As social entrepreneurs, how do we know that our ideas are going to create the positive change we want to see in the world? Or that our ideas have a chance of becoming a thriving business that serves our community?

In an environment where the majority of new businesses fail, lean principles aim to give startups a better chance of success by helping entrepreneurs learn more quickly what works and discard what doesn’t. As a social entrepreneur, you can use lean practices to test, validate, and adapt your vision of change to ensure you’re creating the greatest impact and investing your time in something that truly meets the needs of your customers and community. By relying on validated learning, experimentation, and iterative product releases, you can shorten product development cycles, measure progress and gain valuable stakeholder feedback.

In this one-day intensive, you will receive valuable training, resources and support to apply lean startup principles and tools in starting and developing a business with positive social, environmental and economic impact. Through a combination of discussions and hands-on activities, you will:

• Learn the build-measure-learn approach that characterizes lean methodology
• Develop hypotheses regarding your big idea and the problem it is solving
• Learn how to test your big idea with potential stakeholders
• Gain a “lean mindset” for building a thriving social enterprise

This workshop is appropriate for anyone who wants to try out lean methodologies to start a new enterprise or build a new program or initiative within an existing organization.

Facilitator

Rani Croager – Co-Founder, Uptima Business Bootcamp

Rani Croager founded Uptima Business Bootcamp to address the challenges of traditional entrepreneurship programs and business accelerators in providing accessible education and mentorship to a diverse group of entrepreneurs. Rani has drawn on more than 15 years of experience advising organizations on strategic and financial planning, capital raising and mergers and acquisitions to develop the model for Uptima. Prior to co-founding Uptima, Rani was a member of the founding team and vice president at Altius Education where she raised over $30 million of capital to fund development of the company’s educational ecosystem. Rani began her career as a successful investment banker and has led and participated in over 30 financing, merger, acquisition and joint venture transactions, representing over $15 billion in value, for leading technology companies.