The fall cohort for ITEN’s Eureka Validation Experience consists of seven startups ranging in maturity from idea stage through scaling the business.
Those companies are:
“We will help them find iterative ways to get to test things… through very intentionally designed conversations,” ITEN Director of Entrepreneur Development Melissa Grizzle told the 4thEst8. “Problem discovery interviews – it’s not a sales call. It’s not talking about the solution. It’s understanding their daily life and what the pain point might be.”
Some have come up through the Eureka Ideation component – a free ITEN program, open to all innovators – it helps them focus on the problem instead of the solution and decide to ‘pivot, persevere or perish.’ But this cohort, regardless of where they’re at in the business development cycle, are testing their model and early market response to find what is working – the ‘build, measure, learn’ loop – still heavily tied to the actual problem.
“This is an opportunity to try our B2B sales play within the education market,” TimeBolt CEO Doug Wulff told the 4thEst8. “We’re looking to validate whether to pursue a top-down or bottom-up approach to solving the editing problems in education.”
Others are validating their business, but also tapping into other resources at Lindenwood University, the parent of ITEN.
“The university connected us with their internship program… we’re looking for a Minecraft expert,” said Doug Devitre, co-founder (with his 6 year old son, Harry) of Harry Devitre. “The people who we need to put in place to be able to deploy a minimally viable product isn’t very far off.”
As for his son, Harry, Doug says the framework helps him ask him questions based on his level of understanding — which for a six year old involves things like wanting ‘the silver play button’ that comes with 100,000 subscribers.
Links:
ITEN
On the 4thEst8:
