Super-charged Acceleration: From a pitch deck to launching a business in 2 weeks.

At REBORRN, we consider ourselves as one of the very early adopters of design sprint methodology globally, with our first sprint dated back in Sep 2017 and more than 40 remote and physical sprints in the past year alone.

While working on our version of Design Sprints, we have managed to stretch the process to its very own limits. We stretched the duration of a session from 5 to 3 days (sometimes even less) and then we stretched the Definition of Done, moving from high fidelity prototypes to test with a group of users to live prototypes that get real market validation.

I mean, in a sprint we did last year, we shot, edited, and published a video of these production values in less than 10 hours:

We have actually generated real revenue and won real customers out of a working prototype within the duration of a sprint.

However, what we did here, we’ve never done it before. This is a case study of launching not a prototype but a full-blown business in 10 working days, without even working over hours. ??

It was mid-November when Adam Markakis, approached REBORRN to discuss helping him launch an urban micromobility startup, he had just secured a pre-seed round of funding for his idea, he had 6–9 months to prove product-market fit, and he was a company of one, as he told us.

The idea: A subscription service for leased electric vehicles (e-bikes & e-scooters), standing in the middle between ownership and rental, with a simple proposition:

• No upfront fees.
• Cancel anytime.
• If it breaks we fix it.

Riding an electric bike is fun, convenient, healthy, sustainable and with this idea, it could be also carefree. And there was a market for it: 37% of routes in Athens are under 2.5km, and 80% under 8km. ??

Our initial response was building a prototype within 3 days to test the concept and its core assumptions, but we quickly moved away from this idea. Here’s why:

• We were not exploring ideas to tackle a certain challenge. We already had one.
• It wasn’t a question if he would eventually launch the concept or not. This is what the original design sprint methodology is very good at.

The other downside with building prototypes is that they don’t scale. After running your validation process, you most probably have to kill them, even if the validation is positive. In our case, we needed to build fast the v1.0 of something that would last.

As such, we came up with a process, that is not, in any way, rocket science, but worked wonders.

Defining the team and the challenge.

We first worked closely with the founder to define his expectations, and have a clear definition of done. We were lucky enough that Adam was very clear on what he was looking to build and was well prepared, with stellar product, market & competition research. He had even drafted wireframes for the website and had a shortlist of names to discuss.

If adam was not so well prepared, we might need more days to tackle the challenge or spend some “homework” time (a week or more) to research the industry and the product. In our case the sprint preparation was minimum.

After committing on the definition of done, we had to set up the team. We built a sprint team of 11 people.

• The Decision Maker (Founder)
• The facilitator (that would be me)
• Strategy lead
• Product designer
• Software engineer
• Visual Designer
• Writer
• 2 x Operations Specialists
• 2 x performance marketers (external)

It’s important to mention that it was crucial to the Sprint’s outcome the fact that not only the above team consisted of world-class talents, but they have also been working together for some time now. I doubt if we would achieve our goals with a team of super talented freelancers, working together for the first time.

Kicking off the Sprint

We designed a 2-week session that was a mix between the original Design Sprint, a Hackathon and how Agile Scrum works.

Understanding the challenge and setting our Long Term goal.

We spend the biggest part of the first day on bringing everyone on board to the challenge, sharing different POVs on the challenge, setting the long term goal for the venture, and discussing the risks ahead of us.

Fat marker sketching & Backlog.

“Fat market sketching” is a term coined by 37signals, and we love it. It describes the process of sketching the end result ahead of us with a “fat marker” fidelity. When you draw with a fat marker you can’t draw the details, but you can paint the big picture. That’s what we did, and this is how we generated our backlog for the sprint.

Setting a common way of working.

Having a clear definition of done ahead of we now had to focus on a common way of getting things done.

We split into 4 teams:

• The Brand & Content team
• The product team.
• The Growth team.
• The Operations team.

All teams were meeting twice a day for a 15' morning stand up and a 15' afternoon wrap up, they shared a common backlog on Asana, and a common channel on Slack. This way we ensured every team’s autonomy, but strong alignment at the same time.

From a pitch deck to launching a business in 2 weeks.

Using the above approach the teams produced a world-class quality of work in record time. In 8 working days we did the following:

• We designed a brand identity and came up with a master narrative that led everything we built.

• We ran lightning-fast market research to define the optimum price point for our proposition and understand more about our end users. (Thank you Pollfish)
• We build this website using Shopify integrated with Zoho Subscriptions for payments.

• We build a scalable CRM solution using Zoho CRM.

• We integrated Zoho & Shopify with a lightweight cloud-based call centre solution.
• We set up a growth plan for the short/mid-term with the respective campaigns on every relevant platform.
• And finally, we built a measurement protocol for digital analytics.

After some UATs, and some idle time to wait for the Greek tax authorities issue a VAT number, Kinéo was born. ??

On the last day, we focused on making a handover of our work to Adam, while part of the team would stay in touch to support his next steps. The handover process was a bumpy one, and we are now exploring ways to make it better.

We were so happy to be part of this venture, not just because of another high in adrenaline and super fun experience, but also because as Adam put it, we don’t always have the chance to work for a company that has a real purpose.

And kinéo is one of these cases, where we know that if it succeeds in its 3-year vision, Athens, will be slightly different with fewer cars on the road, more public space for its citizens, happier people, and so much more.

Go on, get yours! ??

Kinéo is alive and kicking, the first customers have already subscribed, and REBORRN is going to be the first employer that will be offering electric vehicle subscriptions as a benefit to any employee that chooses to commute with an e-bike or an e-scooter. If you are an employer in Greece, you should seriously consider the option of such a benefit.

You can now go get your own kinéo if you re based in Athens. From all of us at REBORRN: Godspeed Kinéo! ????

Our thoughts on the aftermath of this new achievement. ??

Following those intense 2 weeks, and while holding a retrospective with the team, we thought that we could use this approach to help more founders kick start their entrepreneurial journeys, even before securing the first funding round.

For the ideas and the teams we believe in, we would even do it for equity instead of charging a fee that a start-up cannot afford. It would be like an early-early-early stage fund, offering tiny-tiny funding just enough to get some early validation, and a world-class team to help founders on their first steps.

So, If you are a founder and you have an idea, go ahead and ?? drop us a line.

* This case study was originally published at REBORRN's medium publication. You can find more case studies there.