This document provides the syllabus for the Lean Launchpad course at NYU ITP. The course will be held on Mondays from 6-8:55 PM from January to April. It will be taught by Jen van der Meer and Josh Knowles and will use the Business Model Generation text. The course uses an iterative approach combining business model design, customer development, and agile development to help student teams develop their business ideas and products over the course of the semester.

1. Syllabus For Lean Launchpad at NYU ITP
Instructors: Jen van der Meer, Josh Knowles
Days and Times: Mondays, 6:00 PM­8:55 PM
Location: ITP NYU 421 Broadway at Waverly, 4th Floor Room TBD
Text: Business Model Generation
We embrace a creative, iterative, and collaborative approach to making things ­­ but launching a product out
into the world takes a somewhat different set of skills. How does one make sure people want to use what
they make? How does one create a business plan to support the idea? Is the idea strong enough to turn into
a job ­­ or a career? Enter Lean LaunchPad, at NYU ITP – the experiential course in entrepreneurship.
Based on the Steve Blank’s Lean LaunchPad and the NYU Summer LaunchPad Accelerator, we are
applying the curriculum developed at Stanford and Berkeley for the NYU community. This course has been
developed with support from the NYU Entrepreneurship Initiative, and aims at mixing the best of the methods
from the Lean LaunchPad methodology with the best of ITP's methods. Over the spring semester, student
teams participate in an iterative approach to startup development, a combination of business model design +
customer development + agile development.
Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Generation is used as the basic framework for business model
development, and we utilize UX methods and tools to ground students in an understanding of how to
successfully move through the early stages of product development. Students work in self­formed teams of
3­4 to develop their business model and product/service over the course of the semester. The primary focus
of the course is the work of customer development, speaking directly to potential customer to help define
opportunities that the startup is designed to solve, and early stage product development. The ITP curriculum
will augment the LeanLaunchpad method with additional approaches from design thinking, UX, and
ethnography to accelerate the understanding of both explicit pain points and more latent or hidden
challenges that people face, in their jobs and their lives.
Participants from the NYC Venture Capital community and leading successful startup entrepreneurs will
serve as mentors and advisors to student teams. The course is open to all enrolled NYU students.
Grading criteria:
15% Participation in class, giving feedback to your peers.
40% Progress in customer development interviews (out of the building)
20% Lessons learned weekly presentation and class blog
25% Final lessons learned report
Class Schedule:
Part 1: Business Model Canvas
Week 1: Monday, January 27, 2014: Business Models and Customer Development
Week 2: Monday, February 3, 2014: Value Proposition and UX Tools and Frameworks
Week 3: Monday, February 10, 2014: Customer Segments, Research Tools
Note: Monday, February 17, 2014 is President’s Day
Week 4: Monday, February 24, 2014: Revenue Streams, Distribution Channels, Product Definition
Week 5: Monday, March 3, 2014: Customer Relationships and Partners, Product Development

2. Week 6: Monday, March 10, 2014: Resources, Activities, and Costs, Product Development
Note: Monday, March 17, 2014 is Spring Break
Part 2: Iterative Development
Week 7: Monday, March 24, 2014: Continue Customer Development, Product Development
Week 8: Monday, March 31, 2014: Continue Customer Development, Product Development
Week 9: Monday, April 7, 2014: Continue Customer Development, Product Development
Week 10: Monday April 14, 2014: Continue Customer Development, Product Development
Week 11: Monday, April 21, 2014: Product MVP Completed
Week 12: Monday, April 28, 2014: Lessons Learned
Class roadmap:
Each week’s class is organized around student presentations on their lessons learned from getting out of
the building and iterating or pivoting their business model, with comments and suggestions from other
teams, and teaching team. We’ve combined methods from LeanLaunchPad, and will be augmenting with UX
methods as we move through agile development and launch..
Part 1: Business Model Canvas
Week 1: Monday, January 27, 2014: Business Models and Customer Development
Intro to teaching team, ground rules, expertise. How this class is different from Lean LaunchPad at the NYU
Accelerator.
What is a business model, and business model components. What are guesses vs. facts? What is the
minimum feature set? What experiments are needed to test business model hypothesis? What is market
size? How do you determine whether a business model is worth pursuing?
We’ll then have each team present the business model canvas developed, and develop another version in
class as we go deeper into the definition of addressable market size.
We’ll also review starter ideas about how to do customer interviews and overview of interview methods and
customer research methods.
Assignment for week 2, prep for Monday February 3, 2014:
Alexandar Osterwalder on Business Model Canvas Video
Read: Business Model Generation pp. 14­49.
Video Lecture: Value Proposition
Talk to at least 5 potential customers. Post first discovery narratives on your team blog.
Prepare a presentation – guidelines below:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Market size (TAM, SAM, Target Market)
Total addressable: how big is the universe
Served available market: how many can I reach with my sales channel?
Target market: who will be the most likely buyers?

3. ∙
Propose experiments to test your value proposition. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each
test?
Week 2: Monday, February 3, 2014: Value Proposition and UX Tools and Frameworks
What Is your product or service? How does it differ from an idea? Why will people want it? Who’s the
competition and how does your customer view these competitive offerings? Where’s the market? What’s the
minimum feature set? What’s the market type? What was your inspiration? What assumptions drove you to
this? What unique insight do you have into the market dynamics or into a technological shift that makes this
a fresh opportunity?
In class brief lecture on how to construct a value proposition.
In class we’ll also review basic user experience design tools and practices.
Teams will present a refined business model canvas, and update us on learnings and experiments from
customer development interviews.
Assignment for week 3, prep for Monday February 10, 2014:
Watch Customer Segments lecture.
Business Model Generation, 126­145.
The Founder’s Dilemma (HBR) and optional ­ The Founder’s Dilemma Noam Wasserman (Stanford
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcast)
The Lean UX Manifesto
Talk to at least 5 potential customers. Post discovery narratives on your team blog.
Prepare a presentation – guidelines below:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Updates to Market size (TAM, SAM, Target Market)
∙
Results of last week’s experiments. What passed, what failed, what did you learn?
∙
Proposals for next week’s experiments. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each test?
Week 3: Monday, February 10, 2014: Customer Segments, Research Tools
(Jen out at Strata on the west coast)
Who’s the customer? User? Payer? How are they different? How can you reach them? How is a business
customer different from a consumer?
As a part of answering the above questions, teams will need to begin designing their products. Designing for
user experience should be the primary goal ­­ and each team should be alert to questions about their
product which they will need customer input to answer. If you don’t know the answer to a design challenge
or have split opinions, note it as a possible customer question.
Assignment for week 4, prep for Monday, February 24, 2014:
Talk to (while observing non verbal cues) at least 5 customers face­to­face (optional: Survey Monkey to get

4. more data).
Watch Lecture 4: Distribution Channels – take the quiz
Read Business Model Generation: 146­179
Presentation for post break:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Updates to Market size (TAM, SAM, Target Market)
∙
Results of last weeks experiments. What passed, what failed, what did you learn?
∙
Proposals for next week’s experiments. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each test?
­­­­­­­­­­Note: Monday, February 17, 2014 is President’s Day there is no class­­­­­­­­­­
Week 4: Monday, February 24, 2014: Revenue Streams, Distribution Channels, Product Definition
What’s a revenue model? What types of revenue streams are there? How does it differ on the web versus
other channels? How will you package your product into various offerings if you have more than one? How
will you price the offerings? What are the key financials metrics for your business model? What are the
risks involved? What are your competitors doing?
What’s a channel? Direct channels, indirect channels, OEM. Multi­sided markets. B­to­B versus B­to­C
channels and sales (business to business versus business to consumer).
At this stage we are going to put more boundaries around early stage product definition. Many of your
groups will already have done some development work by this point, but in order to efficiently build your
products, you will need to have a product definition that you stick to. This can change, of course, but you
should reach the point where your product design only changes for demonstrable reasons, not on whims.
Assignment for week 5, prep for Monday, March 3, 2014:
Watch Lecture Customer Relationships—take the quiz
Watch Lecture Partners
Read: Business Model Generation 180­225
Talk to 5 or more customers face­to­face, Survey Monkey if relevant. Post discovery narratives
Presentation:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Updates to Market size (TAM, SAM, Target Market)
∙
Results of last week’s experiments. What passed, what failed, what did you learn?
∙
Proposals for next week’s experiments. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each
Week 5: Monday, March 3, 2014: Customer Relationships and Partners, Product Development
How do you create end­user demand? How does it differ on the web versus other channels? Evangelism
versus existing need or category? How do you get, keep and grow customers? General marketing, sales
funnel, etc.
Who are your partners? Strategic alliances, competition, joint ventures, buyer supplier, licensees, industry

5. organizations. What does it mean to participate in a startup ecosystem? The NYC vs. Bay Area discussed.
Each group will also, this week, define a plan for product development. How do we hit beta by the end of the
semester? What technologies will we use? What features do we include or lose due to time constraints? In
what order do we build so we can use our in­development product as a part of our customer conversations?
Assignment for week 6, prep for Monday, March 10, 2014:
Watch Lecture on Activities, Resources and Costs
Read: Business Model Generation 226­261.
Presentation:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Results of last week’s experiments. What passed, what failed, what did you learn?
∙
Proposals for next week’s experiments. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each?
Week 6: Monday, March 10, 2014: Resources, Activities, and Costs
(Jen is back from SXSW, Josh is still at SXSW)
In week six, we complete our tour of the Business Model Canvas with Resources, Activities, and Costs.
What resources do you need to build this business? How many people? What kind? Any hardware or
software you need to buy? Any IP you need to license? Are there benefits to not raising money from outside
sources? How and when should you think about raising money? What are the alternatives to raising money,
and the sources? We discuss the importance of cash flows in any business, or not­for­profit. When do you
get paid versus when do you pay others?
Assignment for week 7, prep for Monday, March 24, 2014:
Assemble a resources assumptions calculation (google spreadsheet will suffice), including people,
hardware, software, prototypes, financing, etc., and determine when will you need these resources, at what
time in the first year? For physical product projects: Get real costs from suppliers – Bill of Materials.
Optional Reading: Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz overview.
Presentation for post break:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Updates to Market size (TAM, SAM, Target Market)
∙
Results of last week’s experiments. What passed, what failed, what did you learn?
∙
Proposals for next week’s experiments. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each test?
∙
Present a topline revenue and cost forecast for the first 2 years.
­­­­­­­­­­­­­Note: Monday, March 17, 2014 is Spring Break there is no class­­­­­­­­­­­­­
Part 2: Iterative Development

6. The second half of the class is set up for iterative product development, with continued customer
development. We have done a full tour of the Business Model Canvas, and we will iterate assumptions and
findings as we move through development. At this stage the support provided and experiments chosen will
start to depend significantly on the needs of each individual team. We will select outside experts and invite
advisors to address key needs of the project team, to be determined as we move forward to launch the
MVP.
Week 7: Monday, March 24, 2014: Customer Development, Product Development
Assignment for week 8, prep for Monday, March 31, 2014:
Continue to build your MVP.
Talk to 5 more customers (or equivalent analytics test of assumptions).
Presentation for post break:
∙
Cover slide
∙
Latest version Business Model Canvas with changes marked
∙
Results of last week’s experiments. What passed, what failed, what did you learn?
∙
Proposals for next week’s experiments. What constitutes a pass/fail signal for each test?
Week 8: Monday, March 31, 2014: Customer Development, Product Development
Repeat!
Week 9: Monday, April 7, 2014: Customer Development, Product Development
Repeat!
Week 10: Monday April 14, 2014: Customer Development, Product Development
Repeat!
Week 11: Monday, April 21, 2014: Customer Development, Product Development
Assignment for week 12, prep for Monday, April 28, 2014:
Prepare 30­minute team “lessons learned” presentation including a 7 minute presentation, and 2 minute
video.
Week 12: Monday, April 28, 2014: Lessons Learned
5 teams deliver a 30 minute presentation with advisors and mentors in full attendance.