Start with mindsets. What separates success today isn't differing skillsets, but differing mindsets. This playbook teaches you ten key mindsets for building the next generation of successful products.
Online courses and tools for founders designed by Ash Maurya.
Systematically build your startup:
Start using our battle-tested courses and tools for designing, validating, and growing your next big idea.
These courses teach you how to take an idea step-by-step from concept to scale.
CONTINUOUS INNOVATION
FOUNDATIONS
BUSINESS MODEL
DESIGN
Pitch your idea clearly and concisely. At the early stage of an idea, people struggle to see what you see. Pitching your idea clearly and concisely is key to securing buy-in from co-founders, advisors, and investors.
This playbook shows you how to:
- deconstruct your idea using a Lean Canvas,
- stress-testing whether your idea is worth pursuing, and
- formulating a validation go-to-market strategy.
DEMAND VALIDATION PLAYBOOK
Establish repeatable sales. Too many founders rush to build an MVP only to get stuck in a build-trap where they're constantly chasing the mythical killer feature in the hopes of attracting paying customers.
This playbook does NOT advocate starting with an MVP and instead shows you how to:
- use customer interviews to first deeply understand your customer's problems,
- prioritize the top 1-3 problems worth solving, and
- validating demand for your product before building it aka selling before you build.
(This playbook is only open to Business Model Design students)
VALUE DELIVERY PLAYBOOK
Make happy customers. A product is a like a moving river and post-launch lots of things can and do go wrong. Rather than launching to everybody, this playbook advocates using a stage-based 10x launch strategy to validate your product's riskiest assumptions systematically.
This playbook shows you how to:
- get your MVP launch-ready to maximize speed of learning,
- drive early trials and pilots to reference-able customers,
- establish a repeatable business model ready for scaling.
(This playbook is only open to Demand Validation Playbook students)
ROCKETSHIP GROWTH PLAYBOOK
Achieve sustainable growth. Once you've established repeatable value delivery, you should turn your attention to finding sustainable rockets of growth using growth loops.
This playbook shows you how to:
- identify the most promising growth loops for your product,
- systematically build and test these loops, and
- double down on your primary growth rocket.
(This playbook is only open to Value Delivery Playbook students)
Who's It For?
- Aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs who want learn a systematic approach to vetting ideas.
- Innovators and intrapreneurs charged with finding new business model growth opportunities.
- Product managers who want to build the next generation of products that matter.
- Makers and visionaries charged with bringing new ideas to life.
What is a Playbook?
Learn by doing. Playbooks are curated step-by-step guides that show you how to take your idea from concept to product/market fit using a Continuous Innovation framework.
Unlike traditional courses that drown you in lots of theory, our playbooks utilize just-in-time learning so that you prioritize Right Action, Right Time and maximize your speed of learning.
Each playbook builds on mental models and tools taught in the previous playbook and they are designed to be followed chronologically. As everyone learns differently, these playbooks are delivered using a "choose your adventure" model that allows you to learn at your own pace.
- If you're new to Continuous Innovation, I recommend starting with the Continuous Innovation Foundations playbook.
- If you're already familiar with the ten key mindsets that power these playbooks, I'd recommend starting with the Business Model Design playbook.
What's Different About These Playbooks?
We believe entrepreneurial thinking is a skill, which means it can be deconstructed and learned.
In these playbooks, we break down entrepreneurial thinking into a set of foundational skills much like you would see at a martial arts studio.
Business modeling, for instance, is a skill. So is learning from customers (problem discovery), designing an MVP (solution design), or pitching (offer delivery). Each can be learned independently, but when they’re put together, the dots connect.
These skills stack and compound on one another and you move a lot faster and with less waste
Where Did These Playbooks Come From and Who's Using Them?
These playbooks were created by Ash Maurya, author of 2 best-selling books and the creator of the Lean Canvas. It synthesizes learning across hundreds of workshops and bootcamps with startup and corporate teams building products spanning a broad spectrum of domains, from banking to software.
Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs all over the world. His articles and advice have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. He serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin.
Unlike a book that is hard to change once published, these playbooks continually evolve to reflect the latest techniques that work.
These playbooks are used across several enterprises, accelerators, and universities that use them as their standard innovation/accelerator curriculum.