Testing Business Ideas

4.6 (9)

3 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

Avoid wasting time and money building something nobody wants. Learn how to de-risk your product or service idea in 10 days.

Testing Business Ideas

4.6 (9)

3 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

Avoid wasting time and money building something nobody wants. Learn how to de-risk your product or service idea in 10 days.

Hosted by

David J. Bland

Internationally best selling co-author of Testing Business Ideas.

David J. Bland

Internationally best selling co-author of Testing Business Ideas.

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

You're an entrepreneur who doesn't have time to make something nobody wants.

You're a corporate innovator who wants to challenge the status quo and create new revenue streams.

You're a solopreneur who has a side project but is nervous about making the leap.

You're an entrepreneur who doesn't have time to make something nobody wants.

You're a corporate innovator who wants to challenge the status quo and create new revenue streams.

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

The types of rapid experiments were really beneficial. I believe we always fall into the trap of doing the same ones over and over.

Paige Leonard

Assistant Director - Marshall University

David provides you with a toolbox, that enables you to de-risk the idea by yourself without relying on external service providers.

Oliver Barnickel

Digital Collectibles Manager - ESL Gaming

I have undergrad and grad degrees in business and yet have never had such a delightful and enlightening course about how to rapidly & calmly de-risk and test ideas.

Christian Abt

Entrepreneur

This highly interactive workshop environment enhanced my ability to apply the concepts from the Testing Business Ideas book to my specific client engagements.

Eric Kutche

Managing Principal - 313 Works

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Testing Business Ideas

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Meet your instructor

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.

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

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.

Topics:

Design Thinking and Risk
Desirability
Viability
Feasibility
Extracting Your Assumptions

Assumptions Mapping

Focusing can be difficult. Learn to cut through the noise and focus on your efforts through Assumptions Mapping.

Topics:

Strength of Evidence
Assumptions Mapping
Refining Assumptions into Hypotheses

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.

Topics:

Principles of Experimentation
Designing Experiments
Tasking Experiments

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.

Topics:

Experiment Sequences
Experiment Boards
Digital Experiment Tools
Next Steps

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.