Monthly Lean Startup Event

The monthly meeting kicks off with Garrick van Buren (https://garrickvanburen.com/) sharing insights on "Avoiding Burnout While Changing the World." Garrick will identify the early signs of burnout, discuss techniques to avoid it and ways to bounce back from it.

Garrick is a product strategy consultant on web-based applications, publications, and e-commerce. He has 18 years of experience translating business goals and customer goals into innovative web-based properties. He's also a kubb enthusiast, avid home-brewer, and father of four.

Next we will have a series of 1-minute pitches from people hoping to form a new team.

Attendees organize into teams, either joining an existing team or forming a new team from the 1-minute pitches. Everyone joins a team.

Each team then develops its problem hypothesis, solution hypothesis and a series of assumptions which are core to the success of the business.

Next, the team creates an MVP, or "Minimum Viable Product." (This will likely be done between events.) The goal of the MVP test is to "Get Out Of the Building," speak with real customers and to collect cash or non-cash currency which serves as validation.

The process promotes a problem-centric approach to business ideation. By continuously validating and invalidating assumptions, teams are forced to pivot their solution (and even problem) toward a true customer pain rather than creating a solution and after-the-fact seeking customers with a problem.

The event culminates with each team sharing its activities, challenges and results.