Welcome to our Incubation Toolkit
In this digital toolkit, you will find all the phases, which will accompany you on your founding journey.
We recommend following the given structure. However, you can always start in between, depending on where you are when you access this toolkit.
Each phase contains a list of milestones that you should have reached before proceeding to the next one. It’s up to you to decide if you have reached these milestones and when it is time to move on to the next phase.
Incubation Process
Downloads
Your Idea
In the booklet “Your idea” you will deal with your motivation and your actual goal, i.e. your vision. Moreover, you will develop a first version of your business model by systematically mapping your idea using the Lean Canvas and identifying what the next logical steps are.
Move on once you:
- Have thought about your motivation and know what makes you persevere
- Know your overriding goal and have formulated that in a vision.
- Have conducted short research on the context of your idea.
- Have completed an overview of your idea in form of the Lean Canvas.
- Have formulated your idea as a One Sentence Pitch.
Problem & Customers
“Problem & Customers”: The centerpiece of every innovation is a comprehensive understanding for the addressed customer segments and their problems & needs in context of your idea. Only then, customized and useful solutions can be developed.
Move on once you:
- Have identified and validated the target group for your problem.
- Have sketched personas for each target group.
- Have conducted numerous problem interviews with the representatives of the target groups.
- Have identified the central problems of your target groups.
- Have discovered a problem worth solving.
- Have learned what target groups suffer from the problem the most (early adopters).
- Have formulated the respective problem statement.
The process overview guides you through the seven different steps, described in the second booklet “Problem & Customers”.
A guideline on how you can structure a problem interview with a potential customer.
Solution & Prototyping
“Solution & Prototyping”: Following the slogan “Fake it until you make it” you will learn how you can easily test your solution approaches with your target groups, without spending a lot of time, money and energy.
Move on once you:
- Have gathered different solution ideas for the identified problems.
- Have identified your critical assumptions.
- Have created a prototype for at least one idea.
- Have received feedback on your prototype from your potential customers
- Have validated the relevant hypotheses.
- Have customized and confirmed your solution based on test results.
Why prototyping?
- Give shape to your idea
- Start a conversation
- Test your different versions
- Make mistakes quickly and learn from them
Business Model
With the help of the “Business Model” booklet, you will polish your idea for the business world, by showing how you will earn money, how big your addressable market is, who your customers are and how you plan to hold your ground against them.
Move on once you:
- Have a clear understanding of your major competitors and their strategic positioning.
- Can show the market potential through top-down and bottom-up approaches.
- Have developed a unique value proposition and have an idea on how to create an unfair advantage.
- Have created one or a couple of earning models.
Podcast Swisspreneur: Mark Essam
Swisspreneur regularly interviews entrepreneurs about their founding stories. This podcast features Mark Essam, co-founder of YASAI.
18:42 the business model behind vertical farming
Success Pitch
In this last booklet “Your Success Pitch” you will get to know the common pitch formats, learn how to develop a classic investor pitch and how to stand out from standard pitches by using a bit of creativity.
The most important takeaways from this booklet:
- A pitch is not the same as a pitch. Setting, audience, and the aim of the pitch have a massive influence on how you present your business idea.
- Good pitching is an art in itself and often a tightrope walk. Find your own mix between emotions and facts, as well as between expectations and surprises.
- Regardless of what your plans are, be authentic: in an artificial role in which you don’t feel right you won’t convince anyone.
Here you can find the famous pitch deck of Airbnb: Obviously, it worked! The Airbnb pitch deck gives you a good idea of a successful pitch deck’s scope, content, design, and storyline.
Read this article about the 10 slides you need for a convincing pitch.
Watch this video about the core elements of an investor pitch from an investor’s point of view.
Proof of Concept
These documents will help you to identify, prioritize and test the critical assumptions of your business idea.
Bausteine
Inkubationsprozess
DEINE IDEE
PROBLEM & KUNDE
LÖSUNG & PROTOTYPING
GESCHÄFTSMODELL
