Idea Surgeries, Enterprise Lab, Imperial College London (QAA23567 #FEEUK )

Objectives:

• To help entrepreneurs who are at ‘idea stage’ understand what the most valuable next steps they can take in testing whether their assumptions are valid, providing tools and recommendations where further work can be done by the entrepreneur, signposting relevant resources and granting access to further resources where available and appropriate
• Engage students and alums 
• Understand what ideas are being developed by our founders 
• Help founders who are preparing to apply for an entrepreneurial programme understand how to prepare

Introduction:  

Imperial College London students produce 300+ new ideas a year, and many of them need simple guidance about how to understand the problem they are trying to solve, test their assumptions and work in a lean approach whilst they establish whether there is a potentially viable business and whether they want to create that business if that is the case. We have evolved this activity to take on a peer coaching and networking aspect, by extending each Idea Surgery to an hour and having up to three ventures participate. This helps build confidence in our founders and shows them the power of networking with other entrepreneurs, as well as getting advice from enterprise educators. This is kinder on enterprise educator time, however, Idea Surgeries also work well at half an hour with one facilitator and one venture. 

Activity: 

What preparation do founders do? 

• Hopefully read Imperial Enterprise Lab Idea Surgery page which explains what an Idea Surgery is etc.  
  
  
• Hopefully complete an Idea Canvas (we don’t need to see this, but it should help them gather their thoughts and have a good Idea Surgery) 

-      Problem 

-      Solution  

-      Customers/Users 

-      Resources 

-      Key Assumptions 

-      Next Steps 

Format of a Group Idea Surgery 

• Up to three ventures  
• 60 minutes  
• Short intro from the facilitator (more details below)
• Each venture talks through the problem they want to solve and their idea, you can do these all together and then move on to questions, insights or recommendations or you can spend about 18 mins on each venture
• Participants should be asking each other questions and making observations (so insight gained from everyone, not just the E-Lab coach, and so that they see how useful engaging with their peers is)
• Note: you can adapt this as you see fit, 1:1 works well, although you do not need an hour for that. Having two, rather than three ventures also works well. Four teams in an hour was too much in our experience

E-Lab Coaches’ role in an Idea Surgery  

Set the Scene 

·       Who you are 

·       Manage expectations

-      How you intend to run the surgery

-      This is Business coaching, not technical 

-      Us making introductions to potential customers or experts is rare  

-      Encourage participation, this isn’t just about the E-Lab coach asking questions, providing insights and making suggestions, they are all capable of doing that too, and we hope they will be delighted by how helpful they can be to each other

-      Remind them to take notes

-      Ask how much they know about E-Lab, if anyone doesn't know much, give a high-level overview (what the E-Lab does, that we don’t take equity)

-      At the start, if not all teams have joined, email those who have not arrived with the Zoom link, letting them know the surgery has started and letting them know you are looking forward to them joining  

What the coach should cover during the surgery

·       Determine manageable next steps with each team 

·       Instil confidence that they are capable to exploring their idea and can learn the business skills needed

·       At the end:  

-      Check in that you have covered everything 

-      Remind them that you will send them a personalised email with recommendations 

-      Encourage them to book another Idea Surgery when they are ready  

What will happen after the surgery 

·       An email goes out from the Idea Surgeries email account, you can see the content in the references section

·       You send a personalised email for each venture with agreed actions, and cc Victoria Nicholl 

Questions/tools you can use to tease out the information you need  

·       What are you hoping to get out of today?   

·       What is the problem you are working on? (might need to specify that is the business problem, not a problem they have getting the business off the ground!)  

·       Go around everyone in turn, why have you booked the meeting, what do you need to get out of today?  

·       Can you expand on that? 

·       If they are talking about an interview or survey they did: 

-      What sort of questions did you ask? (hint, they need to be asking about past behaviours digging into how people solve the problem now, not asking them about hypothetical futures) 

-      How many people did you interview/survey? 

-      Are there any themes that emerged? 

-      Oxford Venture Evaluation Framework  

After an Idea Surgery  

Send your personalised email to the venture with agreed next steps. See references section for some content to start your own! Encourage them to book another surgery once they have completed the actions. If you can, automate feedback requests so you can check how well the Idea Surgery went. 

Impact:   

Idea Surgeries are a critical part of the services that Imperial College London Enterprise Lab runs, and have grown significantly since they were introduced in 2018.  

Idea Surgeries coaching hours 

•        Aug 2018 – Jul 2019 – 114 hours 
•        Aug 2019 – Jul 2020 – 292 hours  
•        Aug 2020 – April 2020 – 233.5 hours (expect another 90 hours May to July)  

The demand in and of itself, particularly as the more determined founders who want to get onto our Experts-in-Residence programme tend to come back for repeat surgeries, is a positive indicator that they are well received and impactful. 

We ask for feedback after every session collect NPS sore. You can find more info here about NPS and what the scores mean, essentially -100-0 means improvements are needed, 0-30 means good, 30-70 means great and 70-100 means excellent.  

The 2020-21 NPS score to end May 2021 is 48, ranging from 11 in May 2021 (we quickly leapt on the issues that arose in that month) to highs of 100 in March and April, with a more normal month hanging around the 66 level. While we are very happy with our scores overall, and even though they have never yet been less than ‘good’ we always strive for excellent. 

Selected anonymised quotes from our founders: 

‘Useful guidance and advice to take the next steps. Thank you.’ June 2021 

‘I thought it was very helpful, the recommendations on getting in touch with other experienced founders as well as highlighting some potential packagings of the product and some problems were all very helpful. I think the enthusiasm of the host was a good feature.’ June 2021 

‘Good discussion and recommendations. One hour to discuss three ideas was barely enough though.’ May 2021 

‘The set up and concept was great - testing ideas on each other, and then getting some guidance and ideas for where to go next. I am at the very beginning of the process, whilst the other groups were much further along, so it was really helpful to get a sense of evolution and equally great to be able to help feed back on other ideas too.

The only thing I would suggest would be a little more framework initially. It wasn't quite clear how it was going to play out and one student dropped off the call once his team had been, meaning it was really only two groups sharing and discussing. I think, however, that was because that student's team had got what they came for - promise of a referral.

What was super helpful was Selina's follow up email, which helped put a framework to the scribbled notes I made during the discussion - and also she made some great suggestions on the email in addition to what came out in the surgery that I am working on now too. She also put me at my ease - I was solo, whereas the other teams were in groups, as well as being new, so that was very much appreciated.

As for recommending to others, I've already done so!’ May 2021 

As you can see, confidence and openness are an important facet of a facilitator’s delivery, and founders hugely appreciate the opportunity to meet with someone more experienced who can help them figure out manageable steps. Most of the time they do appreciate the opportunity meet other founders too, and in the best idea surgeries, lively conversations ensue and contact details are exchanged so founders can keep the discussion going. 

That said, we do sometimes get founders who are incredibly nervous about meeting in groups, they worry about people stealing their idea or revealing their IP. As an Idea Surgery is an early stage business coaching session, there should be no need to reveal any IP, and, unless the founder has developed a brand new technology the odds of them having any IP are slim. We used to offer both individual as well as group idea surgeries, but the automatic assumption founders made was that 1:1 support must be better, which we fundamentally do not believe. We removed the individual surgeries and now only provide them when a founder is too nervous to come to a group one – despite having the advantages pointed out and being offered reassurance about their idea and IP being safe. This is a good approach, as it is important for founders to feel safe.  

As you can see, an hour for three ventures is tight, and something we will be reviewing in the next couple of months, to see whether we now have enough resources to make this more generous. We initially moved from half an hour per individual venture to an hour for three ventures because we did not have enough team members to meet demand.  

Another issue we have found is that founders can be nervous about presenting their idea, sometimes cancelling a surgery at late notice because they do not feel ready, or want to work on their idea more. The earlier they meet have an idea surgery the better, so that they spend time usefully. Common errors in customer discovery, such as asking questions in such a way as to encourage confirmation bias, or talking to friends and family rather than genuine potential customers or sending out surveys rather than doing in person interviews as a starting point, abound, and whilst it is always impressive to see a concerted effort being made, it can be frustrating for founders to realise they need to go back a step or two, or worse, they can be stuck in the belief that they have done good customer discovery and that their assumptions are safely tested.  

Conclusion: Idea Surgeries are a useful tool, particularly for the earliest stage founders. They are relatively easy to facilitate, and work well both in person and virtually. They instil confidence in founders, and maximise their chances of determining whether there is a viable business from the idea they have. Far from every idea will turn into a company, and that is absolutely fine, the skills, understanding and experience that founders gain are a lifelong positive outcome. Idea Surgeries are incredibly versatile and can be used as part of a recruitment process. We use ours for Imperial College London offer holders before they join the College, and as part of how we advertise our entrepreneurial programmes. It is easy to set these up in such a way that no matter where a founder is, or what time, they can book a session and know that they will get a real person’s time, which as entrepreneurship educators is a massive win for engaging with the people we work so hard to help.    

Resources: 

•        Space

o   In person – meeting room

o   Online – meeting platform such as Zoom or MS Teams

•        One facilitator with knowledge about testing business ideas, the ability to ask great questions and knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystem within your institution. They do not need to a highly experienced entrepreneurship educator, it is possible to train up early career enterprise educators. 

o   That said, individuals who have knowledge of the institution’s portfolio of startups can be a great asset. One of my best hacks is to tell stories about the more mature ventures (6 months to a couple of years ahead of where the people in the idea surgery are) and encourage the founders to reach out to obtain insights. I usually specify what I think they can learn and, in my follow-up email I give the venture’s LinkedIn profile. I no longer make direct introductions as it is too time consuming, and seeing whether the founder is proactive enough to follow advice and brave enough to reach out cold to someone in our startup network. 

•        A document where you store your frequent recommendations for founders, so that it is easy to create follow-up emails. This also serves as a great training tool for new facilitators. I have included some suggestions to get you started in the Reference section below.

References: 

I have included below a range of ‘if they’ paragraphs that I think are useful for anyone doing an Idea Surgery. Whilst this is a ‘good start’, I am constantly adding to the shared ‘Idea Surgeries Playbook’ and recommend creating your own, which can also include resources and opportunities that are relevant only to your institution.  

If they really need to start doing some customer/idea validation (a high percentage of idea surgeries will have this as a recommendation)   

I strongly recommend you read Talking to Humans and do the Business Assumptions exercise. Or read The Mom Test. This is useful for everyone, regardless of starting a business or not.    (*Caution advisory: you may choose to retitle this activity/approach to more appropriately support your group/to focus on the message of the text) 

Start to fill out a Business Model Canvas, available for download here.    

The ‘How to build a start up’ modules may be a useful reference point in general, but also for completing your Business Model Canvas here.    

If they need access to cheap legal documents  

I would suggest looking at Seed Legals. I’ve had positive feedback from students about it.  

Ignition Law also recommended CooleyGo where you can create (for free) a number of legal documents.   

If they need to understand various legal positions from starting a company to GDPR  

I recommend you take a look at the qLegal website, which has a number of valuable resources and a free advisory service. 

If they need to figure out when to stop doing customer interviews    

When do I *stop* doing customer interviews and start writing code? Article here.    

Good books about Lean methodology  

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries    

Running Lean by Ash Maurya   

If they need to explore the market opportunity more   

Have a go at looking at the Where To Play worksheets and completing them. You can download them all here. You can also take a free course here also by the authors of the same book.      

If they don’t clearly outline their problem and could do with a tool to make them tell a better story/get their point across more efficiently   

This article gives an overview of pyramid principle, which I think would be a valuable approach for you to adopt when talking to people about what you are doing and what you want from them.  

If they are agonising over how much work is involved in getting to a scalable stage:   

This episode of the Masters of Scale podcast is particularly relevant to where you are now, as it addresses how sometimes to scale effectively you need to do things that don’t scale.    

If they should do a lean canvas   

You can find a free lean canvas here.   

Help with the Lean Canvas can be found here.    

If they should do a Value Proposition Canvas   

On the Value Proposition Canvas, to help you fill it in look here.     

If they should be taking a look at the grant, competition, incubator and accelerator landscape 

Review the grant, competition, incubator, accelerator landscape. Type in all the terms related to the problem and your idea and see what comes up. Create a record and see what path is going to suit you most. I would be surprised if there wasn’t equity free money you could access for this. And remember, you want to be choosy about when you take on angel and VC money it can be highly useful, but changes the dynamic of your company significantly. Hence looking at all funding opportunities, not just focusing on that. 

The email that all attendees who booked the surgery automatically receive  

An email automatically goes out from the idea Surgeries account to each person who has booked an Idea surgery with the following resources in it  

Hi Invitee Full Name,

Thank you for attending Event Name at Event Time on Event Date.

Please complete feedback for your Event Name. 

We really appreciate understanding what is working and what could work better – and this helps us identify what resources we should be providing in the lab.  

As promised a quick follow-up to give you some general resources

• There’s an Imperial Enterprise Lab Slack Community where you can get to know the other founders at Imperial, hear about events and opportunities, and ask questions. You can sign up here 
• Take advantage of all the great E-Lab events (like the How to series and Pitch 'n' Mix) more here 
• Apply for Imperial Launch who can provide 1-2-1 support through their mentoring programme.
• If you haven’t done so yet, read the book Talking to Humans (you should be able to get a free PDF) and do the Business Assumptions exercise
• There are lots of ways to do customer discovery even in the current circumstances. As a starting point, Rob Fitzpatrick, author of the Mom Test has created 5 brief videos to get you started. 
• Strategyzer has lots of free resources, including modules on ‘How to build a startup’ which are a useful reference point in general, but also for completing your Business Model Canvas if you have not completed one yet. You can explore more here and download a free Business Model canvas 
• • This article gives an overview of pyramid principle, which is a valuable approach to adopt when talking to people about what you are doing and what you want from them.  
  • If you haven’t read them yet, check out the COVID-19 startup survival guide (start here links to future pieces provided at the end of the article). 
  • For those thinking about building massively scalable businesses listen to the Masters of Scale podcast  

  We look forward to helping you on your entrepreneurial journey!
  
  The Enterprise Lab Team

  The email feedback questions we ask in our survey 

  •        What date was your session?
  •        On a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = Not at all likely and 10 = Extremely likely) how likely would you be to recommend this service to a friend or colleague? 
  •        Please comment; what did we do well OR what would you like to see improve for next time?