Startups Unplugged: What To Do Before Building Your MVP

What You’ll Do

Project: Use Customer Discovery Interviews as a way to learn from your potential users.

What You’ll Learn

You’ve probably come across the startup term “Minimum Viable Product” or MVP -- a technique for gaining maximum learning from minimal effort. But what should you do and learn before you build an MVP?

You will leave this course with techniques to test your startup idea -- and the assignment to go out and actually start to do just that. These techniques may seem simple, but they are not. The early discovery stage is where many startups get stuck. We’ll work on how to figure out who your customers are, what your business model is, and ways to test your hypotheses. This will prepare you to soon afterward develop your first MVP.

This online class is for both business and technical people.

Beginner Level

About Your Teacher See Full Bio

Paul Orlando · Co-founder

I'm from New York, but now run Hong Kong’s first startup accelerator. I'm a previous startup founder, a TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon winning team member and also run an intensive three-month startup bootcamp that includes many of the topics in this hybrid class. In my case, I also learned these skills the hard way. Over the years, I've seen hundreds (thousands?) of people pitch their startups and reviewed hundreds of applicants to my accelerator and bootcamp. I'm tough on pushing you to achieve more because of how valuable these skills are.