Start a Business: Design Thinking & Entrepreneurship [2024]

Course Curriculum

Chapter 1: Welcome to the 8 Step Business Launch Program | New for 2023

Lecture 1: What’s Coming Up: a Short Introduction to the Course

Lecture 2: Access All Course Templates, Guides, and Special Resources

Chapter 2: Startup Step 1: Clarify Your Business Concept and Match it with Target Markets

Lecture 1: The First Drop: How to Clarify Your Business Concept

Lecture 2: How to Access to Eazl’s Concept to Market Tool

Lecture 3: Share Your Business Concept Sentence

Lecture 4: AI for Entrepreneurs: Prompt for Generating a Business Plan

Lecture 5: Target Market Selection: Visualizing Markets, Segments, and Niches

Lecture 6: Audience Ideation: How to Use Constraints and Segments

Lecture 7: Are You Building a Two-sided Business? If So, This is for You.

Lecture 8: Introducing the CAM System for Prioritizing Audiences

Lecture 9: AI for Entrepreneurs: Develop an Early Customer Profile

Lecture 10: What MIT Found Out about Focus in Entrepreneurship

Lecture 11: [Extra Help] Identifying Chen and Samir’s Possible Audiences (Digital Technology

Lecture 12: [Extra Help] Identifying Kym’s Concept and Test Audiences (Retail and Products)

Lecture 13: [Extra Help] How to Use the CAM Market Filtration Tool

Chapter 3: Startup Step 2: Perform Target Market Research for Your New Business

Lecture 1: Why 45% of New Companies Fail (or Why Product/Market Fit is Mission #1)

Lecture 2: Case Study: Visualizing Chen and Samir's Launch in Two Scenarios

Lecture 3: Access to Eazl’s Primary Market Research Tool

Lecture 4: The Fundamentals of Human-centered Design

Lecture 5: Risk Reduction with Three Areas of Primary Research

Lecture 6: Interviews are Like Sailboats: Just Steer in the Right Direction

Lecture 7: Watch Customers Reveal Strategic Information in Real Interviews

Lecture 8: Access to Eazl’s Primary Market Research Toolkit

Lecture 9: [Extra Help] LinkedIn® Power Game for Primary Market Research (Rebroadcast)

Lecture 10: [Optional] Watch a Live, Unedited Customer Interview

Chapter 4: Startup Step 3: Use Your Target Market Research to Design a Better Business

Lecture 1: Three Types of Customer Needs (or “Pain Points”)

Lecture 2: [Optional] Let’s Convert Real Market Research into a Needs Map Together

Lecture 3: How to Find Customers’ Attitudes Regarding Your Business Arena

Lecture 4: Visualizing Customer Motivation through Your Purchasing Funnel

Lecture 5: [Selling Complex or Expensive Offerings] Selling to the Buying Center

Lecture 6: [Extra Help] Let’s Extract Design & Marketing Needs from Real Audience Research

Chapter 5: Startup Step 4: Estimate the Value of this Opportunity and Focus on a Tribe

Lecture 1: Athlete or Megatron and the Impact on Your Customer Group (or “Tribe”)

Lecture 2: Audience Validation: Three Characteristics of Every Good Target Market

Lecture 3: [Optional] The Meg Media Case Study (an “Athlete” Startup)

Lecture 4: [Optional] The Tanium Case Study (a “Megatron” Startup)

Lecture 5: The Peersight Tool: How We Remind Ourselves to Design Human-Centric Products

Lecture 6: How to Create Your Customer Persona

Lecture 7: [Extra Help] Let’s Use Real Customer Research to Create a Persona Together

Chapter 6: Startup Step 5: Build and Test a Prototype of Your Business Concept

Lecture 1: Prototype Concepting with the ORB System

Lecture 2: [Optional] Prototype Concepting: The Hire Hero Case Study

Lecture 3: Let’s Start Building! (or Getting around the Competition and Capital Roadblocks)

Lecture 4: [Prototyping for Services and Experiences] Your MVP as a Service Design

Lecture 5: [Prototyping for Physical Products] 3D Printing and CAD Fundamentals with Henry

Lecture 6: [Prototyping for Digital Products] Designing Your MVP as a Walking Skeleton

Lecture 7: Testing Your Prototype: The Three Big Questions

Lecture 8: How to Test Your Prototype as an MVP (or "Minimum Viable Product")

Lecture 9: [Optional] Here are Some of My Favorite MVP Testing Tools

Lecture 10: When Your Know Your Prototype is Ready for It's Big Debut

Chapter 7: Startup Step 6: Build the Brand, Set a Price, & Engineer the Customer Experience

Lecture 1: The Real Deal with Branding: What I Wish I’d Have Known

Lecture 2: The Four Core Parts of Your Business’ New Identity

Lecture 3: How to Write a Compelling Business Description

Lecture 4: [Optional] Case Study: a Tour of Artisan Access’ New Identity

Lecture 5: Pricing Strategies for Your New Business

Lecture 6: Branding and Customer Loyalty through Experience Design

Chapter 8: Startup Step 7: Get Your First and Second Groups of Customers

Lecture 1: The Two Startup Sales Strategies (and the One that Usually Won’t Work)

Lecture 2: Visualizing a How a Startup's Marketing and Sales Activities Work

Lecture 3: [Optional] a Quick Intro to Startup Customer Relationship Management (or “CRM”)

Lecture 4: How to Approach Your First Group of Customers

Lecture 5: The Launch Marketing Suite: Your New Business’ First Selling Tool

Lecture 6: [Optional] Case Study: a Tour of Artisan Access’ Launch Marketing Suite

Lecture 7: How to Approach Influencers as Your Second Customer Group

Lecture 8: [Extra Help] Troubleshooting when You’re Having a Hard Time Attracting Customers

Chapter 9: Startup Step 8: Recruit a Lead Advisor and Raise a Seed Round of Funding

Lecture 1: How We Suggest Most Startups Raise a Seed Round

Lecture 2: How to Recruit a Lead Advisor to Help Guide Founder(s)

Lecture 3: [Optional] Case Study: How Meg Media Recruited Their Lead Advisor

Lecture 4: #BeyondBusinessPlans: What Startups Really Need

Lecture 5: [Optional] Practical Research Methods for Your Business Case

Lecture 6: [Optional] Let’s Draft Your First Financial Forecast Together

Lecture 7: How to Design a Seed Round that Really Works [Contract Template Here]

Chapter 10: Bonus Section: Extra Lean Branding and Launch-Phase Marketing Tutorials

Lecture 1: Lean Branding I: Crafting Kym’s Business Name

Lecture 2: Lean Branding II: Developing the Artisan Access Color Palette

Lecture 3: Lean Branding III: Creating a Typography Package for Free

Lecture 4: Lean Branding IV: Designing a Cool, Inexpensive Logo

Lecture 5: Lean Branding V: Writing Artisan Access’ Public-facing Business Description

Lecture 6: Let’s Create the Artisan Access Launch Marketing Suite (Extended Tutorial)

Chapter 11: Selected Features and Specs of this Course + Content Upgrade Journal

Lecture 1: [Optional] Selected Features and Specs of this Learning Experience