 Written by Nick Glavan As we conclude yet another cohort of I-Corps, I wanted to use this week’s blog to reflect on some of the most common follow-on steps for startups and entrepreneurs after they their 21-interviews of our flagship program. Assess Your Idea’s Potential This typically happens informally, but the first activity after wrapping up your cohort experience in I-Corps should be to step back and assess your idea’s commercial potential. Ask yourself critically, “is there a real customer who needs my innovation?” Don’t be afraid to pivot your idea to provide value to your customer and solve a real problem for them. Your initial idea may not have been what’s best for your customer, but as long as you continue focusing on meeting their needs, you can still find success. In most cases, 21 stakeholder interviews will only scratch the surface of truly knowing the wants and needs of your target customer, so you’ll likely end up finding there are more questions to answer before you are ready to develop your innovation further.  Investigate with More Interviews The best way to find answers to those questions is to conduct more customer interviews. Customer discovery is an on-going task, even once you have launched your product or service. For most entrepreneurs exiting our 21-interview I-Corps, there are uncertainties about how exactly a customer experiences their problem, and how they would go about implementing a new innovation to solve the problem. Interviews will slowly evolve towards learning about your customer’s evaluation process for new purchases, and how decision-making units calculate return on investment. Getting to these deeper interviews will likely take time and relationship building to create open pathways of communication. One of the best ways to approach these interviewees is to demonstrate that you are listening, understanding their problems, and confirming to them that you are interested in helping to solve this problem with them. You might find yourself going back to interview the same customer several times, but in this process, you will build a relationship and establish trust with a target customer, who can help provide guidance as you move closer towards MVP development and market entry.  Fill Out the Full BMC While I-Corps focuses primarily on the Customer Segment and Value Proposition boxes of the Business Model Canvas, there are still 7 boxes left to fill with hypotheses and go out and test. After wrapping up your I-Corps interviews, try filling out a full BMC with your best guesses. Note down which hypotheses are critical to the success of your innovation’s placement in the market and start crafting interview questions to test those assumptions. Keep moving through your canvas until its full of validated hypotheses. Try to revisit the full BMC every 20 or so interviews to track any new insights you gain along the way. Prep Your Pitch Once you’ve validated your business case on your Business Model Canvas, you’ll likely want to format your information into a pitch for funding opportunities. We often see I-Corps graduates participating in pitch opportunities such as Hudson Library & Historical Society’s The Pitch, Jumpstart’s Pitch Cypher, and Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise(GLIDE)’s Innovation Fund, to name a few. You can reach out to us at UARF for a pitch practice session to spruce up any slides, too. When it comes to pitching, winning isn’t everything; it’s a great opportunity to receive critical feedback to make you a better entrepreneur and strengthen your business case. The more times you practice and take in feedback on your pitch, the more chances you’ll have to take home a prize.  Network and Stay Involved The most important next step after I-Corps, though, is to stay involved in entrepreneurship and training. Whether you attend monthly networking events or sign up for a follow-on program, staying active in the entrepreneurial ecosystem will help you advance your ideas and your skillsets. Now that you’ve finished your local I-Corps experience, keep your momentum going by continuing to participate in activities that will hold accountable and encourage you make progress on your innovation. Many I-Corps grads seek out ongoing mentorship or participate in startup accelerator programs offered by organizations like Bounce Innovation Hub, Braintree Business Development Center, MAGNET(The Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network), BRITE Energy Innovators, Jumpstart, Youngstown Business Incubator, and ProMedica. Each organization is staffed with specialized advisors and program managers who can assist you in planning next steps in your business. Keep UARF in the loop too, by emailing uaicorps@gmail.com or replying to our biweekly newsletters with any requests for assistance or company updates you want us to know. We’re happy to direct you towards the best resources for your business.
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