Mapping out our Business Model Canvas

We are following the Lean Start up method to grow our new venture from a problem to a functioning business model

http://theleanstartup.com/

The aim of this meeting was to decide on the content for the business model canvass which we were contributing to individually online in the days leading to the meeting.

We also need to reassess the idea of 'gifting' after some initial market research which proved the idea to be difficult for consumers to digest.

We began our meeting by discussing this problem. We concluded with the decision that we would move forward without deciding on the solution. We decided to concentrate on the search and digging deeper with our problem.

We moved on to the first step in the business model canvass. This was ‘Customer segments’. We spoke about our customer from the perspective of SMES and Their customers. We decided that the most important customer is the SME. Our business will be centred on the needs of the SMEs and solving problems facing SMEs.

We identified that within SMES there is a number of archetypes. SMEs span every sector and also within each industry there are segments of customers with a variety of needs. We began to build customer personas to help us concentrate on catering to the varying needs of SME owners/decision makers.

We then went on to discuss third parties who we could include as customers this includes, investors, government agencies, banks.

Once we had identified these three strands of customers we began to hone in on SMES. We began to look at this problem from their perspective

The problem is not necessarily that they do not have data on the customers. We made a hypothesis of what some of their problems are;

·         I don’t know how to get more customers

·         How do I get consistent repeat business from customers?

·         I do not have to resources to use technology to help my business

·         I would not have time to dedicate to a new initiatives to help business

·         I cannot scale my business

·         I don’t have a benchmark to judge my progress against

 We began to talk about questions that we would ask our customers to discover if these are true and also other problems that they may have.

The questions we felt we important are;

·         Tell me about your customer

·         How do you gather information on your customers?

·         How to you get new customers?

·         How do you retain customers?

·         How much/how often do they spend?

·         What would help you to get and retain customers?

·         Would it help to have accurate data on your customers on how much they shop/spend, their demography etc.

Almost 3 hours later and 5 very tired students - we decided to call it a night and recoup later in the week to continue filling out our business model canvass