[SOUND] Let's take all the work that we've done during this class session and roll it into a quick case study to wrap things up. So we are going to go out and take our cow-based business through the customer discovery process, business and business model both. Let's take to look at how we do that. First of all, let's focus this case study a little bit. So my assumption, my approach is that there is a need, there is an opportunity, for a different approach to mowing people's lawns, to maintaining people's lawns, by grazing cows. And the business model that I would like to adopt and I would like to test is a subscription business model. So don't pay me for every time I show up. Just pay me a certain amount to maintain a healthy lawn and a lawn that is well cropped, or in our case well grazed. And the way we'll go out and test all of these and determine whether we choose to move on with launching the business, is the customer discovery process. So first, we'll approach Phase 1. And we'll document our key assumptions across the nine steps or the nine elements of the business model canvas. So to start with, who's our customer segment? Well, we've decided to focus on homeowners who have a lawn and currently either maintain it themselves or pay others to maintain it, that might be interested in an alternative. And perhaps they might be interested in a more environmental alternative. So we'll go ahead and build a persona around that. We'll also start to lay out how we get those customers. Do we market to them door to door? Do we market to them perhaps at farmers markets, where they may be more likely to attend? We'll start to develop that. That includes our channel approach as well. How do we deliver the process? Do we do it directly? Or do we have others that maybe will franchise our cow lawn grazing service, too? So we'll create some hypotheses around the channel. Next, of course, we'll determine what's that right value proposition. As I shared earlier, our hypothesis is, we're going to start with a subscription at a certain rate, instead of perhaps the current amount that they are paying other people. So it's a subscription-based model. And we'll determine the other elements or we'll lay out the other elements under that value proposition. What are the key activities that we need to undertake to move cows around and to get them to graze? And what are some of the key resources that we need? Well, cows certainly being one of them, and perhaps a large trailer with a truck to pull it as well, unless all of the homes are very near one another and we can just walk our cow around. And finally, what kind of partners do we need? One of them may be, we don't want to own the cows. We'll actually partner with people who own cows. And in fact, when we look at revenue streams, we may have just opened up a second revenue stream. The first revenue stream would be homeowners who will pay us to have cows keep their lawn nicely grazed. But the second revenue stream may be cow owners who would be interested in having us feed their cows and would pay us something for that. Of course, we'll feed them by taking them from home to home to graze the lawns. And then we'll have to look at our cost structure to manage all of that. All of these elements of our overall business are laid out like that on the business model canvas. Now, once we've done that we moved on to Phase 2, which is, let's test the problem. In other words, we've laid out a set of assumptions that this problem exists. Let's make sure that we actually have potential customers that are interested in this problem, that have this problem and are seeking a solution. So that's what we're going to focus on. So we'll go out and we'll talk to many customers. This is where we get out of the building and we speak to homeowners in their homes, in farmers markets, in web forums, wherever we can, to understand who is facing this challenge, and start to get some idea about how they might approach a solution. And then we move on to our next stage, Phase 3, where we actually test the solution. And this is where we'll try and test it with that minimum viable product. So one option may be to identify a friend or a colleague or a farmer who has a cow, and find three or four customers who are actually willing to sign up for $100 a month for us to maintain their lawns with cows. And we'll sign them up for the first month. And we'll go out and we'll test that solution, and have our cow graze their lawn every week for a month, and see how they like the solution. If our assumptions around cost and transportation and everything else are accurate, or where they're not, which ones we have to change. And then we'll move on to Phase 4, where we go back to our business model canvas. We look at our original assumptions, and we say, are these the right customers? Are our cost assumptions correct? Are they willing to sign up for a second month? We'll have a great test when we say, can we come back next month, and will you give us another $100 to manage your lawn? And we'll go on from there. Now, if our test is successful, we then will look to move on and start to say, what's our plan to commercialize this more broadly, move on from discovery into development? If not, we may choose to pivot, to focus on a different market. Perhaps it would be on an industrial or a municipal market instead of a homeowner. Or perhaps instead of cows, we decide goats might be a better option. [LAUGH] But our core business proposition is accurate. Anyway, that's a way to think about it. And you can take almost any product or service through a similar type of iterative process in this early customer discovery approach, to test the business concept and to test the business model. Now, there are some great resources, and I've referenced them through the session. Alexander Osterwalder's book on business models. There's Gassman, Frankenberger and Csik's book on the business model navigator. We have Steve Blank on customer discovery and The Startup Owners Manual. And then we have Eric Ries, who really captured a lot of this in his classic book, The Lean Startup. I hope you've enjoyed the session. See you soon.
