Here’s our plan for Day 005:

• Monday  9:00am coffee, breakfast, mentor briefing
• Monday 10:00am mentor introduction, plan for the day
• Monday 10:30am every team pitches for 5 minutes
• Monday 11:30am feedback
• Monday 12:00pm lunch
• Monday  2:00pm resume
• Monday  3:00pm breakout sessions, teams get more private time with mentors
• Monday  3:30pm round-robin rotate teams and mentors
• Monday  4:00pm round-robin rotate teams and mentors
• Monday  4:30pm round-robin rotate teams and mentors
• Monday  5:00pm meet as a group again; mentors pitch potentially revised concepts
• Monday  6:00pm close, optional dinner with mentors

Day 006:

• Tuesday  9:00am coffee, breakfast, mentor briefing
• Tuesday 10:00am continued round robin breakouts.
• Tuesday 12:00pm lunch
• Tuesday  2:00pm resume
• Tuesday  5:30pm 5 minute check-in presentations: what have we learned? what will we try? what is our mission and vision now? who’s the customer? what’s the customer development strategy? what’s the product development strategy? what milestones will we aim to show by the start of next week
• Tuesday  6:00pm close, optional dinner with mentors
• Tuesday  7:00pm talk by Melissa Clark-Reynolds
• Tuesday  8:00pm dismissed. go to dinner.

Day 007, 008, 009:

• do it.

Dear Mentors,

The Frog is deeply grateful to you for coming on Days 005 (Monday) and 006 (Tuesday) of JFDI.

What happens on those days?

The plan is simple: get to know the startups. And stretch them.

Learn their passions, their skills, their assets and liabilities. Understand the insights and ideas behind their businesses and their products.

Then challenge them and expand their ideas — the way Derek Sivers’s music teacher stretched him. http://sivers.org/more-than-one

Be harsh if you must, but know that they already had some cold water from a dozen investors on Day 002.

There are some things you won’t need to do on these two days. The teams have already started learning about pitch technique (Day 001) and about investibility (Day 002). Over the next 94 days we’ll work on improving their deck and telling their story.

But for days 005 and 006, we ask you mentors to develop the content of that story.

Francis Bacon said: There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Help the teams discover their excellent beauty. Fan the flames of originality. Let the spark of strangeness shine.

The teams have a golden opportunity, here at the fuzzy front end, to clarify their plans (and change them).

Now’s the time to pivot. It’ll be ten times harder to pivot on day 50, and a hundred times harder on day 90.

Monday

Some of you will be meeting the startups for the first time.

We’ll start the day with a quick, five-minute pitch from each team.

This pitch is going to be a little different from the investor pitch. Ideally, teams should do this without slides. Just talk. The demo is optional; teams don’t have to show off the product. Maybe flash some screenshots for a few seconds, but it’s more important to tell the story of the business and the team.

Each team should say:

We, ____ (team name), are making ___(a web/mobile app?) to help _______ (some clearly defined customer) to ______ (accomplish some goal).

Now we introduce the team members. For each person on the team, these are their skills (programming languages, software development specialties: Python? iOS? Android? Java? Ruby?) and industry experience (10 years of biz dev in Indian VAS? 5 years in the game development industry?)

We are doing this because _________________. (We’re scratching our own itch. Or maybe our last six clients all wanted the same thing built and we want to make a COTS product for the next sixty.)

Then we move into discussion. To get the ball rolling, Hugh and Meng will explore why the teams are doing what they’re doing. Not the what or the how but the why. http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Then we’ll ask the mentors to roll up their sleeves.

Some of you will feel an affinity for some of the teams that emerges from industry experience.

Some of you might see yourselves as a customer of their product, one day.

Some of you might like their technology and drive. Some of the teams might remind you of yourself.

At lunch, we’ll ask the mentors to find teams that they’d like to work with in the afternoon. There isn’t much structure here – it’s an organic process. Each team should be able to meet with each mentor on a more personal basis in the afternoon.

Some questions for the afternoon breakouts: How could the direction of the business change? If you were running this company, what would you do differently? What markets would you consider? What pitch would you give?

Do disagree with the other mentors – the startups will learn from that.

At the end of Monday, we’ll reconvene. At 5pm we’ll ask the mentors to pitch the renewed vision of the company. This is meant to be a fun, creative exercise, and it’s not a big deal – if nobody likes the reformulated vision, the startup can always hit “undo” and go back to Plan A.

The teams can sleep on it and come back Tuesday.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, we’ll dig deeper into defining the business – what’s the mission? What’s the vision? How does the first wave of product fit that? What features and benefits should be postponed to version 2 and beyond?

And how passionate are the founders about the mission and vision? How excited are they? Can they get behind it? We’re looking for idea/founder fit as much as product/market fit.

Develop customers first – develop product second!

We’ll continue the breakouts in the afternoon. Half an hour each.

By the end of Tuesday, the founders should have their marching orders. They should:

1. know what customers to talk to for initial validation
2. know what their value proposition is, in a couple of sentences
3. know what core features go into their MVP
4. know how to describe that product in a one-page feature/benefits brochure
5. be able to describe their business to an investor
6. and they should be ready to go out and talk to customers to get a sense of pricing.

Each team should have a list of action points and deliverables for next week’s check-in.

Ready? Let’s focus and do it!

Oh, and there’s a talk by Melissa Clark-Reynolds at 7pm Tuesday. More on that soon.

The incorporation exercise tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning has been postponed to next week. We need to do a briefing for all teams re incorporation and we just haven’t had time for that yet.

Instead, after two intense days, we will do a little stress relief, Singapore style: let’s go shopping!

Especially for those founders who are new to Singapore, please join this excursion to Funan, Sim Lim, and Hackerspace.

This activity is OPTIONAL. The talk by Ari Klinger is RECOMMENDED.

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL
NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and
“OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in
RFC 2119.

the map for the 28th: http://g.co/maps/x423p

2:00pm meet at funan centre, on the ground floor, in the middle area. walking tour. Challenger, etc. Call Meng if you’re lost.

2:45pm depart funan centre on foot

2:55pm pass by the Singapore Art Museum
3:10pm stop in at Artichoke restaurant for coffee or tea and to collect a Smoochy Adventure point
3:20pm arrive Sim Lim Square, wander around
4:00pm depart Sim Lim Square, head toward Hackerspace.SG, passing through Kampong Glam along the way
4:30pm arrive Hackerspace.SG, cool down and rehydrate
5:00pm talk by Ari Klinger – RECOMMENDED FOR JFDI FOUNDERS
7:00pm dinner around the area – Murtabak, Prata, etc local food
8:00pm movie at HSG: the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009, Swedish with English subtitles)
10:00pm explore the Arab Street area – Bar Stories – Cafe le Caire – Nabins

Saturday 28 January
Ari Klinger
Partner, Right Click Capital
Previously Built & Exited 2 Companies
5:00PM
@ Hackerspace.sg

Tuesday 31 January 2012
Melissa Clark-Reynolds
Founder minimonos.com
7:00pm
@Plug-In@Bl71

Wednesday 1 February
Scott Rafer
CEO Lumatic
7:00pm
@Plug-In@Bl71