Month 1: Customer Focus

The first area of focus is your market and customer. You need to know their demographic and psychographic. You need to know who they are, not only from an economic standpoint, but also from an emotional and social standpoint. You need to get to the bottom of what problem you are solving, and why this is such an important to solve for them.

You may think you know this, but every venture learns something new every time they do primary market research. This is the month to double down on that.

In this month, you will refresh everything you have done to date on market sizing and analysis, beachhead market selection and persona development via a combination of primary and secondary market research. Based on new data, you will revisit your proposed solution, as well as your competitive advantage against alternative solutions available to your customer today.

Remember: Doing nothing differently is always an attractive option for your customer! Figure out how you are different and better – and clearly articulate this.

Prepare

Daily standups are good to hold with the team to keep everyone aligned, especially when people are remote. Download a template for the daily standup meeting here.

Weekly goal setting meetings are best held early in the week at the same time (e.g. 11am on Mondays). Download a template for the weekly goal setting here.

Set up mentor meetings for the end of the month to get feedback on your progress.

Download this mentor meeting preparation template to structure your conversation in the most productive way.

Take some time in the beginning of the summer to define your team members’ roles and responsibilities. Download this RACI template to help define roles on a venture and/or project basis.

Also take some time to explicitly define how your team works together. Consider reading Linda Hill’s excellent HBR article titled “A note on Team Process” for guidance on how to explicitly define the rules of engagement for your team members.

Team members who have experience with each other’s workstyle can collaborate more effectively. Consider running an online team building game to give team members who are new to each other an opportunity to see each other’s communication and collaboration styles.

Learn

Watch these short videos to review Disciplined Entrepreneurship, Theme 1: Who is your customer

Watch the following long format workshop videos to learn skills that are helpful for this month.

Read the following masterclasses to learn skills that are helpful for this month.

Build

Use this worksheet to refresh your market segmentation and rethink whether your segments reflect behavioral attributes that cluster potential customers together.

Use this worksheet to rethink whether your beachhead market makes sense.

Use this worksheet to structure new primary market research efforts.

Use this worksheet to define your persona.

Use this worksheet to review your customer’s full life cycle use case (also known as customer journey map).

Use this worksheet to define your product concept

Use this worksheet to chart your competitive advantage

Reflect

Complete the rubric for Month 1, and reflect on what you achieved, what you did not, what you learned, and how that informs what you will do in Month 2.

Use this worksheet to take inventory of what you have learned as an entrepreneur – and think about how that informs what you do and how you do it in the next month.

Watch this video to hear the story of Nima, a delta v alumni team.

Use this template to frame a retrospective for the past month, and help you plan the next month.