120-DAY STARTUP
Go From Idea to Early Traction Without a Product
120-Day Startup is a cohort-based workshop, designed by Ash Maurya, for aspiring entrepreneurs, innovators and product managers who want to level-up and build the next generation of products that matter.
Products that matter = Products that go on to achieve product/market fit.
Stop wandering aimlessly.
It doesn't help to be constantly reminded that most products end up failing anyway.
- What if you could test the viability of your idea before committing yourself and your company resources fully?
- What if you could find traction (aka paying customers) for your product even before building it?
- What if you could use this early validation to de-risk your idea, build a team, and greenlight your project?
That is what we teach you how to do and why we built 120-Day Startup.
Who's It for?
seeking to level up and build the next generation of products that matter.
You're a great fit if any of these are true:
- You're an aspiring entrepreneur or innovator in the idea stage.
- You're working on a digital, physical, or services product.
- You've built and launched a new product (MVP) with few or no paying customers yet.
- You're pre-product/market fit.
- You've been operating like Steve and are ready to level-up and transform your mindsets.
You're not a great fit if:
- You aren't actively working on an idea. Our program is for doers.
- You have a mature product with 20+ team members.
- You have a working product with lots of customers getting ready to scale.
- You're post-product/market fit.
- Your current process is working and you aren't interested in changing anything.
Edel Lyons
Rag Revolution
Why a Cohort-based Workshop?
We have reimagined a completely different learning model: one that combines best-in-class entrepreneurial education, online tools, small class size, live instruction, deliberate practice, and external accountability.
When it comes to leveling-up on entrepreneurial education / product management skills, there are no shortage of options. You could read books, take an online course, attend workshops, or simply learn on the job.
Our cohort-based workshops are different.
More than a workshop or online course
The key to mastering anything is creating space for deliberate practice and establishing external accountability.
MOOCs have a dismal 6-7% completion rate.
The reason relying on books and workshops alone fall short is come-Monday, it's back to business as usual. Old habits die hard.
Our cohort based workshops are about triggering a mindset change.
Participants learn by doing and are held accountable through the project delivery commitments they make during the program. Certified coaches help facilitate, steer, and reinforce these commitments through real-time feedback, live workshops, and 1:1 coaching.
You don't need to quit your day job or travel to participate.
All our workshops are delivered 100% online and designed to be taken part-time. This means you can attend from anywhere and don't need to quit your day job to participate.
We recommend allocating 10-15 hours / week to get the most out of this program.
The key to finding the next big idea isn't working longer hours, but focusing your scarcest constraint, time, on the few key actions that drive the biggest impact.
Practice trumps theory.
What sets this program apart is that it is taught and led by practicing entrepreneurs. We practice what we teach and the more we coach, the more we learn and share, the better results everyone gets. Everything in this program (content, tools, coaching) has been meta-recursively tested using every principle, technique, and tool in the program.
Our workshops are built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and it shows.
James Spalding
CEO of VOALÁ
How is 120-Day Startup Structured?
120-Day startup is a product launch fast track that combines the first three workshops in our stage-based roadmap under one program.
These workshops when put together help you take any idea from concept to the first significant milestone: Problem/Solution Fit.
120-Day Startup in a Nutshell
5 live Q&A workshops.
Launch a product.
coaches.
What You Learn in 120-Day Startup?
120-Day Startup teaches you a systems approach to driving repeatable awareness and interest to your products and services -- before building them.
This is exactly how we have launched all our products over the years -- from best-selling books (Running Lean and Scaling Lean) to popular tools used by millions of people (Lean Canvas, Traction Modeler, Customer Forces Canvas).
Establishing demand for your product before you build your product is the first step to take when launching a new product.
You'll learn
- How to design business models.
- How to test whether an idea is worth pursuing.
- How to communicate an idea clearly and concisely to internal and external stakeholders.
- How to identify and prioritize the riskiest assumptions in your business model.
- How to stress test your riskiest assumptions using small and fast experiments.
- How to use customer interviews to learn from customers.
- How to build a company-wide dashboard.
- How to pitch to customers.
- How to operate and make decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
120-Day Startup Outcomes
The goal of 120-Day Startup is teaching you how to take any idea from concept to Problem/Solution Fit.
Problem/Solution Fit means you have
- a business model blueprint for your idea captured on a lean canvas.
- a traction roadmap that outlines your key milestones and validation strategy.
- identified a big enough opportunity worth pursuing.
- have a clear understanding of your customers needs (and wants).
- know the smallest thing you need to build to deliver value to your customers (MVP).
- have secured sufficient tangible commitments (e.g. advance payments, letters of intent) from customers.
- be able to make an evidence-based go/no-go decision to move forward on the idea.
Apply for 120-Day Startup
This program is hands-on and delivered over 4 months.
The S2023 cohort runs from January 16th - June 5th, 2023.
The W2023 cohort runs from August 1st - December 11th, 2023.
Where Did this Workshop Come From and Who's Using It?
120DS was created by Ash Maurya, author of 2 best-selling books and the creator of the Lean Canvas.
Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs all over the world. Driven by the search for better and faster ways for building successful products, Ash has developed a continuous innovation framework for raising the odds of early product success built upon principles and techniques drawn from Lean Startup, Business Modeling Design, Design Thinking, Jobs-to-be-Done, Behavioral Science, and Systems thinking. He regularly hosts sold out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, Capital Factory, and guest lectures at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. Ash serves on the advisory board of a number of startups, and has consulted to new and established companies.
This workshop incorporates learning across hundreds of workshops and thousands of hours of coaching startup and corporate teams building products spanning a broad spectrum of domains ranging from banking to software.
The tools, curriculum, and coaching systems used in 120DS have already been deployed and battle-tested across numerous enterprises, startup and corporate accelerators, and universities around the world.
Alumni Case Studies
We have put hundreds of teams through this program across the world. Here are some of their stories:
GoodLawyer doubled their monthly recurring revenue after
LEANSTACK.
G2V took an idea from early concept to growing traction in less than 90 Days.
DealSimple was able to raise their pricing by 4X by positioning their real estate product in terms of what customers wanted to buy (an assistant) vs. what the team initially though they were selling (software).
TryDawn has already doubled revenue and is on track to 6X their revenue as a result of identifying and focussing on the key constraints in their therapist marketplace business model.
Trustini went from having no access to their customer segment (personal injury laywers) to booking dozens of interviews, closing sales, and delivering an MVP.
Z. Bynum
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is this program 120-Days?
After extensive testing across thousands of teams, we've found that 120 days, made up of 30 days of business model design/stress-testing, followed by a 90-day cycle of business model validation is the right time-box to take any idea from concept to the first significant milestone: Problem/Solution Fit.
How many people can participate in a team?
We subscribe to Jeff Bezos' 2-pizza rule and recommend team sizes of 3-5 people with an overlapping mix of hackers, hustlers, and designers.
What is your refund policy?
Due to the high-touch nature of this program, we only accept a limited number of participants into each cohort. As a result, we have a no refunds policy once the program starts.
We understand that circumstances change and if you find that you need to defer your participation to a later cohort, we can move you one-time to the next available cohort.
Why should I join this program? Can't I get the same learnings from your books and free videos?
For the same reason that we attend schools and universities, or elite athletes hire coaches -- for experience, advice, and external accountability.
That's what makes this program different from traditional courses. In addition, we are constantly evolving and refining our framework. You'll learn a completely revised problem discovery process with updated interview scripts and offer testing techniques not covered in any of our books.
Is this a remote or onsite coaching program?
The program is run 100% online using the LEANSTACK platform to deliver courses, tools, and livestream events. We also have coaches in (almost) every timezone region which means you can attend from anywhere.
How much time will I be required to dedicate to this program?
We recommend allocating 10-15 hours a week.
How do timezones work?
We've put teams from South Africa to New Zealand through the program and all timezones are workable. We factor the timezones of students into the time selection for workshop events as much as possible. All events are also recorded with replays made available afterward. All 1:1 sessions are coordinated to mutually fit. Everything else is handled asynchronously over the LEANSTACK platform.
Can you introduce me to investors?
Yes. We partner with a number of accelerators who teach our playbooks in their programs and are happy to introduce you to investors if fund-raising is part of your goal.
I still have questions!
Drop me an email at ash@leanstack.com.
Ash Maurya
Author, creator of Lean Canvas, and founder of LEANSTACK.