M02-06 · AI Product & Business Strategy

Founding a Product Company — Idea to Product-Market Fit

Teaches students the product-focused skills needed to found a company and reach product-market fit. Covers customer discovery methodology, MVP experiments (concierge, landing page, software prototype), measuring product-market fit signals (retention, NPS, Sean Ellis test), pivot decision-making, content marketing as a distribution channel, preparing investor materials, and managing personal and company cash flow. Students learn the founder's product playbook for going from validated problem to paying customers.

30 Hours

9 Learning objectives

Evaluate Bloom's ceiling (?)

5 Competencies

What You'll Be Able To Do

Learning Objectives

Objectives

Depth

Conduct structured customer discovery: write specific customer descriptions (not personas), send outreach, run problem-focused interviews (not solution-focused), and synthesize findings using AI-assisted pattern recognition Apply
Design and execute MVP experiments that test core assumptions with minimum build: concierge MVPs, landing pages, manual-service-first approaches Create
Measure product-market fit using multiple signals: week-over-week retention (>40%), NPS (>30), Sean Ellis test (>40% "very disappointed"), and revenue trajectory Analyze
Make pivot decisions using data: distinguish product problems (solvable) from market problems (pivot), identify adjacent opportunities, and execute pivots without starting over Evaluate
Build content marketing as a distribution channel: blog posts, social media, email sequences — using AI for drafting and human editing for authenticity Apply
Create investor materials: pitch deck, financial model, competitive analysis — and prepare for skeptical investor pushback Create
Manage startup cash flow: personal burn rate, company runway, quarterly tax obligations, and the relationship between funding strategy and product decisions Apply
Systematize founder operations before first hire: document processes, build onboarding materials, and create delegation-ready workflows Apply
Evaluate hiring priorities based on current bottleneck: customer success (frees founder time), engineering (ships faster), or growth marketing (scales acquisition) Evaluate

Levels: Remember · Understand · Apply · Analyze · Evaluate · Create — highest demands most original thinking.

Core Competencies

What You'll Master

Customer Discovery

Problem validation through structured interviews, outreach methodology, verbatim feedback capture, pattern synthesis.

MVP Experimentation

Concierge MVP, landing page tests, minimum-build validation, iterating based on real user behavior.

Product-Market Fit Measurement

Defining and tracking PMF signals, interpreting early metrics, knowing when to iterate vs. pivot.

Founder Content & Distribution

Content marketing, social media presence, community engagement, building audience as distribution channel.

Startup Financial Management

Runway calculation, pricing experiments, cash flow management, fundraising preparation.

Portfolio Artifact

What You'll Build

Startup Launch Plan — Student develops a complete startup launch package: validated problem statement (based on 5+ customer discovery interviews with transcripts and synthesis), MVP design with core assumption identified, landing page with analytics, pricing model with 3 tiers and rationale, content marketing plan (10 post topics with 2 drafted), 6-month financial projection (revenue scenarios, burn rate, runway), and a pitch deck (12-15 slides) reviewed against investor objection criteria.

Tools You'll Use

Industry Tools, Not Toy Projects

Notion

Everything hub for customer discovery notes, product documentation, and operational processes.

Claude

AI assistant for strategy, writing, analysis, interview synthesis, and co-strategic thinking.

V0 / Bolt.new / Lovable

AI-powered MVP prototyping tools for building landing pages and product demos quickly.

Vercel

Deployment platform for shipping MVPs and landing pages to production.

Stripe

Payment processing for charging from day one and running pricing experiments.

PostHog / Plausible

Product analytics for tracking activation, retention, and product-market fit signals.

Google Sheets

Financial models, runway calculations, pricing analysis, and revenue projections.

Otter.ai / Fireflies

Interview transcription tools for capturing customer discovery conversations verbatim.