1. NSF I-Corps
The Lean LaunchPad
Lecture 8:
Resources, Activities & Costs
Version 6/22/12

2. Key Activities
What’s Most Important for the Business?

3. © 2012 Steve Blank

4. Key Resources
What’s Are Your Most Important Assets?

6. Cost Structure
What are the Costs and Expenses

7. © 2012 Steve Blank

8. How You Make Money
<

9. Key Resources

10. Four Critical Resources
• Physical
• Financial
• Human
• Intellectual

11. Physical Resources
• company facilities
– office space, company location
• product/services
– supply of silicon wafers or iron ore, or
thousands of feet of warehouse space?
• Many physical goods are capital intensive

12. Financial Resources
• Friends and Family
• Crowdfunding
• Angels
• Venture Capital
• Corporate partners
• Others: SBA or SBIR grants
• Lease-lines
• Factoring
• Vendor-financing

13. Human Resources
• qualified employees
• mentors, teachers, coaches, advisors

14. Mentors, Teachers, Coaches
• Mentors, teachers, coaches advance your
personal career
– If you want to learn a specific subject find a teacher
– If you want to hone specific skills or reach an exact
goal hire a coach
– If you want to get smarter and better over your career
find someone who cares about you enough to be a
mentor

15. Advisors
• Advisors are people you need to help advance
your company’s success
– Founders fail when they believe their visions are facts
– Listening to experienced advice can help you sort
through whether your vision is a hallucination
– Getting an advisory board (by expanding your circle
of accumulated wisdom past their investors) is so
important that it’s an explicit step in the Customer
Development process

16. Qualified Employees/Culture
• Are the difference between a good idea that
never went anywhere and a billion dollar firm

18. MBA295F
Customer Development
17

19. Executive Traits by Stage
Entrepreneurial- Mission-Oriented Process-Managed
Driven Learning and Management Execution and Growth
Discovery
Personal Superstar Leader Manager of plans,
Contribution goals, process, and
personnel
Time Commitment 24/7 As needed Long term 9 to 5
Planning Opportunistic and Mission- and goal- Process-, and goal-
agile driven driven
Process Hates and eliminates As needed, driven Implements and uses
by mission
Management Style Autocratic, star Distributed to May be bureaucratic
system departments
Span of Control Hands-on Mission-driven, Distributed down the
synchronized organization
Focus High and passionate Mission Execution
vision
Uncertainty/Chaos Brings order out of Focuses on fast Focuses on
chaos response repeatability

20. Executive Traits by Stage

21. Executive Traits by Stage

22. Executive Traits by Stage

23. Intellectual Property

24. Trademark protects branding & marks
• Trademark gives you the right to prevent others from
using “confusingly similar” marks and logos
• Trademark protection lasts as long as you use the mark
• The more you use the mark, the stronger your protection
• Trademark registration is optional, but has significant
advantages if approved
• Country by country

25. Copyright protects creative
works of authorship
• Copyright gives right to prevent others from copying,
distributing or making derivatives of your work
– Protects “expressions” of ideas but does not protect the
underlying ideas
• (Way) more than just technology:
– songs, books, movies, photos, etc.
• Copyright protection lasts practically forever
• Copyright does not prevent independent development
• Registration is optional, but is required to sue for
infringement

26. Trade Secrets
• Information that is kept secret and has economic
value to the business
• Coke recipe, customer lists, product road maps.
• No registration required
• Can last for as long as you take reasonable
steps to keep confidential

27. Contract
• Protection agreed to by contract
• No registration process
• You have whatever protection is defined in the contract
(e.g., NDA gives you certain rights to protection of your
confidential information)
• The protection lasts for the time period defined in the
contract

28. Patents
• A government granted monopoly
– prevents others from making, using or selling your invention
– Even if the other’s infringement was innocent or accidental
• Invention must be non-obvious
• Protection lasts typically for 15-20 years
• Application and examination is required
– Typical cost for application and exam is $10-30k
– Typical time for application and exam is 1-4 years
• Must file in U.S. within one year of sale, offer for sale,
public disclosure or public use
• Provisional application alternative

29. What Can be Patented?
• Just about anything . . .
– Circuits, hardware
– Software, applied algorithms
– Formulas, designs
– User interfaces
– Applications, systems
– Business processes (sometimes)
• But not these . . .
– Scientific principles
– Pure mathematical algorithms
• And, pending Supreme Court Case raises concerns regarding
patentability of “methods” inventions

30. Costs
Metrics that Matter

31. Search vs. Execution Metrics
• Existing companies execute plans
• Startups search for them
• Income Statement, Balance Sheet, etc are
execution documents
• You first need to derive the metrics that matter

32. Metrics That Matter
• Value proposition: product cost, mkt size/share, competition?
• Customer Relationships: customer acquisition costs, conversion
rates, lifetime value?
• Market Type: revenue curves
• Operating Costs: basic operating costs of the business?
• Channel: Channel margin, promotion, shelf-space charges?
• Revenue Streams: average selling price, # of customers/year,
achievable revenue?
• Burn Rate: per month? When will the company run out of cash?

33. Life Science
Intellectual Property Example

34. Intellectual Property
Does Y Does Y Will they
Y
Harvard Harvard license it
own it? want it? to us?
N N N
Proceed with
Extreme Pivot patent filing
 and pre-
clinical trials
N
Does Does Will they
Berkeley Y Berkeley Y license it Y
own it? want it? to us?
N N
Meeting with Berkeley Technology Transfer at LBNL (This
Week)
Meeting with Harvard Technology Office (Next Week) Class 7 - Update 3.12.2012

35. Robotic Agriculture
Resource, Activities Example

36. We’ve hit our first milestones
Mar 2013
Jun 2011 Dec 2011 Jun 2012 First unit
Technology Track
Post-processed Real-time First unit
Prototype
Image recognition image
recognition
Customer Discovery Track
Select 1st Testing agreement Customer trial and
target crop with top producer customer order
Finance Track
Friends and Seed Round Series A
Applied
family round for grants
$125 K $800 K $3-5 M
F&F Seed Series
A
Confidential

37. Medical Device
Resource, Activities & Cost Example

46. Apple
Resource, Activities & Cost Example

47. Product User Digital Hub Digital Lifestyle Digital Platform
PARTNER KEY VALUE CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
NETWORK ACTIVITIES PROPOSITON RELATIONSHIPS SEGMENTS
build whole differentiated
component High-end
devices both solutions for markets
makers, shipping & mass market
logistic suppliers h/w & s/w differentiated
customers -
professional &
consumer
KEY DISTRIBUTION
brand -
RESOURCES CHANNELS
Apple, PowerM online store
ac, iMac
COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS
Computers, s
Invest in
oftware &
R&D
services

48. Product User Digital Hub Digital Lifestyle Digital Platform
PARTNER KEY VALUE CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
NETWORK ACTIVITIES PROPOSITON RELATIONSHIPS SEGMENTS
build whole differentiated
component High-end
devices both solutions for markets
makers, shipping & mass market
logistic suppliers h/w & s/w differentiated
customers -
professional &
consumer
KEY DISTRIBUTION
brand -
RESOURCES CHANNELS
Apple, PowerM online store
ac, iMac
COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS
Computers, s
Invest in
oftware &
R&D
services

49. Product User
PARTNER KEY VALUE CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
NETWORK ACTIVITIES PROPOSITON RELATIONSHIPS SEGMENTS
component build whole High-end
makers solutions for differentiated
devices both differentiated markets mass market
h/w & s/w customers -
Shipping & professional &
logistic consumer
suppliers
KEY DISTRIBUTION
brand -
RESOURCES CHANNELS
Apple, PowerM
Wholesalers, ret
ac, iMac
ailers, re-sellers
innovative online store
designers
IP & patents
&
agreements
COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS
Computers, s
Invest in
oftware &
R&D
services

50. Product User Digital Hub
PARTNER KEY VALUE CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
NETWORK ACTIVITIES PROPOSITON RELATIONSHIPS SEGMENTS
KEY DISTRIBUTION
RESOURCES CHANNELS
COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS

51. Product User Digital Hub Digital Lifestyle
PARTNER KEY VALUE CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
NETWORK ACTIVITIES PROPOSITON RELATIONSHIPS SEGMENTS
KEY DISTRIBUTION
RESOURCES CHANNELS
COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS

52. Product User Digital Hub Digital Lifestyle Digital Platform
PARTNER KEY VALUE CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
NETWORK ACTIVITIES PROPOSITON RELATIONSHIPS SEGMENTS
KEY DISTRIBUTION
RESOURCES CHANNELS
COST STRUCTURE REVENUE STREAMS