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The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

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The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

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The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

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The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon eBook : Stone, Brad: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

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The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

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The Lean Startup: The Million Copy Bestseller Driving Entrepreneurs to Success

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The Lean Startup: The Million Copy Bestseller Driving Entrepreneurs to Success eBook : Ries, Eric: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

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Winner of a special award from the National Science Foundation -- With a foreword from Steve Blank, Talking to Humans is a practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development, an indispensable skill for vetting and improving any new startup or innovation. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action.

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Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers

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Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers eBook : Constable, Giff, Fishburne, Tom, Rimalovski, Frank: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

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Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

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Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

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Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future eBook : Masters, Blake, Thiel, Peter: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

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Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

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Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

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Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction eBook : Tetlock, Philip, Gardner, Dan: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

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Thinking, Fast and Slow eBook : Kahneman, Daniel: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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The Ratchet of Technology, a site by Michael Magoon

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Book Summary: “The Innovator’s DNA” by Clayton Christensen et al

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Title: The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive InnovatorsAuthor: Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. ChristensenScope: 3 starsReadability: 4 starsMy personal rating: 5…

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A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

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A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

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A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

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A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas eBook : Berger, Warren: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Wise Words - Book Summaries, Notes and Reviews

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A More Beautiful Question Book Summary – Warren Berger - Wise Words

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What you will learn from reading A More Beautiful Question - An insight on how beneficial it is to question the reality we are in. - What kind of questions are best to tackle problems. - How to deconstruct questions so you can follow an easy step process to problem solving. Buy A More Beautiful

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Qualities

This new edition of Charles O'Reilly and Michael Tushman's 2016 original, offers expanded, fresh insights into how to build an "ambidextrous" organization: one that continues to extract profits from existing lines of business while simultaneously developing new ventures that eventually displace the old. The authors use cautionary lessons from Blockbuster, Sears and Kodak to demonstrate how fraught this balancing act can be. However, their description of firms that get it right, including Amazon and IBM, offers your business a road map to survive and thrive in turbulent times.

Firms that cling exclusively to past successes are unlikely to survive a disruptive business landscape.

Before World War II, US firms' tenure on the S&P 500 averaged almost a century. Today, that span has fallen to less than 15 years. In a time of faster change and disruption, companies must consistently revamp to survive - but very few do so. Ironically, most firms' success holds them back. They may start out as disrupters and become wildly profitable game changers; but at some point, they fail to commit to the ongoing change necessary to continue thriving.

For example, Blockbuster did not act in time to move from physical stores and rentals toward direct mail and streaming. Even the early successes of Netflix - which had only a small fraction of Blockbuster's resources in 2002 when it went public - were enough to shake the market leader's standing. Blockbuster collapsed in 2010. Netflix, meanwhile, has renewed itself several times, demonstrating a willingness to cannibalize thriving businesses of its own to go after the next thing.

Ambidextrous organizations...

Business professors Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman teach and conduct research at Stanford and Harvard universities, respectively. Each has earned a Distinguished Scholar Award from the Academy of Management.

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Lead and Disrupt Free Summary by Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman

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Access a free summary of Lead and Disrupt, by Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman and 27,000 other business, leadership and nonfiction books on getAbstract.

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Qualities

Are corporations capable of change? Popular opinion sees disruption as damaging to corporations and favoring start-ups, but corporations are learning how to embrace change and foster innovation by empowering their most ambitious leaders. Professors Charles A. O'Reilly III, Andrew Binns and Michael Tushman share the hard-won lessons of corporations that have successfully pushed back against fear and inertia. These organizations recognize and support employees who possess and can act upon insights about the future of the business, and who drive change from within the corporate structure.

Corporations are closing the innovation gap with start-ups.

Conventional wisdom holds that large firms operate at a fundamental disadvantage compared to start-ups. Corporations rely on the profits of a mature business model. They are risk-averse and unwilling to commit significant resources to unproven ideas. In his book The Innovator's Dilemma, Clay Christensen argues that this makes corporations vulnerable to disruption: a new way of doing things that changes all the rules and makes old business models irrelevant.

However, in the 25 years since the publication of Christensen's book, corporations have learned to leverage their assets to create an innovation advantage.

Corporate explorers are leaders from any level of an organization who turn their insights into initiatives.

Corporate explorers do not wait for permission from above; they see opportunity, initiate their projects and get leadership on board to create their own mandates.

Krisztian Kurtisz of UNIQA Insurance, for example, believed that the insurance industry had lost touch with its original mission: ...

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Corporate Explorer Free Summary by Charles A. O'Reilly III et al.

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Access a free summary of Corporate Explorer, by Charles A. O'Reilly III et al. and 27,000 other business, leadership and nonfiction books on getAbstract.

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5 min read ⌚

Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations

The logical inquiries are not the main cause that instigates people or organizational units to change.

The process focusing on "look, feel and change" has the crucial role.

Who Should Read "The Heart of Change"? And Why?

Educate your associates on how they will benefit from the transformation. Outline their importance in the company, don't make them feel unworthy and stop with the bossy attitude.

Approach their heart, not their mind and confront these interrelated opposites. To save your company from financial collapse, promote or stimulate new perspective consisting of new methods. These tactics will prevent the business from going down by advocating dramatic changes.

" The Heart of Change " is interpreted as one of a kind - instruction manual; a manual suited for businessmen, entrepreneurs, managers, lawyers and every other person willing to explore the power of change.

About John P. Kotter & Dan S. Cohen
John P. Kotter Leading Change". Dan S. Cohen momentarily heads the "Global Energy Change" company in which he applies the fundamental "transformation techniques".
"The Heart of Change Summary"

In some business communities, the stability is all that matters. Companies are distracted by the influence of external factors - which is enormous. Consolidation of business positions is gaining momentum as well. Despite today's economic turbulence and unpredictability, the business environment requires stability.

Some experts like the word - adaptability more, because firms are in "do or die" situation, flexible approach and openness to change is the only route to prosperity.

A lot of the people are still aversive to change, the author sidesteps individuals and emphasizes groups or organizations which share the same attitude. The problem emerges because most of the people don't know or understand the starting point.

Their way of functioning is familiar to them, even if they successfully adapted to the new era in the past, they are not comfortable doing it all over again.

Time after time, managers in big companies try to encourage the organization to adopt a new error-free perspective. This point of view appeals to utilizing new technologies and methods in order to compete in the market.

Your employees or associates expect clear reports and guidance which will allow them to overcome the fear of transformation. However, frequently some of these tactics cannot "construct" the infrastructure of possibilities - if the sense of urgency is missing.

Become aware of the theory and endorse it - the "heart of change" is located at the very center of our being or in other words a mere reflection of our inner state (the emotions). Only a deep connection among you and your co-workers can spark that fire and motivate them to transform from risk-aversive to risk-takers.

Go one step at a time; organizational change requires individual change. Before you know it, the company itself may suffer the consequences if the executives don't prove themselves as great leaders.

John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen, the authors of this concise life-altering book, began their journey by conducting a series of interviews - covering more than 400 individuals from 130 companies and ultimately saw the big picture.

Their central discovery is based on changing individuals before you take it to the next level or in this case - organizations of teams. Before you ask a change from your associates, make sure that you become the example of such.

Some readers may find the theory focusing on feelings "not productive, " or even "boring," but the authors inform against believing in reports and other external activity as tools for stimulating transformation.

Self-change, as the authors explained, doesn't only refer to individual transformation, but also it covers organizational change which is quite harder to attain. Many firms are fighting with the aversiveness of their employees. Unfortunately, the results are devastating.

The techniques these companies use, tend to delude organization into thinking that all is going well and shortly after to take a turn into unexpected reality. The company's turning point will not take place if that firm has a shortage of capable leaders.

These individuals need to assess the situation and resolve the unresolved problems, which are often hidden - behind the curtains. The ratio between change and the aversiveness of the same varies according to the knowledge that institution or individual possess.

Key Lessons from "The Heart of Change"

1. Adopt a perfect vision 2. Build a productive team 3. Almost nothing is impossible

Adopt the perfect vision

Once you manage to persuade the members of your organization that change is an imperative, the team will quickly shift from personally oriented to "we".

This approach will give the leadership a new role from which the group will draw energy. The ultimate vision is far more significant than a strategy or a long-term plan because it concerns the entire company.

Build a productive team

After a new vision is set in place, the associates may start to feel the urge arising from it. If you're keen for knowledge, try to convey that same approach to other members.

Build a competitive team, ready to take the struggle out from the company.

Almost nothing is impossible

The "it can't be done" obstacles are just an excuse for incompetent leaders.

Even if some task or a job seems impossible to pull off, yet a stubborn manager who welcomes new ideas will try a several more times before the final "No".

Like this summary? We'd Like to invite you to download our free 12 min app , for more amazing summaries and audiobooks.

"The Heart of Change" Quotes
Never underestimate the power of the mind to disempower. Click To Tweet Never underestimate the power of clever people to help others see the possibilities, to help them generate a feeling of faith, and to change behavior. Everyone engaged in a big change effort...should probably have a banner above the mirror in his or her bathroom at home...that says, 'Dying will not help. Honesty always trumps propaganda. People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings. Click To Tweet Click To Tweet Click To Tweet Click To Tweet
Our Critical Review

With a strong appreciation for the revelation, we believe that this book is a good fit for everyone; regardless of their level of education, nationality, race, age, gender.

Kotter and Cohen present his eight-step life-changing model which by all means demonstrate the practical side of transformation. Enriched by real-life stories of managers this book will surely get the best out of you.

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The Heart of Change PDF Summary - John P. Kotter & Dan S. Cohen

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The Heart of Change Summary by John P. Kotter & Dan S. Cohen triggers a discussion to finally end the devastating indirect struggle between members.

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https://medium.com/@beccireid/how-i-want-to-build-my-team-cc30f7d35b47

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...the Lean Startup way

Here are my take-aways from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, focusing on building a Lean Startup organisation. You can order the book online, and pre-order Eric's next book The Startup Way.

As mentioned in my previous blog How I want to build my business, startups are built on uncertainty.

So what sort of company do we need to build to excel in this uncertainty?

As Eric explains it "...we need an organizational structure, culture, and discipline that can handle these rapid and often unexpected changes"..."one that automatically adjusts its process and performance to current conditions."

Eric recognises two powerful challenges for entrepreneurs implementing lean thinking:

1. Building an organisation where these assumptions can be tested systematically; and

2. Performing these rigorous tests without losing sight of your company's overall vision.

A healthy culture is based on the ethos / environment as well as the processes implemented; and they require the support of the whole team, including the executive team! When looking at both ethos and process, my takeaways from The Lean Startup for building a healthy culture which I would like to employ, include a commitment to:

Something caught me off guard in this book - the idea that people find difficulty in measuring value on learning and instead measure value on productiveness. As a result, we build department-based teams where we all put our heads down, our bums up and move work from one department to the next. When we move work on, we see this as productive, whereas real productiveness is in the intangible value of learning.

As a result, we need to re-think how our teams operate, and how we can introduce learning milestones into the business as a value of productiveness by implementing effective experimentation systems.

First, we need to build smaller multidisciplinary teams. Strangely, functional specialisation has been proven to be less effective; and Eric suggests teams no larger than five.

Then, we need to reduce the batch sizes of work. "The ideal goal is to achieve small batches all the way down to single-piece flow along the entire supply chain. Each step in the line pulls the parts it needs from the previous step."

Every role needs to spend time with the customers. A term I particularly liked was Genchi Genbutsu, illustrating the importance to go and see for yourself.

And, we all need to be marching to the same drum. Every activity and decision needs to be focussed around the vision and priorities of the business.

It's important for a startup to build an environment for innovation, including building a community of entrepreneurs.

And as Eric notes, "A solid process lays the foundation for a healthy culture, one where ideas are evaluated by merit and not by job title."

An ideal scenario is building an onboarding process to enable new employees to be productive on their first day, while also learning the culture of the company, and how all these processes work. Eric did this by creating a systems-level view, and asking new developers to change the production environment when they began. Then, if something was to break, this new employee would lead the fixing of the issue to ensure the next person couldn't break it. This immediately taught the new employee the company values of fixing things straight away, and of continual improvement.

In essence, by implementing lean thinking effectively, we're able to achieve validated learning, convert push methods to pull, reduce our batch sizes of work, keep nimble and then accelerate.

I had a real palm to face moment when Eric described the difference between the driver-to-steering wheel experience for a car versus a rocket ship. I've often taken the rocket ship approach, by planning every step and expected result far in advance. However Eric is absolutely right - I have certainly experienced times where down the track, minor errors have meant big impacts for me, and these could have been avoided with the car approach, identifying much sooner when I needed to take a sharp turn or whether it was safe to continue along my current path.

Lean thinking is a great way to look at providing the discipline needed to build an adaptive organisation and is discussed in more detail in my blog How I want to build my business, including a description of the build-measure-learn feedback loop, batch design and continuous development.

It's important, particularly when working in multidisciplinary teams, to ensure everyone is on the same page, and they all have a thorough understanding of what's going on. This means communicating in a more simplified way so those outside your technical skills can read, interpret and contribute. One example Eric provided was for feature requests to be written as customer stories, and for reporting, it means implementing the 3 A's:

Actionable: demonstrating clear cause / effect so everyone can learn from their actions.

Accessible: using terminology so everyone understands them, plus ensuring everyone has access to them (e.g. a simple one-page summary of the results emailed / available via log-in).

Auditable: being able to test by hand (by talking to customers), as well as using a simple mechanism for generating the reports (ideally drawn directly from the master data rather than an intermediate system).

Teams are then in a much better position to evaluate how the changes made were related to the results they're seeing, and to ensure the correct lessons are being drawn from the changes. This puts the team in a better position to evaluate the company's position, and identify what direction it should take.

Eric also suggests teams hold regular pivot or persevere meetings. He recommends every 1-2 months; however notes the regularity will be best determined for the individual organisation. This meeting would include:

Product development team. They would provide a complete report on the product optimisation efforts and a comparison against expectations (over time, not simply since the last meeting).

Business leadership team: They would provide detailed accounts on conversations with both current and potential customers.

Outside advisors: They would be asked to provide external thoughts / advice where possible.

This book has been incredibly valuable in allowing me to question my earlier processes developed, and think about how I wish to build startup organisations in the future.

I'm excited to put this into practice, and share my progress!
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the Lean Startup way Here are my take-aways from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, focusing on building a Lean Startup organisation. You can order the book online, and pre-order Eric's next book The Startup Way . As mentioned in my previous blog How I want to build my business , startups are built on uncertainty.

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Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

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Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

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Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead

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Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead eBook : Bock, Laszlo: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Welcome to the Springwise Innovation Library. Each dedicated sector room is filled with 1,000 positive-impact global innovations from the last 20 years

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This is an activity that I use in almost every teambuilding session I run--because it delivers results every time. I can take no credit for its invention since it has existed from long before my time, in various forms and with a variety of names (such as Blind Polygon). The activity can be frontloaded to focus on particular issues by changing a few parameters or altering the instructions.

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70+ energizers, energizer games and ice breaker activities for your next workshop, meeting or training session. Step-by-step guides on how to successfully run energizers, energizers for training or energizer workshop - FREE access to all energizer activities.

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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation eBook : Brown, Tim: Amazon.co.uk: Books

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Purpose-driven innovations from around the globe, selected by our trend analysts. Which product, service or campaign will spark your next meaningful big thing?

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Tried and tested quick, inexpensive and low risk experiments to test for traction!

To test out the riskiest assumptions in your business or mission model canvas, using rapid experiments offers a structured approach to test your ideas as quickly, as inexpensively and in as low risk a way as possible while you search for traction.

Contents
Generative Market Research - Discover who your users are Evaluative Market Experiment - Test out market demand for your idea Generative Product Research - Test and prioritise which features of a MVP to develop Evaluative Product Experiment - Test features of your idea with real users

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Tried and tested quick, inexpensive and low risk experiments to test for traction! To test out the riskiest assumptions in your business or mission model canvas, using rapid experiments offers a structured approach to test your ideas as quickly, as inexpensively and in as low risk a way as possible while you search for traction.

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https://www.countdownkings.com/

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A smarter way to organise events
and save time

We are primarily focused at timers for speaking, meetings and similar events, this is why numbers are large and clearly visible even from far away. Timer is easy to use and great experience is top priority.

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We are primarily focused at timers for speaking, meetings and similar events, this is why numbers are large and clearly visible even from far away. Timer is easy to use and great experience is top priority.

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New small business ideas to make money for entrepreneurs. Best top business ideas!

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Trend - Generative artificial intelligence is being used to convert spoken language into written text. This text can be used for a variety of purposes, such as transcription services for meetings, interviews, lectures, and content creation.

Insight - There is a constant demand for effective and accurate communication in hybrid and remote work environments. Employees often seek out tools and technologies that streamline interactions, automate repetitive tasks, and allow them to focus on higher-value, creative aspects of their roles. The adoption of low-attention, automated solutions enables businesses to prioritize active engagement and discussions, fostering a heightened emphasis on innovation.

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TREND HUNTER - #1 in Trends, Trend Reports, Fashion Trends, Tech, Design

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Trends! The #1 largest Trends, Innovation and Trend Spotting community, 2023 Trend Reports, Style, Gadgets, Tech, Pop Culture, Art, Design, Fashion Trends

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Pocket. Great ‘save it later’ app for interesting articles

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Pocket. Great ‘save it later’ app for interesting articles

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Miro is the most intuitive online collaborative whiteboard platform for distributed teams. Over 20+ million product managers, project managers, Agile coaches, developers, and other talented team members around the world use Miro to collaborate, brainstorm and visualize ideas, and share team work.

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Subscribe to The Hustle Daily Newsletter - The Hustle

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Sign up for the free, 5-minute newsletter keeping 2M+ innovators in the loop with stories on business, tech, and the internet.

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Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

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The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss - Summary

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The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss - Summary

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Google’s “Innovation time off” Intrapreneurship program

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Google’s “Innovation time off” Intrapreneurship program

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Google’s “Innovation time off” Intrapreneurship program

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The best definition of innovation. Scott Berkun

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The best definition of innovation. Scott Berkun

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For years I've studied use and abuse of the word innovation. In the business world, it's often used as a empty filler word, without meaningful intent. You can test this by simply asking someone using the word: what does innovation mean? Rarely will they have an answer, which is a good sign it has become a nonsense word. I've complained about this, which leads to people ask me to do more than complain, and to offer a definition.

I generally recommend people don't use the word at all when working. Use more thoughtful words instead. Most importantly, simply dedicate yourself to solving problems. It's solving problems that matters. Instead of saying "our goal is innovation", which is vague, say "our goal is to solve THIS problem for THESE people", or admit that your first aim is to decide which problems you're going to solve and for whom.

If you must use the word, here is the best definition: Innovation is significant positive change. It's a result. It's an outcome. It's something you work towards achieving on a project. If you are successful at solving important problems, peers you respect will call your work innovative and you an innovator. Let them choose the word.

This is a high bar, and it should be. To call every change you make in your work an innovation belittles the possible scale of progress. The act of creating something, even if it solves a problem, should perhaps still not be considered an innovation until it is adopted by other people (see Innovation vs. Invention). Until then, it's just an invention with the potential to be an innovation. If you are an engineer, a designer or a start-up founder, inventing things is simply your job.

What does significant mean? I'd start with the invention of the light bulb, constitutional governments, wireless radio and the Internet. Perhaps you could say significant is a 30% or more improvement in something, like the speed of an engine or the power of a battery. If you know the history of your profession you know the big positive changes people made over the last 50 years, giving you perspective on the scale of brilliance you need to have to be worthy of that word.

But if you use word lightly, or frequently, you show hubris in the present and ignorance of the past. Sayings like "we innovate every day", "chief innovator" or "innovation pipeline" are inflations. They're popular, but misguided. Calling a thing an innovation doesn't make it so. It's just a word and words are free to be abused. If you think about it, it's easy to separate mere improvements from something worthy of grander praise.

The best thing to ask anyone who uses the word innovation is: what do you mean when you say that?

Most of the time people have no idea what they mean (or realize they really just mean one of these). And once they admit this, that's when you offer the definition above.

[Note: I can't claim that I came up with this definition. I've read dozens of books on the history of invention and progress that influenced me before ever realizing an improved definition was necessary. Suggested sources are welcome.]

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For years I've studied use and abuse of the word innovation. In the business world, it's often used as a empty filler word, without meaningful intent. You can test this by simply asking someone using the word: what does innovation mean? Rarely will they have an answer, which is a good sign it has become a nonsense word.

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As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill a mission? In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue?

Alexander Osterwalder and I think we have the answer - the new Model Canvas.

Here are our collective thoughts.

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The Lean Startup is the way most innovators build startups and innovate inside of existing companies. As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts:

The Business Model Canvas has been a great invention for everyone from startups to large companies. Unlike an org chart, which describes how a company executes to deliver known products to known customers, the Business Model Canvas illustrates the search for the unknowns that most new ventures face. The 9 boxes of the canvas let you visualize all the components needed to turn customer needs/problems into a profitable company.

From Revenue Streams to Mission Achievement
The Business Model Canvas has served all of us well in thinking about building businesses - and therein lies the problem. In a business the aim is to earn more money than you spend. What if you're a government or a military organization or part of the intelligence community? In these cases you don't earn money, but you mobilize resources and a budget to solve a particular problem and create value for a set of beneficiaries (customers, support organizations, warfighters, Congress, the country, etc.)

For these organizations, the canvas box labeled Revenue Streams doesn't make sense.

In a mission-driven organization such as the defense and intelligence community, there is no revenue to measure. So the first step in building a canvas for mission-driven organizations is to change the Revenue Stream box in the canvas and come up with a counterpart that would provide a measure of success.

We're calling this alternative Mission Achievement. Later in this post I'll explain how we'll measure and describe Mission Achievement, but first our Mission Model Canvas needs four more tweaks.

Customer Segments is changed to Beneficiaries

Cost Structure is changed to Mission Cost/Budget

Channel is changed to Deployment

Customer Relationships is changed to Buy-in/Support

The rest of this blog post explains the how and why of these changes to the canvas.

Customer Segments Change to Beneficiaries
At first glance, when developing a new technology for use in the defense and intelligence community, the customer appears obvious - it's the ultimate war fighter. They will articulate pains in terms of size, weight, form fit, complexity and durability. But there are other key players involved. Requirement writers and acquisition folks look at systems integration across the battlefield system, while contracting officers, yet another segment, will count beans, measure the degree of competition and assess the quality of market research involved. The support organizations need to worry about maintainability of code or hardware. Does legal need to sign off for cyber operations? So yes, war fighters are one customer segment, but others need to be involved before the war fighter can ever see the product.

So the first insight is that in the defense and intelligence community mission models are always multi-sided markets with the goal of not just building a great demo but getting the product adopted and deployed.

Second, in the defense and intelligence communities almost all of the mission models look like that of an OEM supplier - meaning there are multiple layers of customers in the value chain. Your product/service is just part of someone else's larger system.

So to differentiate "customers" from the standard business model canvas we'll call all the different customer segments and the layers in the defense and intelligence value chain beneficiaries.

The Value Proposition Canvas
Of all the nine boxes of the canvas, two important parts of the model are the relationship between the Value Proposition (what you're building) and the beneficiaries. These two components of the business model are so important we give them their own name, Product/Market Fit.

Because of the complexity of multiple beneficiaries and to get more detail about their gains and pains, Osterwalder added an additional canvas called the Value Proposition Canvas. This functions like a plug-in to the Mission Model Canvas, zooming in to the value proposition to describe the interactions among these beneficiaries, war fighters, etc. and the product/service in more detail. Using the Value Proposition Canvas with the Mission Model Canvas lets you see both the big picture at the mission model level and the detailed picture of each beneficiary at the "product/market fit" level.

In the defense and intelligence community mission models, there will always be multiple beneficiaries. It's important that each beneficiary gets its own separate Value Proposition Canvas.

Distribution Channel changes to Deployment
In the commercial world we ask, "What type of distribution channel (direct sales, app store, system integrator, etc.) do we use to get the product/service from our company to the customer segments?" For the Department of Defense or Intelligence organizations, we ask instead:

"What will it take to deploy the product/service from our current Minimum Viable Product to widespread use among people who need it?" (What architecture components can they innovate on and what can't they?)

"What constitutes a successful deployment? (number of users, units in the field, time to get it into the field, success in the field, etc.)"

"How do we turn a Horizon 3 innovation into something that gets adopted by a Horizon 1 organization?"

Customer Relationships changes to Buy-In/Support
In an existing business, Customer Relationships is defined as establishing and maintaining a relationship to support existing customers. In a startup we redefined Customer Relationships to answer the question: How does a company get, keep and grow customers?

For the defense and intelligence communities, we have modified Customer Relationships to mean, "For each beneficiary (customer segment), how does the team get "Buy-In" from all the beneficiaries?"

Customer discovery helps you understand whose buy-in is needed in order to deploy the product/service (legal, policy, procurement, etc.) and how to get those beneficiaries to buy-in? (Funding? Mandates? User requested? etc.) In addition, the long-term support and maintenance of new projects need to be articulated, understood and bought-into by the support organizations.

At the Pentagon a favorite way to kill something is to coordinate it to death by requiring buy-in from too many people too early. How to determine who are the small group of critical people to get buy-in from - and how to determine who are the next set required to sustain the iterative development of future MVP's - is one of the arts of entrepreneurship in the defense and intelligence community.

Revenue Streams changes to Mission Achievement
Mission Achievement is the value you are creating for the sum of all of the beneficiaries / the greater good.

It's important to distinguish between the value for individual beneficiaries (on the Value Proposition Canvas) and overall Mission Achievement. For example, Mission Achievement could be measured in a variety of ways: the number of refugees housed and fed, the number of soldiers saved from roadside bombs, the number of cyberattacks prevented, the increased target surveillance of sensor fusion, etc. None of these are measured in dollars and cents. Keep in mind, there is only mission achievement if it delivers value to the end beneficiary.

[Update: Watch the Mission Model Canvas Videos]

1. Introduction to the Mission Model Canvas (2:19)

2. Mission Model Canvas: Beneficiaries & Stakeholders (2:49)

3. Mission Model Canvas: Value Proposition (1:33)

4. Mission Model Canvas: Buy-In (1:35)

5. Mission Model Canvas: Deployment (1:26)

6. Mission Model Canvas: Mission Achievement (1:16)

7. Mission Model Canvas: Key Activities (0:53)

8. Mission Model Canvas: Key Resources (0:37)

9. Mission Model Canvas: Partners (0:57)

10. Mission Model Canvas: Mission Budget (1:17)

11. Mission Model Canvas: Key Concepts (2:44)

Lessons Learned

In the defense and intelligence community the metrics of success are not revenue but mission achievement

We've modified the Business Model Canvas into a Mission Model Canvas

Changed Revenue Streams to Mission Achievement

Changed Customer Segments to Beneficiaries

Changed Cost Structure to Mission Cost/Budget

Changed Channel to Deployment

Changed Customer Relationships to Buy-in/Support

Organizations without specific revenue goals can now use a version of the Business Model Canvas

Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Hacking For Defense, Science and Industrial Policy, Teaching |

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Steve Blank The Mission Model Canvas - An Adapted Business Model Canvas for Mission-Driven Organizations

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As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill ...

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Why the Lean Start-up changes everything. HBR

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Why the Lean Start-up changes everything. HBR

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Launching a new enterprise-whether it's a tech start-up, a small business, or an initiative within a large corporation-has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. According to the decades-old formula, you write a business plan, pitch it to investors, assemble a team, introduce a product, and start selling as hard as you can. And somewhere in this sequence of events, you'll probably suffer a fatal setback. The odds are not with you: As new research by Harvard Business School's Shikhar Ghosh shows, 75% of all start-ups fail.

But recently an important countervailing force has emerged, one that can make the process of starting a company less risky. It's a methodology called the "lean start-up," and it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional "big design up front" development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts-such as "minimum viable product" and "pivoting"-have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.

The lean start-up movement hasn't gone totally mainstream, however, and we have yet to feel its full impact. In many ways it is roughly where the big data movement was five years ago-consisting mainly of a buzzword that's not yet widely understood, whose implications companies are just beginning to grasp. But as its practices spread, they're turning the conventional wisdom about entrepreneurship on its head. New ventures of all kinds are attempting to improve their chances of success by following its principles of failing fast and continually learning. And despite the methodology's name, in the long term some of its biggest payoffs may be gained by the large companies that embrace it.

In this article I'll offer a brief overview of lean start-up techniques and how they've evolved. Most important, I'll explain how, in combination with other business trends, they could ignite a new entrepreneurial economy.

The Fallacy of the Perfect Business Plan

According to conventional wisdom, the first thing every founder must do is create a business plan-a static document that describes the size of an opportunity, the problem to be solved, and the solution that the new venture will provide. Typically it includes a five-year forecast for income, profits, and cash flow. A business plan is essentially a research exercise written in isolation at a desk before an entrepreneur has even begun to build a product. The assumption is that it's possible to figure out most of the unknowns of a business in advance, before you raise money and actually execute the idea.

Once an entrepreneur with a convincing business plan obtains money from investors, he or she begins developing the product in a similarly insular fashion. Developers invest thousands of man-hours to get it ready for launch, with little if any customer input. Only after building and launching the product does the venture get substantial feedback from customers-when the sales force attempts to sell it. And too often, after months or even years of development, entrepreneurs learn the hard way that customers do not need or want most of the product's features.

The business model canvas lets you look at all nine building blocks of your business on one page. Each component of the business model contains a series of hypotheses that you need to test.

After decades of watching thousands of start-ups follow this standard regimen, we've now learned at least three things:

1. Business plans rarely survive first contact with customers. As the boxer Mike Tyson once said about his opponents' prefight strategies: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

2. No one besides venture capitalists and the late Soviet Union requires five-year plans to forecast complete unknowns. These plans are generally fiction, and dreaming them up is almost always a waste of time.

3. Start-ups are not smaller versions of large companies. They do not unfold in accordance with master plans. The ones that ultimately succeed go quickly from failure to failure, all the while adapting, iterating on, and improving their initial ideas as they continually learn from customers.

One of the critical differences is that while existing companies execute a business model, start-ups look for one. This distinction is at the heart of the lean start-up approach. It shapes the lean definition of a start-up: a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

The lean method has three key principles:

First, rather than engaging in months of planning and research, entrepreneurs accept that all they have on day one is a series of untested hypotheses-basically, good guesses. So instead of writing an intricate business plan, founders summarize their hypotheses in a framework called a business model canvas. Essentially, this is a diagram of how a company creates value for itself and its customers.

During customer development, a start-up searches for a business model that works. If customer feedback reveals that its business hypotheses are wrong, it either revises them or "pivots" to new hypotheses. Once a model is proven, the start-up starts executing, building a formal organization. Each stage of customer development is iterative: A start-up will probably fail several times before finding the right approach.

1. Founders translate company ideas into business model hypotheses, test assumptions about customers' needs, and then create a "minimum viable product" to try out their proposed solution on customers.

2. Start-up continues to test all other hypotheses and tries to validate customers' interest through early orders or product usage. If there's no interest, the start-up can "pivot" by changing one or more hypotheses.

3. The product is refined enough to sell. Using its proven hypotheses, the start-up builds demand by rapidly ramping up marketing and sales spending, and scales up the business.

4. Business transitions from start-up mode, with a customer development team searching for answers, to functional departments executing its model.

Third, lean start-ups practice something called agile development, which originated in the software industry. Agile development works hand-in-hand with customer development. Unlike typical yearlong product development cycles that presuppose knowledge of customers' problems and product needs, agile development eliminates wasted time and resources by developing the product iteratively and incrementally. It's the process by which start-ups create the minimum viable products they test.

In contrast to traditional product development, in which each stage occurs in linear order and lasts for months, agile development builds products in short, repeated cycles. A start-up produces a "minimum viable product"-containing only critical features-gathers feedback on it from customers, and then starts over with a revised minimum viable product.

When Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden started Blue River Technology, they were students in my class at Stanford. They had a vision of building robotic lawn mowers for commercial spaces. After talking to over 100 customers in 10 weeks, they learned their initial customer target-golf courses-didn't value their solution. But then they began to talk to farmers and found a huge demand for an automated way to kill weeds without chemicals. Filling it became their new product focus, and within 10 weeks Blue River had built and tested a prototype. Nine months later the start-up had obtained more than $3 million in venture funding. The team expected to have a commercial product ready just nine months after that.

Stealth Mode's Declining Popularity

Lean methods are changing the language start-ups use to describe their work. During the dot-com boom, start-ups often operated in "stealth mode" (to avoid alerting potential competitors to a market opportunity), exposing prototypes to customers only during highly orchestrated "beta" tests. The lean start-up methodology makes those concepts obsolete because it holds that in most industries customer feedback matters more than secrecy and that constant feedback yields better results than cadenced unveilings.

Those two fundamental precepts crystallized for me during my career as an entrepreneur. (I've been involved with eight high-tech start-ups, as either a founder or an early employee.) When I shifted into teaching, a decade ago, I came up with the formula for customer development described earlier. By 2003 I was outlining this process in a course at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 2004, I invested in a start-up founded by Eric Ries and Will Harvey and, as a condition of my investment, insisted that they take my course. Eric quickly recognized that waterfall development, the tech industry's traditional, linear product development approach, should be replaced by iterative agile techniques. He also saw similarities between this emerging set of start-up disciplines and the Toyota Production System, which had become known as "lean manufacturing." Eric dubbed the combination of customer development and agile practices the "lean start-up."

The tools were popularized by a series of successful books. In 2003, I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany, articulating for the first time that start-ups were not smaller versions of large companies and laying out the customer development process in detail. In 2010, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur gave entrepreneurs the standard framework for business model canvases in Business Model Generation. In 2011 Eric published an overview in The Lean Startup. And in 2012 Bob Dorf and I summarized what we'd learned about lean techniques in a step-by-step handbook called The Startup Owner's Manual.

The lean start-up method is now being taught at more than 25 universities and through a popular online course at Udacity.com. In addition, in almost every city around world, you'll find organizations like Startup Weekend introducing the lean method to hundreds of prospective entrepreneurs at a time. At such gatherings a roomful of start-up teams can cycle through half a dozen potential product ideas in a matter of hours. Although it sounds incredible to people who haven't been to one, at these events some businesses are formed on a Friday evening and are generating actual revenue by Sunday afternoon.

Creating an Entrepreneurial, Innovation-Based Economy

While some adherents claim that the lean process can make individual start-ups more successful, I believe that claim is too grandiose. Success is predicated on too many factors for one methodology to guarantee that any single start-up will be a winner. But on the basis of what I've seen at hundreds of start-ups, at programs that teach lean principles, and at established companies that practice them, I can make a more important claim: Using lean methods across a portfolio of start-ups will result in fewer failures than using traditional methods.

The founders of lean start-ups don't begin with a business plan; they begin with the search for a business model. Only after quick rounds of experimentation and feedback reveal a model that works do lean founders focus on execution.

A lower start-up failure rate could have profound economic consequences. Today the forces of disruption, globalization, and regulation are buffeting the economies of every country. Established industries are rapidly shedding jobs, many of which will never return. Employment growth in the 21st century will have to come from new ventures, so we all have a vested interest in fostering an environment that helps them succeed, grow, and hire more workers. The creation of an innovation economy that's driven by the rapid expansion of start-ups has never been more imperative.

In the past, growth in the number of start-ups was constrained by five factors in addition to the failure rate:

1. The high cost of getting the first customer and the even higher cost of getting the product wrong.

2. Long technology development cycles.

3. The limited number of people with an appetite for the risks inherent in founding or working at a start-up.

4. The structure of the venture capital industry, in which a small number of firms each needed to invest big sums in a handful of start-ups to have a chance at significant returns.

5. The concentration of real expertise in how to build start-ups, which in the United States was mostly found in pockets on the East and West coasts. (This is less an issue in Europe and other parts of the world, but even overseas there are geographic entrepreneurial hot spots.)

The lean approach reduces the first two constraints by helping new ventures launch products that customers actually want, far more quickly and cheaply than traditional methods, and the third by making start-ups less risky. And it has emerged at a time when other business and technology trends are likewise breaking down the barriers to start-up formation. The combination of all these forces is altering the entrepreneurial landscape.

Today open source software, like GitHub, and cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services, have slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. Hardware start-ups no longer have to build their own factories, since offshore manufacturers are so easily accessible. Indeed, it's become quite common to see young tech companies that practice the lean start-up methodology offer software products that are simply "bits" delivered over the web or hardware that's built in China within weeks of being formed. Consider Roominate, a start-up designed to inspire girls' confidence and interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. Once its founders had finished testing and iterating on the design of their wired dollhouse kit, they sent the specs off to a contract manufacturer in China. Three weeks later the first products arrived.

Another important trend is the decentralization of access to financing. Venture capital used to be a tight club of formal firms clustered near Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. In today's entrepreneurial ecosystem, new super angel funds, smaller than the traditional hundred-million-dollar-sized VC fund, can make early-stage investments. Worldwide, hundreds of accelerators, like Y Combinator and TechStars, have begun to formalize seed investments. And crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter provide another, more democratic method of financing start-ups.

The instantaneous availability of information is also a boon to today's new ventures. Before the internet, new company founders got advice only as often as they could have coffee with experienced investors or entrepreneurs. Today the biggest challenge is sorting through the overwhelming amount of start-up advice they get. The lean concepts provide a framework that helps you differentiate the good from the bad.

Lean start-up techniques were initially designed to create fast-growing tech ventures. But I believe the concepts are equally valid for creating the Main Street small businesses that make up the bulk of the economy. If the entire universe of small business embraced them, I strongly suspect it would increase growth and efficiency, and have a direct and immediate impact on GDP and employment.

There are signs that this may in fact happen. In 2011 the U.S. National Science Foundation began using lean methods to commercialize basic science research in a program called the Innovation Corps. Eleven universities now teach the methods to hundreds of teams of senior research scientists across the United States.

MBA programs are adopting these techniques, too. For years they taught students to apply large-company approaches-such as accounting methods for tracking revenue and cash flow, and organizational theories about managing-to start-ups. Yet start-ups face completely different issues. Now business schools are realizing that new ventures need their own management tools.

As business schools embrace the distinction between management execution and searching for a business model, they're abandoning the business plan as the template for entrepreneurial education. And the business plan competitions that have been a celebrated part of the MBA experience for over a decade are being replaced by business model competitions. (Harvard Business School became the latest to make this switch, in 2012.) Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, and Columbia are leading the charge and embracing the lean start-up curriculum. My Lean LaunchPad course for educators is now training over 250 college and university instructors a year.

A New Strategy for the 21st-Century Corporation

It's already becoming clear that lean start-up practices are not just for young tech ventures.

Corporations have spent the past 20 years increasing their efficiency by driving down costs. But simply focusing on improving existing business models is not enough anymore. Almost every large company understands that it also needs to deal with ever-increasing external threats by continually innovating. To ensure their survival and growth, corporations need to keep inventing new business models. This challenge requires entirely new organizational structures and skills.

Over the years managerial experts such as Clayton Christensen, Rita McGrath, Vijay Govindarajan, Henry Chesbrough, Ian MacMillan, Alexander Osterwalder, and Eric von Hippel have advanced the thinking on how large companies can improve their innovation processes. During the past three years, however, we have seen large companies, including General Electric, Qualcomm, and Intuit, begin to implement the lean start-up methodology.

GE's Energy Storage division, for instance, is using the approach to transform the way it innovates. In 2010 Prescott Logan, the general manager of the division, recognized that a new battery developed by the unit had the potential to disrupt the industry. Instead of preparing to build a factory, scale up production, and launch the new offering (ultimately named Durathon) as a traditional product extension, Logan applied lean techniques. He started searching for a business model and engaging in customer discovery. He and his team met face-to-face with dozens of global prospects to explore potential new markets and applications. These weren't sales calls: The team members left their PowerPoint slides behind and listened to customers' issues and frustrations with the battery status quo. They dug deep to learn how customers bought industrial batteries, how often they used them, and the operating conditions. With this feedback, they made a major shift in their customer focus. They eliminated one of their initial target segments, data centers, and discovered a new one-utilities. In addition, they narrowed the broad customer segment of "telecom" to cell phone providers in developing countries with unreliable electric grids. Eventually GE invested $100 million to build a world-class battery manufacturing facility in Schenectady, New York, which it opened in 2012. According to press reports, demand for the new batteries is so high that GE is already running a backlog of orders.The first hundred years of management education focused on building strategies and tools that formalized execution and efficiency for existing businesses. Now, we have the first set of tools for searching for new business models as we launch start-up ventures. It also happens to have arrived just in time to help existing companies deal with the forces of continual disruption. In the 21st century those forces will make people in every kind of organization-start-ups, small businesses, corporations, and government-feel the pressure of rapid change. The lean start-up approach will help them meet it head-on, innovate rapidly, and transform business as we know it.

A version of this article appeared in the May 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything

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In the past few years, a new methodology for launching companies, called "the lean start-up," has begun to replace the old regimen. Traditionally, a venture's founders would write a business plan, complete with a five-year forecast, use it to raise money, and then go into "stealth mode" to develop their offerings, all without getting much feedback from the people they intended to sell to.

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Tom Hulme FT article, It’s Ok to launch before you’re ready

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Tom Hulme FT article, It’s Ok to launch before you’re ready

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News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

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30 Legendary Startup Pitch Decks and What You Can Learn From Them

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30 Legendary Startup Pitch Decks and What You Can Learn From Them

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7. MapMe pitch deck

MapMe allows users to create universally accessible (i.e., on smartphones, tablets, and computers) maps of anywhere they want with no coding required.

This startup deck was used to raise $1 million in seed funding.

Social proof almost always works. The deck showed that the startup had over 20,000 unique visitors, 18,000 monthly alerts, and12 minutes average sessions on the site.

Favorite takeaway: The pitch deck has fewer than 13 slides but provides investors with knowledge of the traction the site got going viral on social media and its go-to-market strategy.

8. LaunchRock pitch deck

LaunchRock allows users to create landing pages and quickly get their startups known through social media, even before the launch of their full site.

F avorite takeaway: As a more creatively designed pitch deck example, this pitch deck had only 15 slides but showed how the product works and the different ways it can be used. They also utilize an analogy similar to what LinkedIn had in their decks.

9. Mixpanel pitch deck

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile and the web. They not only measure page views but also analyze the actions people take. This is the series-B startup pitch deck for Mixpanel that helped them raise over $65 million.

Favorite takeaway: This pitch deck example started off with a problem: people guessing their analytics. It followed up by providing its solution to that problem and, ultimately, its competitive advantage. One of the best pitch decks, this is a great example of showing the problem and solution.

10. Moz pitch deck

Moz started out as an SEO company but has pivoted to support marketers across all inbound marketing strategies.

This is the series-B startup pitch deck for Moz which they used to raise over $18 million. If you're an established startup, this is a great example of an investor pitch deck, and you can follow this guide. The pitch deck is packed with information about the company since it was founded five years prior to this pitch.

Favorite takeaway: Because the company had already been in operation for five years, they were able to present an accurate estimated revenue, revenue run rate, average customer lifetime value, cost of paid acquisition, et

11. Buzzfeed pitch deck

We all have a love-and-hate relationship with Buzzfeed, don't we? I'm sure you've stumbled on their pages or watched their videos before. As of today, BuzzFeed has managed to raise over $240 million in investor capital (another great example of an investor pitch deck).

Favorite takeaway: SOCIAL PROOF! It doesn't hurt to start a pitch deck with big numbers the company has, like the millions of users visiting the website on a monthly basis and quotations from large organizations such as CNN.

12. YouTube pitch deck

YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.6 billion. Like Facebook, this company doesn't require any introduction. Unfortunately, this is not the original deck. This is YouTube's pitch deck to Sequoia Capital (one of the most established VC investors who's often regarded as one of the industry's best), which was released through a legal proceeding.

Favorite takeaway: The company wanted to be the primary outlet for video content, and it succeeded in doing just that. It goes to show that if you know what your product can do, are able to show its potential, and build on the momentum gained through early investments to create that, then you can achieve its potential. If you're aiming to build an investor pitch deck to land a VC like Sequoia Capital, this presentation slide deck is a great template for you!

13. Manpacks pitch deck

Manpacks is a platform that delivers men's essentials such as underwear, razors, grooming, and other products.

The company raised $500,000 with this pitch deck.

Favorite takeaway: This deck stands out! They clearly understand who they are, and they stayed that way throughout the entire presentation. The startup pitch deck is filled with a fun tone that helps explain the product well.

14. Foursquare pitch deck

Foursquare is a mobile platform that helps you find the best places to go in your area.

Favorite takeaway: This pitch deck does a great job using screenshots of social proof that the app already has from its users sharing tweets of them being the 'mayor' of a particular area.

15. Flowtab pitch deck

Flowtab was an app that allowed people to order drinks quickly at a crowded bar. Despite shutting down, the founders still made an effort to help other startups.

Favorite takeaway: Simplicity. This pitch deck example does well explaining critical information like the problem, the solution, their business model, and traction. You can't really go wrong with this pitch deck.

16. Dwolla pitch deck

Dwolla is a payment solution that allows users to send, receive, and request funds from other users. This 18-slide startup pitch deck landed the company $16.5 million.

Favorite takeaway: Most startups are founded because of a problem they faced, but not many people tell their story well through their pitch decks. In their slide deck, Dwolla shared a great story of how the founder paid $50,000 a year in credit card fees and then created a solution for never doing it again.

Gusto (previously ZenPayroll) is a cloud-based solution tool for small businesses to pay employees.

The company raised $6 million with this pitch deck.

Favorite takeaway: This isn't just a startup pitch deck. It is a template that you can use and replicate easily by filling in the blanks.

18. Bliss pitch deck

Bliss provides metrics for coders and allows them to collaborate easily.

The company raised over $400,000 using Angel List.

Favorite takeaway: The pitch deck was well composed with a clear understanding of the product and the investors they were pitching to. This is one of the best pitch decks to use if you know your target market.

Adpushup allows companies to maximize ad revenues through advanced A/B testing. They raised more than $632,000 in investments.

Favorite takeaway: This slide deck proves that going back to the basics works. This pitch deck has basic principles like a great introduction, an outline of problems, potential solutions, market opportunities, products, case studies, milestones, traction, and a future plan.

Wealthsimple is Canada's first online investment manager. They raised more than $2 million in seed funding with this slide deck.

Favorite takeaway: The startup pitch deck is sweet and short but effective. Our favorite part is the transformation of the industry, which is laid out in a table format.

AppVirality allows app developers to grow their platforms using growth method techniques proven by other startups.

Favorite takeaway: Our favorite takeaway is how the flow of the pitch deck goes through the problem, the proven solution, and how it works within their app to their target market in multiple slides.

Shape Integrated Software is budget management software that helps PPC analysts manage various budgets across different channels.

Favorite takeaway: When you have the traction to back your startup, use it. Shape clearly took advantage of it and presented it clearly in their pitch deck.

Podozi is an online e-commerce platform based in Nigeria.

Favorite takeaway: Most startup pitch decks work well when they're short and sweet, in multiple slides, like Podozi's. The best takeaway is the working partnership with large brands that this platform already has.

Fittr is a platform that designs custom workouts tailored to equipment, access, time management, and goals.

Favorite takeaway: As a user of this platform, we love the investment goals and the purpose of what the company is planning to use it for.

Swipes is a task manager app to help its users increase their productivity.

Favorite takeaway: One of their pages used social proof of quotations from The Next Web and Lifehacker. You can't go wrong with that.

Canvas replaces paper-based processes with affordable and easy-to-use mobile apps and forms. They raised $9 million with these decks.

Favorite takeaway: Instead of saying what they do, the second slide in their pitch deck shows how their startup helps businesses. No words are needed.

27. Ooomf (now Crew) pitch deck

Crew (formerly Ooomf & then PickCrew) is a freelancer marketplace that connects mobile and web developers with projects or work. This deck was used to raise over $2 million dollars.

Favorite takeaway: Well-designed with an easy-to-understand flow.

Cubeit is a mobile application that allows users to aggregate content from anywhere. Cubeit used this 13-slide deck to raise seed funding before they even had a finished product.

Favorite takeaway: A strong introduction will get investors to pay attention. Their deck starts out with a clear message, which was that "owning more devices doesn't make your life easier". I can't help but pay attention to how this company will help.

29. Castle pitch deck

Castle was a startup that let rental owners put their properties on autopilot. This was the deck Castle used to raise $270,000 for their startup.

Favorite takeaway: Great design and easy to digest.

30. Sequoia Capital pitch deck

Sequoia Capital is one of the leading investment firms in Silicon Valley. This deck is a template they recommend following.

Favorite takeaway: It's like having the keys to the kingdom. You don't have to guess what this investment giant is looking for. They tell you straight away.

Summary of Pitch Deck Template Takeaways

To sum up, a strong startup pitch deck not only serves to reinforce your brand to the target audience or investors, but shows your business plan and unique offering through the slides presented; using a problem slide, a solution slide, and a traction slide including concise bullet points.

The best startup pitch deck also shows off your company's personality, through the inclusion of a team slide or similar in the next few slides, to be presented after your business plan is clearly outlined.

Look at the takeaways from these startup pitch decks as a guide to help you in your quest to raise funds and venture capital for your own startup for an investment round.

Here are some of the key takeaways from our pitch deck examples:

Pitch decks don't have to be formal or beautiful.

A great pitch deck will provide an impactful intro or slogan.

Keep your deck short (less than 20 pages).

Use analogies to back up the points that you're making.

After going through so many startup pitch deck examples, we recommend that to make your pitch presentation stand out you should:

Start with a strong intro/vision.

Show problems and offer solutions.

Identify market opportunities.

Showcase products/services clearly.

Digest your business model

Highlight financials

Add social proof/case studies.

Differentiate from competition.

Show an experienced management team.

If you're looking for additional information, DocSend shared lessons they got learning from 200 startups who raised $360 million from their first pitch deck.

10 Pitch Deck Templates for You to Try

The following pitch decks are free templates available in Piktochart that you can use. This makes it easy to work on your slides without having to worry about design. We took care of that for you. If you don't have an account yet, just sign up for a free Piktochart account here and then click on one of the templates below. To learn how the online pitch deck creator works, watch this on-demand demo.

01. Investment Pitch Deck Template With HighSpark

02. Finance Pitch Deck Template

03. Business Pitch Deck Template

04. Startup Pitch Deck Examples

05. Tech Pitch Deck Examples

06. Business Keynote Template

07. Product Pitch Deck Template

08. Product Pitch Deck Template

09. App Product Presentation Template

10. Product Website Pitch Deck Template

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