As I’ve talked about plenty of times on this blog, Team Sexy Life applied to and was accepted into the Venture School program. We started our journey through the program on Tuesday this week. While the information being presented is very much the same as when I went through with Tom back in October, they have retooled and condensed a great deal of the material, so that we aren’t sequestered in a classroom as much. They are truly emphasizing the “get out of the building” mantra that forms the basis of Lean Startups.
Our most classroom-intensive day was Tuesday, where we were in session for nearly 12 hours. We had essentially two days worth of content presented in the first day, in order to not have any classroom time today. The session yesterday was about 6 hours long, and a good portion of that involved giving presentations and working together with our group and members of other groups on brainstorming activities. There wasn’t much time for sleep the last couple of days either. I stayed up late both the night before the program began and after I got home from the 12 hour day, because there were things to do for the class, including updating the Sexy Life Web site from our simple landing page to something a bit more appealing. I got more sleep last night than I did the previous two combined.
We are part of an incredibly strong cohort of startups in this Venture School group. I’ve gotten talk to some of the other teams during breaks between lectures, and there were some great ideas floating around the room. There are teams with app ideas and service providers, and a couple of organizations that want to streamline their operations using ideas from Venture School are represented. As with last time, it will be interested to see how the other teams pivot based on their work with customer discovery interviews over the next few weeks. I’m sure that Team Sexy Life will learn a few things, both from customer discovery and from things that the other teams are implementing over the length of the Venture School program.
I’m glad that they compressed the first week into two days rather than going three shorter days, as they did this past fall. One of the main tenets of the Lean Startup is to “get out of the building” as much as you can. There is a fair amount of research we need to do involving our competition and some of the financial aspects that will go into this business, and that will require some time “in the building.” However, we have about 90 customer discovery interviews left to gather before the end of the program, which we can’t do sitting in the classroom. David has been the key in getting the customer discovery process rolling – I think that’s one of his favorite things to do. I have some people that I think would be great to talk to, and I hope to accomplish that over the course of the weekend.
I haven’t heard any updates lately about the pizza-turned-barbecue restaurant concept that Tom and I took through Venture School this past fall. I am meeting with one of his current pizza chain partners today to go over the new Web site that a third party had started building for them before Tom brought me on for Venture School. Their new site is built in WordPress (as is this blog), so it’s not difficult to maintain. There is a mailing list feature for their site that I’m going to have to troubleshoot as entries are added into the database. Hopefully Tom will be able to make it to the meeting today, since we haven’t met face-to-face for a couple of months, since I haven’t been able to make it to 1 Million Cups since the beginning of February.
I’m hoping to get a fair amount of work stuff done this weekend. I spent most of the last two weekends cleaning – it’s amazing how big a mess a preschooler and an infant can make around the house. Add to that receiving several large pieces of furniture a couple of weeks ago, it’s no wonder the house has been a bit of an armpit lately. With Easter this weekend, there isn’t anything really on the schedule, other than the older daughter going to an Easter egg hunt in town on Saturday morning. She’s been looking forward to that for weeks now, so I’m sure she will have a great time. Of course, it means that she will add to her ever-growing candy stash, which is still stored in her Halloween pumpkin bucket.
One thing that I’m finding staying home with two kids now instead of one is that I need to find something for my older daughter to do most days, so that has a bit of structure in the schedule. I have to focus so much time and energy on the younger daughter right now that I feel like I am shortchanging my older kid. I have to keep reminding her that her sister will not be so small and helpless forever, and as the younger one gets older, they will be able to play together in a more meaningful way. Also, I keep telling her that summer is just around the corner, and the grandmas will be free to spend time with her then. I can tell that it’s still difficult for her, as a 4-year-old, to wrap her brain around concepts like planning for the future. I’ve been helping her count down the weeks to summer vacation – just 9 weeks left! At least she’s had some quality time with one of her grandmas this week while I’ve been busy with Venture School.
Next week should be a bit more “normal” than the last couple of weeks have been, with spring break last week and all of my activities this week. I’ll be glad to settle back into a regular schedule again over the next two months, and it will be good for the girls. For now, I have some e-mails to send and some proposals to put together for a couple of potential clients. I promise to pass on some new Team Sexy Life news next week, after the next weekly Venture School cycle.