Too often does an entrepreneur build a product or service, spending many months and years, and resources to find out that there are not enough customers who want their product to sustain a profitable scalable business worth the time, money, and effort invested. Performing initial primary customer research, also known as customer discovery can help founders save precious time and resources by ensuring that the products they are building are products that customers want.
This course will help founders develop an understanding of what customer discovery is, why it’s important to their entrepreneurial journey, and how to perform customer discovery effectively. Development of this skill will help them build better products and help them become more successful entrepreneurs.
The course will take place over a 12 week period with a cohort of founders who will learn customer discovery, and perform customer discovery calls or visits. They will bring those calls back into the class to review the effectiveness of them with their peers and learn how to sharpen their customer discovery skills.
Program Details
Length: 12 Weeks
Schedule: Tuesdays, 2:00-3:00 (Two weeks have alternate dates, see schedule below)
Dates: Monday, December 7 – Tuesday, March 9
Location: Zoom, link and calendar invitation will be sent after registration.
Spots are limited to enable valuable interactions, sign up now to avoid disappointment!
Course Learning Outcomes
- Understand customer discovery and why it matters
- Learn how to perform customer discovery interviews
- Learn how to record customer discovery discussions
- Understand how to analyze customer discovery data
- Learn how to find customers with whom to perform customer discovery calls
Schedule
Lesson 1 - Monday, December 7, 4:00-5:00pm
Lesson 2 - Thursday, December 17, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 3 - Tuesday, January 5, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 4 - Tuesday, January 12, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 5 - Tuesday, January 19, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 6 - Tuesday, January 26, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 7 - Tuesday, February 2, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 8 - Thursday, February 11, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 9 - Tuesday, February 16, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 10 - Tuesday, February 23, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 11 - Tuesday, March 2, 2:00-3:00
Lesson 12 - Tuesday, March 9, 2:00-3:00
About Kevin
Kevin Smith is The Story Architect. Kevin helps businesses & startups unleash their story to secure customers and investors, by helping them understand what their core customer story is and then helping them get their story to market. Kevin spent 14+ years at Dell, B2B Sales, Enterprise Sales, Enterprise Marketing, and M&A GTM Strategy. His expertise include branding, marketing, SEO, content and social media marketing, presentation/pitch design, web design, lead generation, sales coaching and business development. He’s provided mentorship to startups through the RIC Centre, Humber Launch, U of T i-Cube, Startup Toronto/TorontoStarts, Startup York’s Y2 and Startup Next in addition to delivering workshops as a MaRS facilitator.