Developing successful corporate start-ups

Introduction

• Demarcations and definitions: Corporate startup, spin-off, carve-out, spin-off.
• The advantages of a corporate start-up.
• The four phases of a startup and their purpose.

Pre-Seed: Idea

• Value proposition and elevator pitch: Why should customers and investors get excited about a business model?
• Adventurousness: Use the freedom of thought and action.
• Start-up team and incubator: Necessary roles and requirements for start-ups.

Seed: Proof

• Guardrails & Alignment: Think Big, Start Small and Move Fast - the importance of quick success.
• Acceleration & agility: prototypes and MVPs/MWPs as a basis for convincing all stakeholders.
• Error culture & pivoting: Allowing and managing errors, learning from them and deriving consequences.

Series A: Expansion

• Marketing & Controlling: From Go-To-Market, Growth Hacking, Bootstrapping, Customer Acquisition Costs to the various Return-On-Investment key figures.
• Revenue model & service architecture: The importance of MRR (monthly recurring revenues), freemiums etc. to increase sales while simultaneously using lean management to reduce costs.
• Paradigm shift & mindfulness: how do you protect yourself from the arrogance of early success?  

Series B, C: Growth - Scale-up

• Expansion and diversification: The strategies of the conquerors (SOM/SAM/TAM, Blitzscaling) and integrators.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Scale-up as the basis for Big Data, Data Science and Deep Learning.
• Challenges of growth: cost regression, shortage of skilled workers, automation, financing.