Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Management 2¶

Why This Matters¶

The first Entrepreneurship course taught you to think like an entrepreneur -- to evaluate opportunities, build business models, and assess whether a venture is worth pursuing. This second course puts you inside the venture itself. You are no longer an analyst deciding whether to start; you are a founder who has committed and must now navigate the chaotic early stages of building something from nothing. The difference is enormous. Analysis rewards thoroughness and objectivity. Execution rewards speed, learning, and the willingness to be wrong.

Entrepreneurial Management 2 is structured as a hackathon. Across eleven sessions, you move a venture idea from trend identification through customer discovery, prototyping, testing, pivoting, and pitch. The course is experiential by design: you do not study entrepreneurship from the outside, you practice it under time pressure. The intellectual backbone combines effectuation theory (how expert entrepreneurs actually think), the lean startup method (build-measure-learn), and design thinking (empathic observation as the root of innovation). The deliverable is not a paper -- it is a live venture pitch evaluated by faculty and peers.

This matters because most new ventures fail not from bad ideas but from bad process. Founders fall in love with their solution before validating the problem. They build products nobody wants. They burn cash on features instead of learning. They persist when they should pivot, or pivot when they should persist. This course gives you a structured process to reduce the odds of those errors, while acknowledging that entrepreneurship will always involve irreducible uncertainty -- which is precisely what makes it different from managing an established firm.

How It All Connects¶

The course follows a venture lifecycle compressed into eleven sessions under Professor Jeroen Neckebrouck (2 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System [ECTS] credits).

Sessions 1--2 establish the opportunity lens. You learn how to spot macro trends and time your entry using the S-curve, and you begin framing opportunities through the lens of effectuation versus causation -- two fundamentally different logics for acting under uncertainty.

Sessions 3--4 move from trends to customers. You build empathy through observation-based research, construct personas and Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) profiles, and translate them into early value propositions using the Value Proposition Canvas. The goal is not to confirm your idea but to discover what problem actually needs solving.

Sessions 5--6 shift from understanding to building. You construct Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) -- not to launch a business, but to test your riskiest assumptions as cheaply as possible. You learn that prototyping is a learning tool, not a product development milestone.

Session 7 returns to observation. Drawing on Leonard and Rayport's empathic design methodology, you watch real users interact with your prototype, capturing behavioral data that surveys and focus groups cannot reveal.

Session 8 confronts the pivot decision. Using the McDonald and Bremner framework for narrative management during pivots, you learn when to change direction, how to classify the type of pivot, and how to communicate a strategic reorientation without losing stakeholder confidence.

Session 9 bridges creativity and economics. You build a business model with real unit economics -- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) -- and learn the structure of a venture pitch that translates your story into an investable narrative.

Sessions 10--11 are the finals. You deliver and refine live venture pitches, first within your section and then on Final Pitch Day.

Cross-references run throughout: - Entrepreneurship 1: This course builds directly on it. Opportunity evaluation, business model canvases, and founding team dynamics from the first course are assumed knowledge. - Marketing Management: Market sizing (Total Addressable Market [TAM], Serviceable Addressable Market [SAM], Serviceable Obtainable Market [SOM]), segmentation, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) appear in Sessions 3--4 and 9. - Communication: Pitch structure, storytelling, and stakeholder persuasion are the backbone of Sessions 8--11. - Decision Analysis: Uncertainty modeling, expected value thinking, and the cognitive biases that distort probability estimates are the analytical underpinning of every pivot-or-persevere decision.

Session 1: Welcome to the Hackathon -- Process, Playbooks, Possibilities¶

Effectuation vs. Causation¶

The most important conceptual distinction in this course is between two logics for entrepreneurial action.

Causation is the logic taught in most MBA courses. You define a goal, analyze the environment, develop a plan, acquire the necessary resources, and execute. It is prediction-driven: success depends on forecasting the future accurately. Causation works well when the future is reasonably predictable, data is available, and the environment is stable.

Effectuation is the logic that expert entrepreneurs actually use when facing genuine uncertainty -- situations where the future is not merely risky (probabilities can be estimated) but truly unknowable. Effectuation was identified by Saras Sarasvathy through a protocol analysis of serial entrepreneurs and operates on four principles:

A fifth, overarching principle is the pilot-in-the-plane: the future is not something to be predicted but something to be created through human action. This rejects forecasting in favor of shaping.

When to use which: Causation is appropriate when the market is well understood and data exists (launching a new flavor of an existing product). Effectuation is appropriate when the market does not yet exist and there is no data to forecast from (creating a category-defining product). Most real ventures require toggling between both logics at different stages.

The Hackathon Structure¶

The course itself embodies effectuation. You begin with the resources in the room -- your team's skills, networks, and knowledge -- rather than a predetermined venture idea. Through iterative cycles of discovery, prototyping, and testing, the venture emerges. The hackathon format compresses the startup lifecycle into weeks, forcing the same rapid iteration that real founders experience.

Session 2: Spotting Big Trends and Opportunity Windows¶

The S-Curve Framework¶

Every technology, product category, and market follows a roughly S-shaped adoption curve when plotted over time. Understanding where you are on the curve -- and which curve you are on -- is the foundation of opportunity timing.

The three phases:

1. Emergence (bottom of the S): A new technology or behavior appears. Growth is slow because infrastructure is missing, costs are high, and most people do not understand the value. Few competitors exist, but so do few customers. Risk is highest here, but so is potential upside.

2. Growth (steep middle): The technology reaches a tipping point. Adoption accelerates as costs fall, complementary products appear, and social proof builds. This is where most venture value is created -- and where competition intensifies rapidly.

3. Maturity (top of the S): Growth slows as the market saturates. Incumbents dominate. Innovation shifts from product to process (cost reduction, efficiency). Opportunities exist mainly for disruptors who can jump to a new S-curve.

The key insight is that S-curves overlap. While one technology matures, the next is emerging. The opportunity window is the gap between when a new S-curve becomes viable and when incumbents recognize and respond to it. Enter too early and you burn cash waiting for the market; enter too late and you face entrenched competitors.

Trend Identification¶

Spotting trends is not the same as spotting fads. A trend is a structural shift driven by technology, demographics, regulation, or culture that creates lasting new demand. A fad is a temporary spike in interest without structural support.

To distinguish trends from fads, ask: - Is there a technological or demographic driver that will sustain this change? - Are multiple independent signals pointing in the same direction (convergence)? - Is the behavior change irreversible, or will people revert when novelty fades? - Is the total addressable market growing, or is a fixed pool of attention being temporarily redirected?

Timing the Entry¶

The entrepreneur's timing challenge is captured by two asymmetric risks:

The practical heuristic: enter when the technology works but the business model is still unsettled. If you can build a functional prototype at reasonable cost, but no dominant player has emerged, the window is likely open.

Cross-reference -- Decision Analysis: Timing under uncertainty maps directly to option value. Waiting has value (you learn more), but waiting also has cost (competitors move). The real options framework from Decision Analysis formalizes this tradeoff.

Sessions 3--4: From Empathy to Opportunity -- Crafting Early Value Propositions¶

Customer Discovery: Observation Before Solution¶

The single most common mistake in early-stage ventures is starting with a solution and then looking for a problem. Sessions 3--4 invert that sequence. You begin with deep customer understanding and let the problem define the solution.

Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) Framework¶

JTBD, developed by Clayton Christensen and refined by Anthony Ulwick, reframes the customer question. Instead of asking "Who is our customer?" you ask "What job is the customer hiring our product to do?"

A "job" is the progress a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance. It is not a task or an activity -- it is the underlying goal that motivates the task. People do not buy a quarter-inch drill because they want a drill; they buy it because they want a quarter-inch hole. And they do not want a hole -- they want to hang a picture. And they do not want to hang a picture -- they want their home to feel complete.

The JTBD structure has three dimensions:

The competitive set expands dramatically under JTBD. A milkshake's competitors are not other milkshakes -- they are bananas, bagels, boredom, and the steering wheel. Understanding the real job reveals the real competition.

Persona Development¶

A persona is a composite archetype of a target user, grounded in research rather than imagination. An effective persona includes:

• Demographics: Age, income, location, occupation -- but only insofar as they shape behavior.
• Behavioral patterns: How they currently solve the problem, what workarounds they use, what frustrates them.
• Goals and motivations: What they are trying to achieve (the JTBD).
• Pain points: Specific friction in their current solution.
• Context of use: When, where, and under what circumstances they encounter the problem.

Warning: Personas are hypotheses, not facts. They must be validated through observation and interviews. A persona built from assumptions in a conference room is worse than useless -- it gives you false confidence.

The Value Proposition Canvas¶

The Value Proposition Canvas (developed by Alex Osterwalder) is a structured tool for achieving fit between what the customer needs and what you offer. It has two sides:

Customer Profile (right side): - Jobs: What the customer is trying to accomplish (functional, emotional, social). - Pains: The negative outcomes, risks, and obstacles the customer experiences while trying to get the job done. - Gains: The positive outcomes and benefits the customer desires or would be delighted by.

Value Map (left side): - Products and services: What you offer. - Pain relievers: How your offering alleviates specific customer pains. - Gain creators: How your offering delivers specific customer gains.

Fit occurs when your pain relievers and gain creators address the jobs, pains, and gains that matter most to the customer. The canvas forces you to be explicit about the mapping -- which specific pain does each feature relieve? If a feature does not map to a pain or gain, it is waste.

Hypothesis Mapping¶

At this stage, every element of your value proposition is a hypothesis. Hypothesis mapping makes those assumptions explicit and ranks them by two criteria:

1. Criticality: If this assumption is wrong, does the venture die? (e.g., "Customers will pay $50/month for this" is critical; "Customers prefer blue to green" is not.)
2. Uncertainty: How confident are you that this assumption is true?

The assumptions that are both highly critical and highly uncertain are your leap-of-faith assumptions -- the ones you must test first. Everything else can wait.

Cross-reference -- Marketing Management: The Value Proposition Canvas is a zoomed-in version of the business model canvas used in Marketing's product strategy. Customer segmentation, positioning statements, and the concept of Economic Value to the Customer (EVC) all feed directly into this work.

Sessions 5--6: From Field to Form -- Prototyping to Learn¶

The MVP: A Learning Tool, Not a Product¶

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the smallest experiment you can run to test your most critical assumption. The word "product" is misleading -- an MVP is often not a product at all. It is a vehicle for learning.

The lean startup method (Eric Ries) frames the venture-building process as a Build-Measure-Learn loop: 1. Build the smallest thing that lets you test an assumption. 2. Measure customer behavior (not opinions). 3. Learn whether the assumption was correct, then decide: persevere, pivot, or kill.

The goal is to minimize the time through the loop. Every day spent building features before validating assumptions is a day of potential waste.

Types of MVPs¶

Different assumptions require different MVP types. Choosing the right one depends on what you need to learn:

Assumption Testing Protocol¶

For each leap-of-faith assumption:

1. State the hypothesis clearly: "We believe [customer segment] will [measurable behavior] because [reason]."
2. Define the minimum success criterion before running the test: "We need at least 100 sign-ups out of 1,000 landing page visitors (10% conversion) to proceed."
3. Choose the cheapest, fastest MVP type that can produce a credible result.
4. Run the experiment with a fixed time box and budget.
5. Measure actual behavior, not stated intent. What people do is more reliable than what they say.
6. Decide: Does the result meet your minimum success criterion? If yes, persevere and test the next assumption. If no, diagnose why and consider a pivot.

Common trap: Moving the goalposts after the experiment. If you defined success as 10% conversion and got 3%, the answer is not "Well, 3% is pretty good for a first try." The answer is: the assumption failed, and you need to understand why before proceeding.

Cross-reference -- Decision Analysis: Assumption testing is hypothesis testing under uncertainty. The minimum success criterion is analogous to a decision rule derived from expected value analysis. The affordable-loss principle from effectuation sets the budget for each experiment.

Session 7: Observing Real Feedback in Action -- Empathic Design¶

Why Observation Beats Inquiry¶

Traditional market research -- surveys, focus groups, interviews -- relies on customers articulating their needs. This works when products are well understood and customers have finely honed preferences (choosing leather scent for a luxury car interior, adjusting the sound of a motorcycle engine). But it fails systematically in three situations:

1. Customers are habituated to workarounds. They have adapted to inconveniences so thoroughly that they no longer recognize them as problems. A surgeon whose view of the monitor is periodically blocked by passing nurses never complains -- the workaround (waiting a few seconds) has become invisible.

2. The solution does not yet exist in the customer's mental model. People cannot ask for what they do not know is technically possible. No customer would have requested a lightweight helmet that projects surgical images directly in front of the eyes -- but an HP developer observing the operating room saw the opportunity instantly.

3. People are unreliable reporters of their own behavior. They give answers they think are expected, they rationalize their choices after the fact, and they cannot recall feelings about intangible product characteristics when they are not actively using the product.

Leonard and Rayport's empathic design resolves these failures by substituting observation for inquiry. You watch customers in their natural environment, using their actual tools, performing their actual routines. The observer -- not the customer -- identifies the opportunity, because the observer knows what the company is technically capable of building.

The Five-Step Empathic Design Process¶

Step 1: Observation Determine who to observe, who should do the observing, and what behaviors to watch.

• Who to observe: Current users, non-users, lead users, and people who have created their own workarounds. Observe in the customer's natural environment (home, office, car, factory floor), not in a lab.
• Who should observe: Send a small, interdisciplinary team -- an engineer, a human-factors specialist, and a designer. Each extracts different information from the same scene. IDEO used this approach for Steelcase's Details subsidiary, sending three specialists into offices to study keyboard repositioning.
• What to watch: Normal, everyday routines. The Doblin Group followed a lawyer from daycare drop-off to bedtime, revealing communication needs that no interview would have surfaced.

Step 2: Capture Data Minimize questions to avoid interrupting natural behavior. Rely on photography and videography to capture fleeting cues -- a puzzled expression, a moment of hesitation, a spatial arrangement that constrains movement. Xerox PARC videotaped users encountering new copier machines, capturing seconds-long expressions of confusion that notes would have missed. Photographs of backyard barbecues revealed women struggling with grills designed for men's height and upper-body strength.

Step 3: Reflection and Analysis Return to base and review visual data with colleagues who were not in the field. These fresh eyes, unhampered by contextual distractions, will notice different patterns. The team identifies all possible customer problems and unarticulated needs. Bulletin-board displays of candid office photos revealed a "snake pit of wires" around every worker's feet, leading to built-in conduits in the next generation of modular office dividers.

Step 4: Brainstorm for Solutions Transform observations into visual representations of possible solutions. Follow IDEO's five brainstorming rules: defer judgment, build on others' ideas, hold one conversation at a time, stay focused on the topic, and encourage wild ideas. The discipline of these rules is what makes brainstorming productive rather than chaotic.

Step 5: Develop Prototypes Create physical representations or simulations of the concept. These need not be functional -- even inert foam models serve three critical purposes: they clarify the concept for the development team, enable cross-functional discussion, and stimulate concrete feedback from potential customers. Thermos built two prototypes for an outdoor grill: the "Monitor" (functional but ugly) and the "Merrimack" (beautiful but inert foam). Both were necessary to elicit useful feedback.

Key Examples from the Literature¶

When to Use Empathic Design vs. Traditional Research¶

Cross-reference -- Marketing Management: Empathic design is the ethnographic complement to Marketing's quantitative customer analysis. The Decision-Making Process (DMP) and Decision-Making Unit (DMU) from Marketing tell you who to observe; empathic design tells you how to observe them.

Session 8: Adapt or Persevere -- Pivoting and Iteration¶

When to Pivot¶

A pivot is a structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, business model, or growth engine. It is not a random change of direction, and it is not giving up. It is the disciplined application of what you have learned from failed experiments.

The pivot decision should be data-driven, not emotional. Warning signs that a pivot may be necessary:

• Experiments consistently fail to meet minimum success criteria.
• Customer engagement is flat or declining despite iteration.
• The unit economics (CLV relative to CAC) do not improve with scale.
• You are gaining users but they do not retain or pay.
• A critical assumption has been invalidated and cannot be patched.

The pivot decision is also one of the hardest judgment calls in entrepreneurship. The same data that suggests "this is not working" can also mean "you have not given it enough time." Effectuation's affordable-loss principle provides the guardrail: if you have burned through what you can afford to lose and the core hypothesis remains unvalidated, it is time to pivot.

Types of Pivots¶

Eric Ries and Steve Blank identified several canonical pivot types:

The Narrative Framework for Pivoting (McDonald and Bremner)¶

The strategic decision to pivot is only half the challenge. The other half -- often underestimated by technically minded founders -- is managing the stakeholder narrative. A pivot is an implicit admission that the original plan was flawed, and this admission can shatter the confidence of investors, employees, and customers. McDonald and Bremner's framework provides a three-step protocol for surviving a strategic reorientation.

Step 1: The Pitch -- Focus on the Big Picture

When you first pitch your venture, resist the urge to be overly specific about product features and functionality. The more specific your initial narrative, the more likely it is to be proven wrong -- and the harder it will be to pivot later without looking inconsistent. Instead, craft a broad narrative -- an "umbrella ambition" -- that leaves room to maneuver.

Pitch the destination, not the path. Like effective political campaigns, the best pitches have emotional appeal and underscore a larger aim. Abstract, aspirational framing encourages stakeholders to project their own expectations onto the vision, generating enthusiasm and higher valuations. It also provides cover for later course corrections, because the overarching mission has not changed -- only the tactics.

Step 2: The Pivot -- Signal Continuity

When the pivot comes, the human mind demands consistency. Stakeholders view inconsistent organizations as less legitimate and less deserving of support. The antidote is to explicitly link the new strategy back to the original umbrella ambition. You do not announce a new goal; you frame the pivot as a better way to achieve the same mission.

Case: 3D Robotics (3DR). By 2015, 3DR was losing to cheaper, better drones from DJI (Dà-Jiāng Innovations). CEO Chris Anderson orchestrated a pivot from consumer drones to enterprise software. He framed the shift by arguing that 3DR was never actually about consumer drones -- the core mission had always been to "extend the internet to the sky," and enterprise software was the most viable path. Some investors bought the revised pitch, and the company secured $80 million in new funding.

Case: Glitch to Slack. The online game Glitch was failing, but its founders recognized that the messaging technology they had built for gamers could become a standalone enterprise product. They handled the pivot with humility and transparency -- publicly apologizing to users, offering refunds, and focusing concern on employees who would lose their jobs. This narrative management secured $17 million in follow-on funding from original investors.

Step 3: The Aftermath -- Move Quickly but with Humility

Resource constraints mean you cannot afford a phased withdrawal from a legacy product. You must move fast. But swift retreats alienate existing customers and employees who feel abandoned. The antidote is empathy and remorse: acknowledge the impact of the change, provide clear guidance about what happens next, and show genuine concern for those affected. Stakeholders are far more willing to remain loyal when they see that leaders care about their situation.

Counterexample: Airware. When this drone startup pivoted from autopilot hardware to cloud software, it made the change suddenly and without warning. Enterprise partners, customers, and employees criticized the leadership for indifference. The CEO stepped down, and the company ran out of cash in 2018. The technology pivot may have been correct; the narrative management was fatal.

Cross-reference -- Communication: The narrative framework for pivoting is applied stakeholder communication. Framing, audience analysis, and persuasive structure from the Communication course are the tools that make this work in practice.

Session 9: From Economics to Story -- Business Model and Pitch Foundations¶

Unit Economics: The CLV > CAC Test¶

Before you pitch, you must prove that your venture can make money. The fundamental unit economics test for any venture is:

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) must exceed Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

If it does not -- if it costs you more to acquire a customer than that customer will ever be worth -- your business model is broken and no amount of growth will fix it. Growth will, in fact, accelerate your death.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total net profit a company earns from a customer over the entire duration of the relationship.

CLV = (Average Revenue per Customer per Period - Average Cost to Serve per Period) x Average Customer Lifespan in Periods

Or, with a discount rate applied:

CLV = Margin per Period x [ 1 / (1 + Discount Rate - Retention Rate) ]

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including all marketing and sales expenses.

CAC = Total Sales and Marketing Spend / Number of New Customers Acquired

Key ratios:

Why 3:1? A CLV/CAC ratio of exactly 1:1 means you break even on every customer -- no profit to fund operations, product development, or growth. A ratio below 1:1 means you lose money on every customer. The 3:1 benchmark provides margin for error, overhead costs, and reinvestment.

Cross-reference -- Marketing Management: CLV and CAC are covered in depth in Marketing's pricing and customer value modules. The calculations here are identical; the difference is that in an early-stage venture, the numbers are estimates based on limited data, which makes sensitivity analysis (from Decision Analysis) essential.

Business Model Design¶

A viable business model answers nine questions, mapped to the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder):

1. Customer Segments: Who are you creating value for?
2. Value Propositions: What value do you deliver? (Sessions 3--4)
3. Channels: How do you reach and deliver to customers?
4. Customer Relationships: What type of relationship does each segment expect?
5. Revenue Streams: How does each segment pay, and how much?
6. Key Resources: What assets are essential to make the model work?
7. Key Activities: What must you do exceptionally well?
8. Key Partnerships: Who are your critical suppliers and partners?
9. Cost Structure: What are the largest cost drivers?

At the early stage, most of these boxes contain hypotheses. The business model is a living document that evolves with each Build-Measure-Learn cycle.

Pitch Deck Structure¶

A venture pitch follows a canonical structure. Each slide answers a specific question in the investor's mind:

Principles of effective pitching:

• Lead with the problem, not the solution. Investors invest in large, painful problems with inadequate existing solutions. If the problem is not compelling, the solution does not matter.
• Show, do not tell. A working prototype, a customer testimonial, or a metric beats a slide of bullet points.
• Quantify everything. "Large market" is meaningless. "$14 billion spent annually on X, growing at 22% per year" is persuasive.
• Address the elephant. Every business has a critical risk. Naming it and explaining how you will mitigate it builds credibility. Ignoring it destroys it.
• End with a clear ask. Specify the amount, the instrument (equity, convertible note, SAFE [Simple Agreement for Future Equity]), and what milestones the funding will achieve.

Cross-reference -- Communication: Pitch structure maps directly to the persuasive communication frameworks taught in the Communication course -- audience analysis, message architecture, and delivery.

Sessions 10--11: Section Finals and Final Pitch Day¶

Evaluation Criteria¶

Venture pitches in the hackathon are typically evaluated on:

1. Problem-Solution Fit: Is there evidence (not just assertion) that a real customer has a real problem and that this solution addresses it?
2. Customer Evidence: Have you talked to real customers? Observed them? Tested assumptions with MVPs?
3. Business Model Viability: Do the unit economics work? Is CLV > CAC? Is there a credible path to profitability?
4. Market Opportunity: Is the market large enough to justify venture-scale ambition? Is it growing?
5. Team: Does this team have the skills, networks, and resilience to execute?
6. Pitch Quality: Is the narrative clear, compelling, and credible? Does it handle objections?
7. Learning Trajectory: Did the team iterate? Did they pivot when the data demanded it? Did they show intellectual honesty about what worked and what did not?

The last criterion is distinctive to this course. The hackathon does not reward teams that got lucky with their first idea. It rewards teams that demonstrated a disciplined learning process -- moving from hypothesis to experiment to insight to iteration -- regardless of whether the final venture is "big."

Quick Reference¶

1. Effectuation vs. Causation: Causation starts with goals and finds means; effectuation starts with means (who you are, what you know, whom you know) and discovers goals. Use effectuation when the future is unknowable. → See: Session 1 Welcome to the Hackathon -- Process, Playbooks, Possibilities
2. The S-Curve: Technologies follow emergence → growth → maturity. The opportunity window opens when the tech works but the business model is unsettled. → See: Session 2 Spotting Big Trends and Opportunity Windows
3. Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD): Customers hire products to make progress. Three dimensions: functional, emotional, social. Reveals the true competitive set. → See: Sessions 3--4 From Empathy to Opportunity -- Crafting Early Value Propositions
4. Value Proposition Canvas: Map customer jobs, pains, and gains (right) against your products, pain relievers, and gain creators (left). Fit = your offering addresses the jobs that matter most. → See: Sessions 3--4 From Empathy to Opportunity -- Crafting Early Value Propositions
5. MVP Types: Landing page, explainer video, Wizard of Oz, concierge, piecemeal, single-feature, pre-order/crowdfunding. Choose the cheapest type that tests your riskiest assumption. → See: Sessions 5--6 From Field to Form -- Prototyping to Learn
6. Assumption Testing Protocol: State hypothesis clearly, define minimum success criterion before testing, run cheapest experiment, measure behavior (not opinions), decide: persevere, pivot, or kill. → See: Sessions 5--6 From Field to Form -- Prototyping to Learn
7. Empathic Design (Leonard & Rayport): Five steps -- Observe, Capture Data, Reflect, Brainstorm, Prototype. Observation beats inquiry for unarticulated needs. → See: Session 7 Observing Real Feedback in Action -- Empathic Design
8. Pivot Narrative (McDonald & Bremner): Three steps -- Pitch broad (umbrella ambition), Signal continuity during pivot, Show humility in the aftermath. → See: Session 8 Adapt or Persevere -- Pivoting and Iteration
9. CLV > CAC Test: Customer Lifetime Value must exceed Customer Acquisition Cost. Target CLV:CAC >= 3:1. Payback period < 12 months. → See: Session 9 From Economics to Story -- Business Model and Pitch Foundations
10. Affordable Loss Principle: Ask "What can I afford to lose?" and commit no more than that. This replaces expected-return maximization under true uncertainty. → See: Session 1 Welcome to the Hackathon -- Process, Playbooks, Possibilities
11. Pitch Deck (10 slides): Problem, Solution, Market, Product/Demo, Traction, Business Model, Competition, Team, Financials, Ask. Lead with the problem, not the solution. → See: Session 9 From Economics to Story -- Business Model and Pitch Foundations
12. Actionable vs. Vanity Metrics: Vanity = total downloads, page views. Actionable = conversion rate, retention rate, revenue per user. Only actionable metrics drive decisions. → See: Sessions 3--4 From Empathy to Opportunity -- Crafting Early Value Propositions

Key Frameworks Summary¶

Glossary of Key Terms¶