Activate Capital — The ingredients of our programme

“If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.”
Elon Musk

Now in the second year, we at Activate Capital have designed our startup studio to encompass all the tools and resources we feel entrepreneurs need to succeed in developing their businesses. In exchange for 5% equity, the fourteen day bespoke programme covers a breadth of topics with our experienced mentors.

Our programme starts from the core question, ‘what is moving you to do this?’. This connects to the business model, which connects to the value proposition which in turn connects to the market segmentation. We then use a technique called impact mapping to begin the design phase and map out all the people, the roles and the deliverables that is required in the digital product.

All of this is centred on a business goal. We use a customer journey design approach to understand how the product will work from both the clients and customers perspective. We try to match the two as by only overlapping the company goal with the customer goal can we create value. This information is then used in a prototyping day, which goes from sketching to building a little prototype to a user testing session.

What is interesting in this whole approach is that, for example, the little “Share on Facebook” button that is in the prototype is directly linked and can be traced back all the way to a core business goal. This means that it is possible for everyone to understand why something is being built: from the developer who is actually programming the button to the founder. And this is very important as a startup only has limited opportunities. They don’t have lots of resources, so have to be very careful about choosing what they decide to do.

One of the main reasons most startups fail is that they get distracted and try to do too many things and run out of money. So by going through our programme they acquire a methodology to manage this process which we think is very valuable and makes a huge difference moving forward.

Along with this there are a number of branches that we plug in from communication, marketing, public relations, help with legal affairs or financial aspects. We have regular pitching sessions to not only aid the startup with their presentation skills but as a gauge to measure the progress they are making within the programme. As the days pass the message being conveyed should get clearer as we strip away any unnecessary elements to reveal the core of the business.

The goal at the end of the programme is to have the startup setup and prepared so they can talk to investors and get that seed investment as quickly as possible. With all these ingredients, you cannot help but bake a tasty cake!

Applications for the 2017 Autumn programme are now open.