Testing Business Ideas
Avoid wasting time and money building something nobody wants. Learn how to de-risk your product or service idea in 10 days.
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Course overview
Transform your idea into a business
Join a small group of peers for an intimate 10 day course to rapidly test your product or service idea. You'll map your risk, run experiments and receive live feedback on your real ideas.
Who is this course for
01
You're an entrepreneur who doesn't have time to make something nobody wants.
02
You're a corporate innovator who wants to challenge the status quo and create new revenue streams.
03
You're a solopreneur who has a side project but is nervous about making the leap.
Key Deliverables
Assumptions Map
You'll create an Assumptions Map for your product, service or business that can be shared with stakeholders.
Experiment Plan
You'll create an Experiment Plan that details out how you are running experiments to address your riskiest assumptions.
Additional Resources
You'll receive a list of digital experimentation tools, the Testing Business Ideas experiment library and more...
What past students are saying
Paige Leonard
Oliver Barnickel
Christian Abt
Eric Kutche
Meet your instructor
David J. Bland
David J. Bland
Co-author of Testing Business Ideas, Founder at Precoil.
I help people test ideas.
I'm the co-author of Testing Business Ideas with Alex Osterwalder. I pioneered GE FastWorks with Eric Ries, coached emerging product teams at Adobe and even helped Toyota apply lean startup practices.
Before my transition into coaching, I spent over 10 years of my career at early stage technology startups.
I stay connected to the startup scene through my work with Silicon Valley venture capitalists and startup accelerators.ย
And most importantly, I created this course to help you quickly test your ideas, because I wasted years of my life building things nobody wanted.
Course syllabus
11 live sessions โข 12 lessons โข 8 projects
Week 1
- ๐
Setup Your Mural Workbook
- ๐
Your Role In This Course
- ๐
Why Test Your Assumptions?
- โ๏ธ
Introduce Yourself
Submit by Jan 12
Jan
12
Testing Business Ideas - Kickoff
Start Here: Orientation
Welcome to the Testing Business Ideas Cohort! If you're here to turn your product or service idea into a business, then you're in the right place. Over the next 10 days, you'll test as you go and meet amazing innovators and entrepreneurs from around the world.
We can't wait to get started.
Please watch the videos before your first workshop, and setup your free Mural account.
Week 2
- ๐
Extracting Risk with Truturi
- โ๏ธ
Missing Assumptions
- โ๏ธ
Share Your Assumptions
Submit by Jan 13 - ๐
Assumptions Mapping with Truturi
- โ๏ธ
What's Truturi's Riskiest Assumption?
- โ๏ธ
Share Your Assumption Map
Submit by Jan 16
Jan
17
Testing Business Ideas - Extracting Risk Workshop (1/4)
Jan
18
Optional: Testing Business Ideas - Coaching Session
Jan
19
Optional: Testing Business Ideas - Coaching Session
Jan
19
Testing Business Ideas - Assumptions Mapping Workshop (2/4)
Extracting Risk
How can you tell a good idea from a bad idea? They both look the same early on. Testing your idea is the hard part. Learn how to identify and extract risk by using design thinking principles.
Assumptions Mapping
Focusing can be difficult. Learn to cut through the noise and focus on your efforts through Assumptions Mapping.
Week 3
- ๐
Rapid Experimentation with Truturi
- โ๏ธ
A Truturi Experiment
- โ๏ธ
Share Your Experiment
Submit by Jan 21 - ๐
A Repeatable Process
- โ๏ธ
What's your biggest challenge going forward?
Submit by Jan 22 - ๐
Plenary Mural Board
- ๐
Landing Page Conversion Report
- ๐
Experiment Board Template
- ๐
Experiment Library
- ๐
Testing Business Ideas Book Sample
Jan
23
Optional: Testing Business Ideas - Coaching Session
Jan
24
Optional: Testing Business Ideas - Coaching Session
Jan
24
Testing Business Ideas - Rapid Experimentation Workshop (3/4)
Jan
25
Optional: Testing Business Ideas - Coaching Session
Jan
26
Optional: Testing Business Ideas - Coaching Session
Jan
26
Testing Business Ideas - Managing Experiments Workshop (4/4)
Rapid Experimentation
Testing your ideas can feel intimidating. Take the anxiety out of it and learn how to leverage the library of 44 different experiments to validate your riskiest assumptions.
Managing Experiments
While you can keep all of this inside your head for a time, it'll be difficult to do it repeatedly or explain it to your team. Learn how to plug these concepts together to test your ideas over and over again until you have a viable business.
Additional Resources
Course schedule
6-8 hours per week
January 12, 2022 - Kickoff Session
10:00am - 11am Pacific Time
Introductions and goal setting for the course. Get to know your peers, learn more about how the course is structured and ask David your questions.
January 16 - 26, 2023
The course will run from January 18th to January 26, 2023. You'll work both independently and in groups on your product, service and business ideas.
Tuesdays & Thursdays
10:00am - 12:00pm Pacific Time
Live 2 hour workshops that occur on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00am pacific time. You'll work through individual exercises but also get peer feedback in groups. While these are recorded, we highly recommend you attend these live if possible.
Live Coaching Sessions
10:00am & 4:00pm Pacific Time
Live 1 hour coaching sessions with David to get pointed feedback on your assumptions, experiments and strategy. Occurs at 10:00am and 4:00pm on non-workshop days to accommodate different time zones. These sessions are not recorded.
Apply the concepts from my book with live feedback on your real ideas.
What's it like to be a part of the Testing Business Ideas cohort?
Learning is better with cohorts
Active, not passive
This course focuses on live workshops and hands-on with real product, service and business ideas.
Learn by doing
Reduce the risk in your product, service or business idea while helping others.
Find your tribe
Find a tribe to help keep you making progress well beyond the course.