The Startup Workshop is the 3 day course for anyone planning to start a digital business!
Solopreneurs, entrepreneurs and SMEs – turn your ideas into gold! The Startup Workshop is the jump-start event for people who want to make their idea into a real digital business.
Tired of your job, or dreaming of independence? This workshop will help you start a business on the side, or go all out into your own digital startup. You’ll gain a thorough overview of what it takes to start a side gig or a company. Learn the right steps, avoid common mistakes, and gain amazing insights into how to organize, run, market, finance, monetize and growth hack your new business.
Full of up to date info. Amazing lessons/examples. Every question answered, every problem solved. Inspiring!
Bianca James
What’s in the workshop?
At the workshop you’ll master the 10 steps to a successful start-up:
- Ideas: Creating business ideas // Turning ideas into commercial concepts
- Reality check: Checking uniqueness, viability, sustainability and scalability
- Business strategy and plan: Making strategic decisions // Crafting a business plan
- Define product or service: Specifying end-game and Minimum Viable Product
- Define user experience: UX design 101 // UI, UX and CX // Differentiation
- Build your team: Partners & shareholder agreements // Vendors // Alliances // Outsourcing
- Create a company: Company types, pros, cons, taxes // Creating a local or offshore company // Getting paid – bank accounts and credit cards
- Project Management: Managing partners, contractors – and yourself
- Launch & growth hack: Gaining traction on low budgets // Digital marketing and sales growth hacks // Marketing and sales automation
- Financing: Cash flow forecasting, business valuation // Bootstrapping, loans, crowdfunding, accelerators, angels, venture capitalists // Routes to funding // Exit strategies
This intensive three-day workshop gets you instantly active. Designed for people with only a basic knowledge of digital, the Startup Workshop will show you the way and jump-start your exploitation of all the available tools and techniques – without you having to be technical or have an MBA!
Why start your own business?
In this increasingly uncertain world, the only real income security you have is in knowing how to make it on your own. We may dream of doing a WhatsApp and being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion, or of simply running a one-person lifestyle business. You can follow your dream. You don’t have to be a programmer or have global ambitions to start a successful digital business.
Digital businesses are not all about selling software. They are about using digital channels to find customers and grow sales – whether you are selling insurance, stuffed toys, haircuts, photography courses, graphic design, financial consulting, garden services, wedding cakes, mobile apps or, yes, even software. If your idea is truly disruptive, you may well be about to change an entire industry.
Every startup begins with an idea. Most ideas never become businesses, because the person with the idea does not know where to begin or how to proceed. If you understand the process, you will have the confidence to put thought into action.
Because you are applying the concepts and using the tools, by the time you complete this workshop you’ll be totally comfortable with them. You will be inspired and motivated to succeed, and you will be well on your way to launching your startup!
Who should attend?
- Solopreneurs, entrepreneurs and startup teams
- People looking to develop a side gig or build a startup
- People wanting independence
It is designed for non-technical people, who do not even need to have any prior experience in business. The workshop will get you grounded, inspired, and productive.
What you will learn
The workshop is growth-focused, practical, and empowering. It provides up-to-the-minute insights into the concepts and culture of startups. It identifies and demystifies the most effective path to startup success. It explains step-by-step how to get from concept to launch. It helps you decide what legal form your business should take, and how to establish the company. It shows you how to avoid the common pitfalls of team selection and investor relationships, and explains the different ways of funding your business. It reveals powerful ways of exploiting free or low-cost tools and platforms for growth hacking, marketing and sales. And it provides you, step by step, the methodologies and ground rules for success in rapidly monetizing your business.
You’ll leave equipped with a set of tools, hacks, strategies and tactics, inspiring examples, and guidelines for defining, creating and growth hacking your new business.
Workshop Leader
Godfrey Parkin is a veteran digital entrepreneur with an international background in consumer behavior, marketing and business development. As CEO of Britefire, Godfrey helps companies develop strategies to thrive in disruptive marketplaces.
He’s founded global digital start-ups in Zurich, London, Washington DC and Cape Town, and has worked with clients in more than 40 countries. He ran the world-wide management services division of AC Nielsen, and created pioneering businesses in computer games, 3D avatar and virtual world technologies, e-learning, digital marketing and sales growth hacking.
He’s currently a co-founder of a start-up teaching high-school math in India via a social gamified mobile app, and another providing personal safety management in Europe.
Godfrey is author of the best-selling books “Doing Business Digitally” and “Digital Marketing: Strategies for Online Success”. He hosts the “Growth Hackers” TV talk show, broadcast throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He leads the “Own the Future” business strategy workshop in mastering disruption. He’s on the faculty of USB-ED, and is a regular speaker at conferences on marketing, business strategy and future tech.