These are slides from a talk Sean Tierney did for GameColab on 8/1/13 teaching concepts of Lean Startup, Customer Development, Lifecycle Marketing and Marketing Automation in the realm of game development.

1. By Sean Tierney
How to pre-validate game demand and launch
to a group of rabid fans on day one.

2. Distribution & Product-Market Fit

4. Pre Post
Product-Market Fit
Searching for b-model Focused on growth
Stages of Development of any Venture

5. My creds

6. Your greatest threat = apathy

7. CustDev Lean Canvas

8. What is Customer Development?
Brainchild of Steve Blank
“Four Steps to the Epiphany” = seminal work. The
revised sequel 10yrs later is “Startup Owner’s Manual”
Answers don’t exist within the building... therefore, get
out of the building and talk to your potential customers!
Need to intimately understand the problem & customer
before pushing your solution
CustDev = framework for doing entrepreneurship. Focus
on P-M fit first then worry about growth. Stages are like
“orbits” - must achieve escape velocity to move to next.

9. Google: “Steve Blank Udacity”

10. What is the Lean Startup?
Mindset of experimentation
Eric Ries’ book (apprentice has gotten more attention)
Originates from Toyota lean manufacturing principles
applied to startups
De-risk the most threatening aspects early
Build / Measure / Learn
Validated learning as the unit of progress
Innovation accounting via the Canvas

11. When you distill it all down
Lean is about systematically...
Reducing risk,
uncertainty & waste

12. Example

13. Example

14. What is the Business Model
Canvas?
An iterative “report card” to track validated learning
Replacement for the business plan
Snapshot of current understanding of the startup
Vessel for sharing and getting input from advisors

16. Need a volunteer

17. http://leancanvas.com/

18. Where does your greatest uncertainty lie?

19. Learn, Build, Measure
Where does the greatest uncertainty lie and what is the
risk to the success of the product?
What testable hypotheses can we form to de-risk this?
What data would we need to collect to confirm or
refute these hypotheses?
What experiments would we need to conduct in order
to collect that data?
Now go run these experiments.
Rinse and repeat...

20. Example

21. Qualitative over quantitative early on

22. Google: “Steve Blank Udacity”

24. Pre Post
Product-Market Fit
Searching for b-model Focused on growth
Stages of Development of any Venture

25. +
Lifecycle Marketing
+
Process Automation

26. Pre-launch list-building ideas
Blog about game creation / inspiration process
FB campaign for VIP super-secret sneak peek
Do podcast interviews with other game creators
“Proceeds during X days donated to charitable cause”
Contest drawing for access to XYZ awesome thing
(donated by sponsor you find)
Give away one year subscription to PC Gamer Mag -
MCI “Friends ‘n Family” style campaign

27. Now that you have a list...
Never abuse it
Exceed original expectation
Show the human, personal side (no marketing-speak)
Exclusive privileges
Always grandfather early-adopters on price increases

28. Shameless Self-Promo for Grid7

29. Lifecycle Marketing & Automation

30. How do you recycle?

32. Follow these three people:
Questions?
Sean Tierney
sean@grid7.com
@scrollinondubs
grid7.com