1. Will it work
Walking through the process of evaluating an idea for feasibility

2. Hi, I’m
Stewart
Youngblood
• Program Director Tech
Wildcatters
• B2B Forbes Top 10
seed accelerator
• Co-Founded Obvious
Apps
• Specialties: Angel
Investment, Venture
Capital, Finance

3. Agenda
• Technical Feasibility
• Evaluate Market Opportunity
• Competitive Analysis
• Customer Validation
• Develop Cost Model
• Revenue Model
• Scalability
• Cash and Financing
• Team and Capabilities
• Pitches

4. Technical/Functional
Feasibility
• The first step in any ideation process is evaluating whether
something is technologically or functionally feasible (but
actually, there’s a step 0!)
• Commit 1-2 hours to research online or through industry
experts on whether your concept can actually be achieved
• Be wary of common mistakes (i.e. perpetual motion
machine)

5. Exercise #1 - Idea
Feasibility
• Discuss: Head’s Up display for driver of motor vehicle with
GPS, phone/text, weather, and other information.
Aftermarket product that uses modern LED/OLED tech to
create banner across top of front windshield and car’s
battery for operation

6. Evaluate Market
Opportunity
• Define where your idea fits into a market category and
research solutions that exist
• Decision criteria depends on players in the market, total
size of market needed for you to feel comfortable
• Build a bottom’s up case (number of users/customers
times price)

7. Competitive Analysis
• Evaluate size, scale, reach, key features, and pricing for
top market owners and put into matrix
• Beware, sometimes no competition is NOT a good thing
• Find a market where competition lacks key features or
customer pain

8. Exercise #2 -
Competition
• Create a matrix of competitive solutions:
• GPS
• Smartphones
• Imbedded systems (i.e. Ford’s Sync)

9. Customer Validation
• Use competitive matrix to develop a set of key features
and differentiators
• Contact as many potential customers you can via email or
phone to generate feedback on key features and potential
prices

10. Exercise #3: Customers
• Identify 3-4 key feature benefits and discuss among the
group how you would acquire customer feedback
• Split into teams and interview other teams for feedback on
your key benefits/value proposition

11. Develop Cost Model
• Research potential manufacturing or development cost of
your idea and begin to build a cost model
• Don’t forget to add 10-20% to original estimates
• Include shipping, packaging, delivery, support, and other
costs

12. Revenue/Business
Model
• Determine how you will sell this product and make money
in order to determine a price point (see cost model) and
ensure profitability
• Evaluate 2-3 revenue models in order to test assumptions
and generate highest rate of return

13. Exercise #4: Revenue
Model
• Create a price point and process for generating revenue by
evaluating and discussing 2-3 revenue models.

14. Scalability
• Look into how you will deliver your product/service for the
first 10, 100, and 1,000 customers in order to understand
whether the concept is scalable
• Research automation, outsourcing, and alternative
manufacturing/development sources

15. Cash and Financing
• Use your assumptions on cost and pricing to build a basic
one year cash flow projection to understand hard costs
associated with launching
• Evaluate feasibility of net cash need versus potential
upside of idea to consider whether you can fund this or if
investors would fund this

16. Exercise #5: Financing
• Use initial costs/revenue assumptions to ascertain
development costs, go to market and product launch costs,
and implement these into a high level 12 month cash flow
statement. Project early sales units based on conservative
assumptions.

17. Team and Capabilities
• Evaluate and recognize your capabilities and strengths to
determine whether you possess the necessary skills to
execute
• Determine whether, based your evaluation, you can attract
talent to supplement your own skills

18. Exercise #6: Team
• Split into teams and discuss experience, training, and skills
to determine what role you would each take and what skills
you would need to acquire. Develop a plan and timeline on
how you would acquire skills (not everyone has to be full
time)

19. Do It
• Understand that entrepreneurs are problem solvers and
that risk is about calculation
• Jump in, with the knowledge that execution drives success,
not the quality of the idea

20. The Pitch
• Leverage what you’ve learned to craft
your 30-second elevator pitch
• Starting a pitch deck will help you
continue to hone all items we’ve talked
about

21. Q&A