Business Modeling and Customer Validation
Learn how to create and deliver value for customers and how to sustainably extract value for the startup, corporate venture, or established organization.
Delivery
Online
Duration
12 Weeks
Commitment
8-10 Hours per Week
Instructor Rating
3.8 / 4
This course will guides aspiring and active entrepreneurs and innovators through the process of creating successful business models and navigating the customer discovery process. Students learn how to conduct customer interviews and identify target customer segments. Students use the Business Model Canvas and test new ideas to create winning business models.
What You'll Learn
- Identify how to create and deliver value for customers
- Learn how to extract value for the venture in a sustainable fashion
- Conduct in-depth interviews to guide the customer discovery process for your venture
- Develop business models that encompass the product or service, customers, and economic engine that deliver on venture objectives
Who Will Benefit
- Aspiring entrepreneurs working to identify a viable new business idea from which to develop their own company.
- Active entrepreneurs seeing to validate and enhance their existing business idea and accelerate their company’s success.
- Corporate professionals interested in understanding how business and technology shape the creation of new products and services by established companies.
- Educators, consultants, and organizational leads desiring to improve their capacity to teach, advise, or empower their constituencies to succeed in startup entrepreneurship or corporate innovation.
Course Topics
Module 1: What Does a Startup Business Model Look Like?
This module includes a welcome to the course, an orientation to our teaching approach and faculty, and an introduction to business models and product-market fit.
Module 2: Talk to Customers to Build the Business Model
Why talk to customers. How to get insight from customers. What to do before and after the customer interview. Building a pipeline of customer interviews.
Module 3: Customer Segments and Value Propositions
Why have customer segments at all. Customer types. Customer segments. Customer archetypes. Minimum viable product (MVP).
Module 4: Market Types
Sizing markets. Physical and virtual goods. B2B and B2C markets. Crossing the Chasm.
Module 5: Customer Discovery Interviews
Fundamentals of customer discovery. Troubleshooting your customer discovery. The customer's wallet.
Module 6: Reaching Your Customer
The funnel of customer engagement. What is a channel. Product-channel fit.
Module 7: How Will Customers Pay
Revenue models versus pricing. Types of revenue streams. Determining the right revenue model. Metrics for a sustainable business model.
Module 8: The Rest of the Business Model Canvas
Key activities. Key partnerships. Key resources. Cost structures.
Module 9: What Comes After Customer Discovery
Four steps to the epiphany. Customer validation and scaling sales. Customer creation and scaling demand. Company building and scaling the organization. Raising financial capital.
Module 10: Telling Your Story
What is storytelling. What do customer want to know. What do investors want to know. Storyboarding for the customer pitch and the investor pitch.
Learning Experience
Asynchronous Lectures
Coaching and Mentoring
Live Office Hours
Peer Interactions and Networking
Project-Based Learning
Real-World Assignments
Faculty
Daniel Gordon
Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute
University of Maryland
Dan Gordon has over 30 years of experience working with technology, as a computer scientist, software developer, manager, analyst, and entrepreneur. Dan is a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Maryland, teaching in the Master of Professional Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation.
As a technology partner with Valhalla Partners, Dan brought together the most respected and successful venture investors in the region. Valhalla Partners' present and past investments have resulted in 27 M&As, 22 IPOs, and over $1 billion in investment proceeds. Prior to joining Valhalla Partners, Dan was a director and senior staff member at the PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Technology Centre, analyzing technology trends and consulting on technology-oriented strategies in the software, e-business, wireless, optical, networking, semiconductor, and life sciences arenas. He worked with clients from North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. Dan was a Contributing Writer and Contributing Editor to the Technology Centre's annual Technology Forecast, and a frequent speaker at industry and general business meetings. Prior to joining PwC, Dan spent 20 years in Silicon Valley as a software technologist, manager, director, and entrepreneur, including senior technical roles at well-known Silicon Valley firms like Symantec, Intuit, and Oracle. Dan has also been involved in startup companies in the applied artificial intelligence and web applications fields.
Dan has a BA from Harvard University and an MS from New York University in Computer Science.
Take a Peek at Business Modeling and Customer Validation
Our no-cost pre-application is the first step to the formal application, and allows our admissions team to give you a preliminary assessment of the strength of your application.
