March, 19 at 4 p.m. an open public performance by the legendary serial entrepreneur and coauthor of the best-selling book «The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step-Guide for Building a Great Company» Bob Dorf will be held in Assembly hall of the ITMO University. Participants will listen to his famous presentation «How to avoid mistakes and how to build a great company?»

The event is organized by the accelerator Launch Gurus, ITMO University and Business incubator «Ingria». The moderator of the event is Lawrence Wright, founder of Launch Gurus.
Audience invited to participate: students and  graduates of St. Petersburg universities, beginning and successful businessmen, all interested specialists.

What is the point?

Bob Dorf will cover the basic principles of Customer Development (consumer research), typical startup mistakes and approaches required to build a flexible and successful company:

  • What is a startup for me? This is a gang of pirates who come together from time to time, to combine pieces of the «map» and understand, whether they move in the correct direction. Always be on the lookout.
  • Most modern startups are fails to scale; they are falling apart because of the lack of a large number of loyal users and customers, attracted by the product. Startups die because they think they know their customers and their product.
  • Writing the code is only a half of work. Current technology allows to create almost everything that is capable of fantasy, therefore, on the first place there is the ability to determine the exact portrait of a potential client, and also find it in bulk and make him «fall in love» in your product.
  • Every team needs 3 persons: «hacker», «businessman» and «creator».
  • Business plan relates to a creative text, but not the development of this business. Even the most elegantly written business plan will not stand up to scrutiny at the first meeting with real client.

 

Who is Bob Dorf?

Legendary entrepreneur and mentor, who brought seven companies for an IPO.

Theorist and practitioner of Customer Development. He is a desired participant of conferences around the world, which, as nobody knows how to create a successful start-UPs, stand with them on his feet, and turn them into a large company.

Co-author of the book «The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step-Guide for Building a Great Company» (along with Steve Blanc). 

Investor and mentor of more than 25 startups.

Lecturer at the business school at Columbia University, author of numerous publications.

Registration for the event at the ITMO University

Participation is free. Pre-registration is mandatory!

The event will be held in English with simultaneous translation.

Date and time: March,19, 2014, 4-6pm

Venue: ITMO University, Assembly hall, 49 Kronverkskiy prospect

Organizers: Launch Gurus, ITMO Universityand Business incubator «Ingria»

Partners: Web Ready Competition and Program of Eureca USRF Fund

Board Meeting with startups in Ingria

Before an open lecture Mr. Dorf and Lawrence will hold in the Business incubator «Ingria» meeting with residents and examine several cases of projects in the format of a Board Meeting. The experts will be invited to present the situation as if they are members of the Board of Directors of each of the projects and listening to the address of the founders.

The event will be held March, 19 from 11.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. Learn more and apply for participation in the meeting you can here.

Contact information:

Anna Veklich,

Rector's assistant on public relations

The ITMO University

Phone: +7(960) 270-62-98

E-mail: veklich@mail.ifmo.ru