KEY INSIGHTS: Amsterdam Business Breakfast — From Lean Startup to Successful Scale-Up
Today I had the pleasure of attending the Amsterdam Business Breakfast event sponsored by Lara Wilkinson and Jamie Lingwood. It’s a monthly networking event for entrepreneurs and as a connector I find it interesting to meet new people.
I also finally got to meet Tony de Bree in person! Tony and I are part of the writers for the Cycles book spearheaded by Bryan Cassidy and it is always pleasant to meet people face to face.
Tony de Bree is an online entrepreneur, a Dutch Fintech Awards jury member and a former banker. He’s also a speaker, facilitator and bestselling author of ‘how-to’ books about digital transformation, entrepreneurship, and personal and business transformation for executives, corporates, start-ups, scale-ups, SMEs and students.
In his presentation he talked in brief about his 5-step blueprint from idea to successful start-up & scale-up:
- DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?
- HOW TO CHOOSE THE BEST BUSINESS IDEA?
- HOW TO PRESENT YOUR BUSINESS IDEA?
- HOW TO BUILD THE BEST TEAMS? Did you know that women are more successful as start-ups than men?
- HOW TO FINANCE YOUR BUSINESS IDEA?
He also presented his three phases from idea to successful scale-up:
- Pre-start-up (problem-solution fit/Vision-Founders fit);
- Lean start-up (validation-phase) — product-market fit;
- Scale up (growth phase)- business model-market fit
These are some of the key questions Tony raised in his presentation that piqued my interest:
❓What’s your revenue model?
❓How do you see cash flows over time? ❓Everybody needs to know when to stop- what is your exit strategy?
❓How are you reducing risks?
❓How are you scaling? Note from Tony: Did know that Physical products are difficult to scale also other services like consulting, training and coaching?
❓Find examples near to your field and ask “why does it work?” “What do they do really well?”
❓HOW DO SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES DO IT? I particularly liked the idea of “bundling” and how they do 4 things in parallel: They develop their customers, their organization, their solution and their company
❓With whom are you going to have the discussion?
❓In the age of “why do I have to believe you?” , how are you answering this?
I can’t wait to read more about Tony’s new and best-selling book “Kan Het Vliegen” (Can it fly?)
