Research Services
University of Missouri-Kansas City, Volker Campus, Kansas City, MO 64110
USA
Join Adam Berk and several other KC superstars including Ryan Bennett as one of our judges, for a highly interactive pitch night, with a twist! Instead of pitching your idea or solution, (or your total addressable market, or your five revenue sources) you’ll pitch the problem you’re solving and the customer / beneficiary you’re solving it for. That’s right, NO SOLUTIONS. Taking a cue from the Socratic Method, this all-engaging, progressive learning process will rile you up while making you think about your idea in a different way. The participants are the audience, the pitchers are the participants, and the audience is one of the judges.
As dreamers, change makers and entrepreneurs, it is easy to get inspired by the next big idea and to want to jump right into building it. All too often, we’re driven by our idea for a solution and don’t take pause to do due diligence and really understand the problem we’re solving, and for whom. Does your solution address a real problem experienced by real people? Our People Problem Pitch event will guide you through the process of distilling your pitch to the essentials– problem and customer. This process is informed by Lean Startup methodologies, but will be far from dogmatic and far from traditional. Learning as we go, the the audience/participants will be taking over as the coaches- taking the words from our facilitators mouths and shouting out feedback that moves the presenter closer to the problem/customer at hand, thus presenting the first hypothesis to test.
If you want people to help you test your idea, and to do customer development & customer aquisition experiments let us know.
SCHEDULE
6:00-6:30 – Doors Open, Meet someone new in KC
6:30-8:00 – Teams have 30 seconds to pitch to tell the audience and judges who their customer is and what problem they are solving for that customer. #leanstartup feedback and advice for the team and the audience will be incorporated into each pitch.
8:00-8:30 – OUTRODUCTION and #LEANSTARTUP Recap + Q & A with Adam Berk on “Entreprenurial Science” best practices.
8:30-10:00 – Let’s design a couple of experiments and talk about why you should come back for the weekend.
