About the iLab
The i.Lab Incubator Program supports the development of new entrepreneurs and the growth of promising seed and early-stage ventures.
We provide this support through a combination of programs, funding, workspace, committed mentors, industry experts, free legal services, a community of founders and funders, and connections to a range of resources.
The i.Lab Incubator program is open to seed and early stage ventures from the Charlottesville community. We welcome applications from both for-profit and not-for-profit ventures, and from ventures with a direct affiliation to UVA (e.g., faculty, staff, or student) or without a direct affiliation to UVA.
About the Workshops
This was a ‘crash course’ in the use of Venture Design. It’s divided into three sections. The basic goal is to introduce working concepts in a hands-on fashion where teams can decide where to focus and use supplemental material (this wesbsite, Coursera, etc.) as they make progress.
Here are some of the follow-up notes:
Where is the Coursera course and how do I take it?
Below are links to the four courses. Number one in particular overlaps with what we discussed today.
There’s also a product management course here:
What if I just want to browse and pick and choose material?
This page has tutorials, examples, and templates for the items we discussed today:
Also, here is the Google Docs template I showed you:
A couple of items I’d like to highlight–
How might I describe my experience over the summer as part of my larger career story?
Create a portfolio entry! Here’s a tutorial, complete with Google Slides templates:
Portfolio Tutorial. The ‘Application Design’ and ‘Design Thinking’ tutorials are particularly applicable to what most of you all are doing.
Session 1: Progress the New Fashioned Way
After this session you will be able to:
- Identify and explain when and where Lean Startup is the right tool to test customer motivation
- Structure ideas into testable hypotheses
- Design and execute creative experiments to quickly assess motivation and focus your venture
Session 2: Solving the Right Problem
After this session you will be able to:
- Organize product ideas into foundational customer problems and solution ideas
- Design customer discovery work to test and refine your problem and persona hypotheses
- Identify where and how to use personas and problem scenarios to support your work on proposition testing, product development, and promotion
Session 3: Your Crazy Summer
After this session you will be able to:
- Identify where your venture should (and shouldn’t) focus
- Structure focused iterations to advance your venture
- Use portfolios to describe your work