Im happy to share that the International Business Innovation Association (InBIA) will kick off its 30thInternational Conference on Business Incubation with Alex Osterwalder as the opening keynote. Osterwalder invented the Bus
iness Model Canvas and is the lead author of the Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design books, which sold over a million copies in 37 languages. I was fortunate to have taken Osterwalders masterclass and have been teaching the methodology to Business Incubators all over the world. Having him speak at the largest gathering of business incubator managers in the world is very good news indeed.
Read InBIA’s press release here.
The conference will take place April 16-20, 2016 in Orlando, Fla. Registration for the conference is now open, click here for more information.
Last month our team traveled to Guadalajara Mexico to run our Business Model Canvas training at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. We were treated to working with the director of the University’s business incubator. As always during these visits, we experienced her enthusiasm as she gave us a tour of her facility and introduced us to her entrepreneurs with the pride any mother would feel for her own kids.
During this same trip we stopped by Guadalajara’s best rated coworking space “Nevermind”. We walked in unannounced, but the young lady at reception welcomed us warmly and offered us a tour. She took us around, explained how the space worked and gave us the backstory to its development. She obviously knew her members well and spoke of the space’s culture knowledgeably.
The two experiences got me thinking about community champions. The National Business Incubation Association has found that one of the keys to an incubation programs success is who heads it, and recent coworking research mirrors the finding. The community champion has to have a unique combination of qualities, which include being giving, outgoing and serviceable. But what about the skills they need to have in order to do their job properly?
- Community building – the difference between a real estate play and an entrepreneurial program is the people. Entrepreneurs can learn business skills in many different places both in person and online, paid or free. What they cannot get anywhere else is community, that group of people they interact with on a regular basis that knows what is going on in his or her life and cares. The champion has to understand how people like to work and how they interact in order to create that sense of belonging that keeps entrepreneurs engaged.
- Community curation – Making sure the members are comfortable and productive in the space means making sure new additions fit the culture. The champion needs to be able to create an intake process for new members conducive to maintaining an environment of collaboration. The champion should also try to include new members whose activities are complimentary to existing members without being competitive.
- Program management – besides the people aspect of a champion’s job is the administrative role. The champion will have to track member’s activities, whether for billing purposes in a coworking environment or for program participation in an incubation/acceleration environment. He will also have to ensure the facility is clean and operational at all times and know how to allocate time and usage in shared spaces. Finally he will be anticipating member needs through intake documentation such as lease, membership agreement, member/client manual, as well as ongoing notices of changes and updates in policies.
One way a champion can learn these skills is through an apprenticeship with an experienced manager. However, since that is not always available, many online resources are a good start. The National Business Incubation Association provides valuable training for incubator managers and the Global Coworking Conference Unconference provides learning opportunities for coworking champions. If you need more in depth training, we offer an online and in-person option for both coworking and incubation champions that is available on a continuous basis.
Will Startup Weekend lose its noble image?
Last month, Techstars announced it had acquired Up Global, the non-profit umbrella of Startup Weekend, Startup Next, Startup Week and Startup Digest. Up Global was founded 2 years ago to extend Startup Weekend’s reach internationally, and is now present in over 100 countries.
I have been a mentor and judge at several Startup Weekends, including a memorable experience in San Pedro Sula Honduras. I truly enjoy the opportunity to work with the participants; helping them very quickly mold an idea into something they can execute on. Some of the projects are quirky or outrageous, but many have real potential. I have given my time freely to these events, and continue to do so with a handful of teams that I continue to mentor.
The fuel behind the Startup Weekend concept is a win-win experience for everyone involved. The entrepreneur gets an amazing learning opportunity, meets interesting people and has fun along the way. The organizing entity, whether a University, business incubator, government entity or something else, gets exposure, an opportunity to interact with their community and most importantly a way to draw potential entrepreneurs out of their garages and into their space. Sponsors and mentors get the warm, fuzzy feelings that comes with supporting a community event and helping entrepreneurs realize their dream.
However, as Startup Weekend transitions to its new for-profit status under Techstars, will the idea of someone profiting out of so many people’s donated time and effort mar the institutions image? Although this merger has not received a lot of press, there are several important issues to consider that will affect organizers, participants and supporters.
Will the communities continue to support Startup Weekend with their time and resources? Startup Weekend’s model has been rooted in the “give first” spirit coined by Brad Feld. Dozens of people come together to make the event happen, giving their time, the venue, food and even beer. But adding profit to the mix could change the dynamic. Recruiting volunteers, getting the corporate sponsorship and in kind donations are much easier when there is an altruistic purpose. The perception that someone profits from his or her gift could make gaining support more difficult.
Will Techstars cherry-pick the winners? To be sure, there is a need for support for the good projects that come out of the program. As I mentioned, I have continued to mentor companies long after a Startup Weekend has ended, even thought that was never an expectation from the organizers who asked me to participate. However good projects do develop in the 96 hours, and they should be given as much support as necessary. Currently, that support often comes from locally based business incubators or accelerators. Some Startup Weekends build working with them into the awards for the top rated teams. But with Techstars in the mix will they fear Techstars will take the best teams? Last month TechCrunch quoted David Cohen, a Techstars partner saying “We want to help entrepreneurs through the whole journey, from idea to IPO.” So clearly gaining access to the early stage participants in part of the Techstars strategy. Where does that leave other programs that in the past have provided participants that ongoing support?
Will the friendly competition turn cutthroat? In particular I worry about raising the stakes for entrepreneurs that participate in a Startup Weekend. As it is right now, the skin in the game for participants is a weekend of their time and their registration fee. There is an awareness that a winner will be chosen who gets some sort of prize, but usually that prize is merely meant to motivating participants for a couple of days. When you throw Techstars into the mix, does the expectation of getting funding and joining the accelerator program turn the once friendly competition into a knock down drag out fight to the finish? And for those promising teams that Techstars does not pick up, I hope they are still encouraged by the Startup Weekend experience rather than leaving demotivated for not being chosen.
Finding support for Startup Weekends has gotten easier over the years, the event is now well known and so are its outcomes. However as it transitions to becoming a for profit entity, organizers will face new challenges in getting the stakeholder and community support that has made Startup Weekend successful so far. To be fair, Startup Weekends are not moneymaking events. It is the potential volunteers, supporters and participants perception of gain that could affect the program’s dynamic.
Startup weekend has been around for 8 years, that might be enough time for the institution to have cemented its image and brand enough to overcome its shift into the for-profit world. It has already impacted positively entrepreneurs all over the world. Lets hope that this transition turns out to be just a ripple in the entrepreneurship support ocean.
Ana Greif, CEO at Varela Consulting
You are busy advising your clients, promoting your program in the community and keeping income and expenses balanced. Do you have time to scour the hundreds of magazine articles, blogs and research papers available to keep yourself current in the entrepreneurship support field?
Over the past 7 years, since I founded Varela Consulting, I have worked with many of you on projects, leading trainings and supporting your programs. I have enjoyed visiting your facilities, getting to know your teams and more than anything watching your programs evolve.
This year, I have set out to find a way to make the information you need available to more entrepreneurship professionals. Until today only those who brought us on for a project or to train on a particular topic could access our specialized and curated knowledge base.
Today I am happy to introduce our new newsletter and redesigned website where we will deliver the most up to date information about developing and managing your entrepreneurship program.
I also want to issue a warm welcome to Varela Consulting’s new team member Stephanie Bermudez. Stephanie has a successful background in coworking and will be sharing her experience and best practices with our community. You can read her bio on our website and feel free to reach out to her at sbermudez@varelaconsulting.com.
Enjoy this first issue of our newsletter and please let us know if you have suggestions for what you would like to see in future editions.
I fell in love with the Business Model Canvas the first time I leafed through the book. After so many years of guiding entrepreneurs through the business development process with the inadequate tool known as the business plan, finally I stumbled onto a method that kept it simple and allowed for experimentation on the business before committing resources.
I truly just stumbled on the now well-known book by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, a couple of years ago, riding in the back seat of a car through the streets of Mexico City. My colleague from NBIA Tom Strodtbeck rode in the front seat with our host Carlos Maynor Salinas, then Director of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Business Incubation Network, who had invited us to speak to the managers of the incubators in his network. As they carried on a conversation I couldn’t hear over traffic noise, I distractedly looked around where I sat. I saw a book full of drawings on the cover that immediately caught my attention. Business Model Generation read the title and as I browsed through the pages I recognized a tool that would have important implications for our industry.
Fast forward to November 2013, and I am now in San Francisco participating in a workshop led by none other than Osterwalder himself. I will add there was a guest appearance by Steve Blank that really put the icing on an already outstanding two days of learning. I now understand a few things about the canvas that were novel to me and I hope are useful to you:
- The canvas was not created for start-ups. I expected to be in a room full of incubator managers, consultants and entrepreneurs. Instead, I was surrounded by people from mature, established companies like Clorox. As Osterwalder explained, these companies must innovate their business model or expect to go the way of Kodak. That was the motivation behind his research and his book.
- It doesn’t matter where you start. Most of us have read through the book and have this idea to start from the right and work towards the left. You identify your Customer Segment then work your way through Value Proposition and finally Key Partners. However, I learned that you can start anywhere, with the Value Proposition, Key Activities, Revenue Streams, or any of the boxes. The point is to make sure you have filled in all the boxes and assigned at least one value proposition for every customer segment you identify.
- You don’t stop at one- or two, or three. I have worked with many entrepreneurs and it always seemed like I ended up with 4 or 5 canvases for a business, which left me feeling like that was somehow wrong. In the workshop, we learned the real value of the canvas is that you can create as many versions of a business as you can imagine- in fact it is recommended that you do. The goal is not to find a business model that works, the goal is to find the one that works best. And to do that you must come up with as many versions as possible, rule out the crazy ones, and dive deeper into a few that make sense.
Have you used the canvas with your entrepreneurs? Has it made the business ideation process easier or have you not seen an advantage? Please share your experience!
Are you interested in learning the Business Model Generation methodology and making it available to your entrepreneurs? I am happy to introduce a workshop I developed based on the Business Model Generation methodology, designed for both existing businesses and star-ups. The workshop stems from my experience with many companies using the Business Model Canvas over the past couple of years, and the unique experience of participating in a workshop led by author Alex Osterwalder. I created this workshop, which can be offered as a one or two day program, to enable entrepreneurship programs and business incubators to make the process available to its clients. We will be running the first two workshops in English and Spanish in Los Angeles at the end of January and in Corpus Cristi in March. Interested in hosting the workshop? Contact us at info@varelaconsulting.com.
Happy modeling!
The Batavia Industrial Center in Batavia New York is considered to be the first business incubator in the world. I recently had an opportunity to visit the massive one million square foot facility and chat with the founder’s son and current CEO Tom Mancuso. It was a great experience after so many years of working in incubation and visiting dozens of incubators, to see this pioneer program. Above all my visit was a learning experience about how incubation was born and why business incubation is important. Over the next few posts I will share some of these lessons.
The term business incubator is so appropriate for what we do. Young companies, sometimes not much more than idea, enter a business incubator that provides an ideal growing environment. The incubator nourishes the start-up and its founder with advice and support until it matures and ultimately become self-sustainable and leaves.
What I have always wondered is, how did the term “business incubator” come about? During my visit to the Batavia Industrial Center I asked Tom. As he tells it, when his father and uncle purchased the old Massey Ferguson building that now houses the Batavia Industrial Center, one of the first businesses they supported was a local chicken hatchery. The business bred chickens on the third floor of the building. Soon enough, Tom’s father Joe Mancuso started giving tours to visitors and potential tenants. During these tours, Joe explained what they were doing using the hatchery as an analogy, “The hatchery incubates chickens and we incubate businesses.” The name stuck, and from there an entire industry was born.
In my next post I will recount why the Mancusos purchased this facility and how it went from being a manufacturing entity to the world’s first business incubator.