYC on December 12th and you will see her hustling and helping entrepreneurs change the world.

Hi all,

It was a great experience for me to organize the LSM workshop in Milan! Even though I have organized events like Meetups or Social Media Day, organizing a three day workshop like Lean Startup Machine was a different experience altogether.  It was about finding the right location, media partners who were willing to go the distance, mentors that were lean startup experts and getting the whole thing together. So with LSM's help and with my network, I leveraged different marketing channels to spread the word about the workshop. After doing this for over 8 weeks, we were able to get a lot of people for the workshop and it was an extremely satisfying experience.

One of the reasons why I wanted to do this was to help entrepreneurs in their early stage of ideation and spread the fundamental learning of Lean Startup methodology based on field real time experience. At the end of it, I met some fantastic people both mentors and attendee's and in the process created a solid network for future business perhaps. To create a community where ideas could be bred and experiences could be shared,  we created an LSM Alumni workshop group on Facebook and hope to meet to help the community grow.

I without thinking twice, would organize one more workshop in Milan and hope to continue spreading the word in the community. It is such a real and concrete experience regarding how to develop a possible idea and realize it that it helps me improve my know-how while developing my professional business network. I encourage every person to get involved in this movement and learn the ropes of starting a business by learning these principles.

Lets bring lean back to Milan!

Andrea Romoli

By Allen Jaffe and Team : Lean Startup Machine Cape Town Organizers

Hi All,

Here is my feedback on our very successful Lean Startup Machine event. I attended the LSM London event and loved the concept. Immediately I wanted to bring it to Cape Town, South Africa. All in all, I can confidently say that we had a 10/10 event – even earning a standing ovation from attendees, mentors and judges alike on Sunday evening! 

In terms of drop-off, we only had 3 people leave due to transport issues and bringing an existing business in, which quickly became difficult to validate from a customer perspective. This discouraged them and they felt the need to withdraw. 

If I can offer any advice to future organizers, it would be to take care of teams who are formed around existing business models, they can’t let go and be objective to the data presented through experimentation.  

1.  Core Committee Hustling. All Day. Everyday.

We formed a committee with four people. Three of the 4 left leaving me alone. As a result I leveraged my company to get involved and assist. The committee is critical is making this a success. 

We created a shared Google doc and broke up sections/responsibilities to each person such as:

- Mentors

- Sponsorship

- Speakers / Judges

- Media, PR and Communications

- Ticket Sales and Promotion

- Event Space

- Event Logistics 

- Catering and Special Dietary Requirements

- Team Management

2. Monstrous Mentors

The mentors make the event. I know the local startup community pretty well so had a great advantage to kick things off. I then reached out to specific mentors of famous startups via LinkedIn. Get the paid LinkedIn account and you can send intro e-mails to viable influencers. People are normally honored that you considered them for the position and respond really well – wanting to know more almost immediately. 

We then prepared a welcome pack to the mentors with all the tutorials & FAQ's. We did struggle to get the mentors to commit to a specific time for us to do the pre-event testing, and despite our best efforts in terms of resource packs - found a few of them arriving without having watched the videos. We arranged quick huddles at a coffee shop nearby to make 100% sure they understood their roles - and the use of Javelin - before exposing them to teams and their initiatives. 

3. Savvy Sponsors

We initially struggled to find sponsors, but at the end got 2 x champion sponsors that really helped out a lot. We also reached out and got free drinks etc. from an ice-tea company which was fairly easy. 

The sponsors do require admin in terms of what they require for their input – we had to allow them to bring pull up banners and print branded content for the attendees. We made extra sure to clear these with Ani and the team in New York before giving go-ahead to print material associated to Lean. Sponsors were also provided with free tickets, and some had competitions for their community to win tickets – this was great additional exposure and promotion for the event.

 4. Superior Speakers / Judges

In terms of speakers – we had two types; those Skyping in and those who were onsite at the event. 

Grace and Trevor offered to Skype in, at first we were a little nervous being at the most Southern Tip of Africa – our Internet can be a bit touch and go. We had attended another local event where Julian Assange Skyped in and they had spent around $36k on the internet line... and the quality was absolutely terrible. To rally, we integrated a second pipe from our business - a 50mb connection with zero other people on it. To cut a long story short the Skype call with Grace and Trevor went without a single hiccup and really stole the show!  

In terms of speakers in Cape Town, I then was able to ask the mentors (group e-mail) who was keen on the remaining 2 x topics and two mentors jumped at the Customer interviews and Concierge MVP, which was great. 

I then reached out to a friend to do a workshop on Landing Pages and also organized a bonus talk from a local entertainment artist on the art of pitching, which really added value.

For the judges, I wanted to make sure they truly understood LSM, were well known in startup circles and just genuinely nice guys :) It was really easy to get the judges to participate, although they were brutal with their questioning.

5. Making It Rain Media

We landed 5 media partners and prepared a special media pack (see attached). They then wrote some great articles and interviewed me. Here is one of them: http://ventureburn.com/2014/05/lean-startup-machine-launches-cape-town-event-fail-fast-succeed-faster/

I found that some of the media partners just published an article, while others were at the event, interviewing and doing follow-up articles. Make sure you find the right media partners.

6. Propulsive Promotion of Ticket Sales:

Here are tips to get great ticket sales. We had 72 :)

- Work with your media partners to promote the event as much as possible.

- We setup a Facebook page and used paid promotion to boost our reach: https://www.facebook.com/leanstartupsouthafrica.

- We used our social media team to promote via LinkedIn, Twitter and obviously Facebook.

- We did mentor profiles and really promoted each mentor in a big way (even live-tweeting thanks from the event for each mentor and speaker).

- We contacted local startup communities such as "Tech Chat" and "Startup Grind", as well as "Silicon Cape"; we offered each community a less than 20% coupon which really helped get the event noticed. 

- Have someone dedicated on email communications who can immediately answer queries regarding the event and coax partners/mentors to invite people on their limited coupons.  

- I personally had a few mails where I had to convince people, but that’s part of the job.

7. Exciting Event Space

We used our offices which had an auditorium, three boardrooms, two offices to serve as organizer headquarters, as well as a kitchen area with communal tables and of course the ever-popular table tennis chill section. 

The bonus is we offered free under-cover parking with security, free Wi-Fi, and even popcorn made fresh from our machine. Each team was located within an 800m² open-plan office, making it easy for mentors to walk around and assist. We tried to ensure that every team was provided with either a chalk wall, stationary or mobile whiteboard for brainstorming. We were also centralized in the CBD, providing easy access to a multitude of optimal customer interview hot-spots. 

8. Audible Audio For Presentations

I almost used our internal projector and computer speakers but decided to make use of a professional audiovisual company instead. This was THE BEST MOVE EVER!

The presentations/speakers and Skype sessions really benefitted from kick ass sound and visuals. When Trevor and Grace Skyped in, we had wireless microphones in the audience to facilitate attendees being able to ask their questions. The professional audio/visual guy also played cool intro music to different team presentations, really adding to the vibe and excitement of the whole event. We managed to get all of the equipment sponsored and only paid for the labour, which was a huge win.

9. Organized Operational Logistics

The event logistics were varied and vast. From printing stickers, T-shirts and Javelin boards – to creating pull-up banners to skin the event and buying enough pens, markers, sticky-notes for 15 teams. We also had to ensure that we could provide security guards over the weekend, as well as access to the parking garage. Our neighbors in the building had to be notified and certain arrangements made to limit building in the area, which could have interrupted sessions with loud noise during the weekend otherwise. 

We can’t stress enough not to underestimate the mess. We had to alternate shifts of volunteers to clean up in the auditorium after each meal or speaker session. Many people leave half-drunk cans of cool drink under their chairs (many knock these over and then leave big puddles that will need mopping). It’s really important to have a plan for all of the garbage to be whisked away as quickly as possible. 

Additionally, we found that the Friday night was quite challenging when it came to checking attendees in and giving them their welcome packs (programme, name tag, WiFi password and event hashtag etc.) As people were able to buy multiple tickets under one name, it became tricky administrating who had actually bought a ticket or not. We would suggest making it compulsory when people buy tickets to events off of the city websites that they have to provide a name and surname for each ticket.  

10. Fabulous Food

In this interview with Justin Mares, Author of the book Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers, we discuss actionable strategies for growing your business.

Justin introduces a revolutionary idea called the Bullseye Framework for rigorously testing your growth channels, while giving examples of strategies from some of today's top startups.

Pre-order his new book Traction here: http://tractionbook.com

His name is Tim Aton and this fall he will be a sophomore at Eastern Washington University with a major in Business Management and a minor in Visual Communication. To make money as a student, Tim came up with the business idea for Resume Redesign. Basically, Tim took his customer's boring resumes and used design templates to give them new life.

After redesigning resumes for 100 people at $5 to $20 each, Tim realized he wasn't charging enough to build a sustainable business. In addition, he didn't know how to acquire more customers or how much he would have to spend to get new customers in the door. So after reading The Lean Startup, Tim set out to create a landing page and test if he could make his business work. He actually tried every landing page tool he could find because he couldn't make up his mind which tool to use. In the end, a tool called QuickMVP is the only one that worked for him.

With QuickMVP Tim discovered his customers would pay $49 for his service and he only had to pay an average of $20.27 to get each one to sign-up. Tim's business was instantly profitable with a healthy margin.

Tim also found he could get 202 new customers to his website every day from just two keywords. With a couple more keywords and another channel or two (say Facebook or StumbleUpon ads) Tim will likely reach serial entrepreneur Jonathan Siegel's target market size of 1,000 clicks a day. And when he does, you can bet I will be putting Tim in touch with Jonathan to invest.

Take a closer look at Tim's metrics (download this spreadsheet here)

We're excited to share with you a new tool we've been working on.

QuickMVP uses a super simple technique to help you validate a new startup idea in literally 5 minutes. It's the only software that combines a Landing Page Builder with a Google Ad Creator in one tool.

But the value of QuickMVP doesn't stop there. Last week we shared an interview with serial entrepreneur Jonathan Siegel where he explained how he uses QuickMVP for both starting businesses and making investments.

QuickMVP quickly tells him:

Do people want this product?

How much will they pay?

How much does it cost to acquire customers?

What is the market size?

It's mind-blowing how much can be done with a simple tool, yet so few entrepreneurs do this before starting. If you're like me, you have a new idea every day. Most of them start off as stupid... but some stupid ideas are incredibly successful (pet rock or snuggie anyone?). You never know how much your idea is worth until you test it.

Jonathan Siegel's built and sold multiple tech companies (RightSignature, RightCart, RightScale, & ELC Technologies, to name a few).

His most recent (Exceptional) sold for 8 figures after just 18 months, without any investors.

Join us as Jonathan breaks down his startup formula--the four questions he asks of every business he starts and invests in.

Join us for a free webinar with Jonathan Siegel, one of the most incredible entrepreneur's I've ever met. He's even been called the "Elon Musk of SaaS businesses."

We often get asked for a list of upcoming workshops. Our website doesn't provide this currently so here's a list of just some of the events scheduled for the next couple months (in order of soonest).

To sign-up for any of these events just go to our website and select the city you want.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Riga, Latvia

Belfast, Ireland

Philadelphia, USA

Chicago, USA

Quito, Ecuador

Bogota, Columbia

Rennes, France

Milan, Italy

Manila, Philippines

Toronto, Canada

Montreal, Canada

Mumbai, India

Lisbon, Portugal

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Brisbane, Australia

London, UK

Monterrey, Mexico

Santiago, Chile

Mexico City, Mexico

Montevideo, Uruguay

Porto Alegre, Brazil

Portland, Oregon

Brasilia, Brazil

Munich, Germany

Taipei, Taiwan

Guadalajara, Mexico

Tijuana, Mexico

Abuja, Nigeria

Orange County, California

We're thrilled by the excitement behind our FREE Experiment Board tool including the coverage in Forbes, Pando, Smashing Magazine, and the Lean Enterprise Institute, since late March.

It's really hard to get comfortable running experiments, yet it is one of the most important things in any startup. The unit of measurement in your startup should be your experiments! In fact, everything is an experiment whether you track it and learn from it or not.

So I've asked two of our top LSM Mentors to offer dedicated coaching on the Experiment Board through Clarity (Dan Martell is also a frequent LSM mentor). These two individuals are Mark Abramson and Jabe Bloom.

It's not free. But it's reasonable at $100 for 30 minutes which includes follow-up via email. In these 30 minutes you could set up an experiment that will save you tens of thousands of dollars. So I recommend you give it a shot.

--

Last week, we had the honor of welcoming John Shook to our office while he was in town speaking at Will's LeanUX Conference. John Shook is the CEO and Chairman of Lean Enterprise Institute and is responsible for introducing Lean manufacturing to the US in the 70's. It is thanks to him and his work that we are here today, running Lean Startup Machine. He sparked the original Lean movement.

John introduced us to the origin of Kanban, and autographed our copy of his book, Learning to See: 

Kanban originated from Japanese street signs!

Grace and Trevor show John the best pizza place in NYC - Lombardi's!

The Dhaka Lean community is exploding!

Unlocked in just 1 day, Dhaka has over 600 sign-ups, just 15 shy of our hometown of NYC.

We've unlocked 73 cities this year and there are many more to go. Here's a quick list of 40 of them.

All cities go through an "unlocking process" where they must first get enough votes before we pick an organizers and start "staffing up." Learn more about our process here.

See your city here? Go to our website and help unlock!

BY VOTES

Over 100 Votes (So Close!)

Amsterdam

Atlanta

Austin

Boulder

Brasilia

Chicago

Johannesburg

Madrid

Miami

Munich

Paris

Santiago

Singapore

Sydney

Vancouver

Over 50 Votes (Building Momentum)

Barcelona

Berlin

Copenhagen

Ho Chi Minh

Kansas City

Melbourne

Moscow

Research Triangle Park

Rio de Janeiro

Zurich

Less than 50 Votes (Needs Love)

Columbus

Dubai

Dublin

Helsinki

Hong Kong

Houston

Las Vegas

Minneapolis-St. Paul

Nairobi

Oslo

Seoul

Shanghai

Stockholm

Vienna

Warsaw

BY REGION

Africa

Johannesburg

Nairobi

Asia & Pacific

Ho Chi Minh

Hong Kong

Melbourne

Moscow

Seoul

Shanghai

Sinagpore

Sydney

Europe

Amsterdam

Barcelona

Berlin

Copenhagen

Dublin

Helsinki

Madrid

Munich

Oslo

Paris

Stockholm

Warsaw

Zurich

Middle East

Dubai

North America

Atlanta

Austin

Boulder

Chicago

Columbus

Houston

Kansas City

Las Vegas

Miami

Minneapolis-St. Paul

Research Triangle Park

Vancouver

South America

Brasilia

Rio de Janeiro

We recently announced our Lean Startup Mentor Assessment. Now we're hosting free webinars to learn what it takes to mentor and to pass the assessment.

Sign-up for a webinar this week (each is at 12:30pm EST):

Tuesday March 4th - https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5883998349904106242

Wednesday March 5th - https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8328679990891984642

We've just added discussion boards to every city dashboard. Log in to your LSM account and you can discuss Lean Startup techniques and bringing the next event to your city.

In the above screenshot, Lead Chicago Evangelist Mike Becker is discussing marketing for the next LSM in Chicago.

60,000 words. 12 chapters. Interviews with GE, Intuit, Hearst, Nordstrom, Qualcomm, and others.

Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit, is calling it, "A framework for empowering the greatest entrepreneurial talent to thrive."