Virtual Startup Design Sprint - exploring an idea

One major development in the area of design thinking is that Design Sprints get adapted to specific topics and problems; we see this with the Talent Sprint or the Artifical Intelligent Design Sprint of 33A and Maaike Coppens Voice X Design Sprint, to name a few but by far not all of these projects and adaptations.

As one of the co-founders of the startup Dialoks I was wondering if I could combine the Design Sprint and design thinking methods with the special situation an early stage startup is in. Could we create a special (early-stage) Startup Design Sprint?

Such a sprint would need to help and accelerate the proof of concept at the early stage. It took our start up three month and this phase consisted of getting a first offer together and find customers who sign it and buy our service - luckily we found some. 

Could we have accelerated that period with a Startup Sprint? But first things first, if we want to create such a sprint, we need to ask: 

What would be the goal of a Startup Design Sprint? 

In my entrepreneurial eyes for early stage startups the true currency is a paying customer. And as hard as this might sound, and early-stage startup life in this regards is hard, that must be the goal of a Startup Design Sprint: getting the first paying customer/s. 

What do you need to get a potential customer sign your offer?

1. You need to present the potential customer your product or service in some type of presentation; interestingly, you do not need the product or service in full, but sales material
2. But with this sales material and presentation you need to have a solid sales argumentation which has identified the problem and the target group to whom you want to sell
3. And you need an offer that the potential customer can sign. The offer needs to follow certain rules and regulations which are required by law - this could be covered through a template, that is prepared ahead of the Sprint. 
4. In the offer it needs describe the product/service and a price. This has not to be a final price, actually finding the right price can be tricky for a startup and is an own learning process over time. Though the price should not be a main obstacle for the customer. It has to be chosen wisely. And it needs to be something and not zero.

The co-founders need already to have a good idea of the service or product they want to offer. From there we need to dig deeper on the problem and the target group , get them identified and develop a sales argumentation out of it. This needs later than be put into a sales presentation. Then you compile the offer including a mechanism of finding the first price. Then you ask potential customers for a (remote) sales meeting and try to convince them and get a signed offer out of it. From this reactions you can learn if you have an idea and where it might need improvement.      

If you think this as a remote sprint with 2-3 co-founders plus a skilled facilitator and co-facilitator you would need additionally 2-4 experienced design thinkers to put together a Virtual Startup Design Sprint. The startup would get the perspective of experienced outsiders on their product or service - in addition to the validation of the idea and its offer and maybe a first customer.  

How could the Sprint format look like? This is still in the making and not a set format, but elements of it would include:

• Start with an elevator pitch of the co-founders followed by the first subject matter expert (SME) interviews , the co-founders are the SMEs, but as well industry experts
• This is followed by a problem framing session, we dive deeper in the problem, the idea tries to solve
• In a user research session we identify the target groups and decide through a voting session on which to focus
• from there a customer journey map helps us to develop our sales argumentation as we bring target group and the problem together
• the story-boarding brings this into one narrative, which then finalizes the sales argumentation
• in-between it is necessary starting scheduling the first “interviews”, in this case sales meetings 
• a lightning demo helps on finding the first price
• then you need a session on compiling the offer, which could be an offline exercise in the first place for the researches getting all pieces together and then combining them
• Then you go for the interviews aka sales meetings (remote).

There need to be votings and warm up sessions during these, but I see this as the skeleton of the sprint. I think of 3 days for compiling the offer and two days on the sales/interview part. 

It is around 1 ? year that I opened myself up for design thinking and especially Design Sprints - this means I will need the support and help of more skilled design thinkers to develop this format: Please share your perspective on this and let me know what you. Is this a thing? What is missing? Where do you see room for improvement?

Currently I am reaching out to early stage startups who try to make an impact on the environment for social good. I want to help them with and at the same time test and develop this format. If you are such a startup or know one - please let me know and get in touch with me. 

A special and big Thanks to Robert Skrobe who encouraged me to write about this. Hope you do not regret it, when you read these lines ;-) 

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you soon IRL or remote at the VDS Europe session in Amsterdam or latest at the next GVDS. 

Looking forward to your feedback. 

All the best, Digital Nomad Alex