Resolution Presents:
CEO Boot Camp
Go from an idea, to a plan.
Prepare yourself for fundraising, pitching, or (gasp) even just operating.
CEO Boot Camp walks entrepreneurs, early stage founders, or anyone looking to build (or fix) a company strategy figure out answers to six essential questions. There’s no signup, and you can do these sessions in any order you’d like. However, if you’re unsure where to begin, going in order will ensure that you cover all the essential topics and figure out all necessary answers.
The CEO Boot Camp Session Library:
Session 1: How Large is Your Opportunity?
How many people, organizations, etc. might conceivably purchase your offering? What kind of competition exists? And what kind of performance would you need to achieve to reach a goal that works for you?
RELATED TERMS/ACRONYMS/BUZZWORDS: total addressable market (TAM), market sizing, potential customer base, personas
Session 2: How Much Money Will You Need?
What kind of costs will be involved in getting your idea of the ground? Are you making stuff? Do you know how to do everything yourself, or are you hiring people? Are there legal, administrative, or other operating costs, and do they go up as your business grows?
RELATED TERMS/ACRONYMS/BUZZWORDS: capital, burn rate, hiring, ramping, scaling
Session 3: How Will You Fund This?
Once you know how much money you need, where are you going to get it? Are you going to pay for everything yourself? Hit up friends and family? Sell your hair? Spend hours on endless pitch decks for venture capital associates to quickly scroll through on their phone?
RELATED TERMS/ACRONYMS/BUZZWORDS: equity, fundraising, venture capital, angel investors, crowdfunding, bootstrapping
Session 4: How Will You Find Users/Customers?
This isn’t “Field of Dreams”; you can’t just build something and expect people to show up. What’s your customer acquisition — a.k.a., marketing and sales — plan? Will it require additional money? Are there salespeople involved? If it’s organic or community based, what will you need to foster and support it?
RELATED TERMS/ACRONYMS/BUZZWORDS: customer acquisition cost (CAC), sales funnel, average contract value (ACV), close rate, cost per click (CPC), channel spend
Session 5: How Will Your Product Be Used?
Are you selling something that’s consumed and purchased again? Or software that people will interact with? Or hours that will be consumed? Figure out what you actually need people to do with your product or service in order to be successful.
RELATED TERMS/ACRONYMS/BUZZWORDS: users, adoption, engagement, churn
Session 6: What are Reasonable Revenue Goals?
At some point, you’re going to need this idea to make money. You can’t predict the future, but based on everything you’ve determined in prior sessions, you should be able to sketch out what success looks like, and most importantly, what you’ll need to accomplish to get there.
RELATED TERMS/ACRONYMS/BUZZWORDS: annual recurring revenue (ARR), margin, win rate, opportunities
No magic bullets, no shortcuts, just a healthy dose of education and preparation.
CEO Boot Camp isn’t “easy”, but neither is starting a business. And unlike incubators or expensive classes, it’s totally free and doesn’t require you give up any ownership of your idea. You don’t even have to say what it is! Everything you figure out is yours and yours alone.
So what can finishing CEO Boot Camp do for you?
It WON'T:
- make investors give you money
- ensure you hit your goals
- cause people to want your product/service
- give you an idea for a business
It WILL:
- make you smarter
- prepare you for objections and criticism
- keep you from lying to yourself
- help you build you a plausible plan for success