I had  great time with the folks from Lean Startup Circle preparing and delivering this talk. I’d like to particularly thank Tristan Kromer, Spike Morelli, and Rich Collins.

The talk’s about using a consulting business as a springboard for product development (a ‘concierge vehicle’ in Lean Startup speak). The slides, footage and original event description appear below.

Slides

Footage

Event Description

Many consultancies dream of creating a scalable product out of their consulting practice, but few succeed. Some try to switch over and are unable to focus enough resources on the product to be successful. Some try to stop consulting altogether and roll the dice by raising funds.

Leonid Systems bootstrapped not one, but four successful products out of a consulting business. Leonid’s products are now deployed to many of the world’s largest cloud communications operators which together had over $350 billion in revenue last year.

This talk will walk through Alex Cowan’s recipe for moving from pure consulting to productized consulting to a scalable product. In this recipe, consulting work provides your business an immediate ‘concierge’ style MVP to test out and fund new product ideas.

Alex will go over how to quickly initiate a rapid improvement loop using design thinking, Lean Startup, customer development, and agile. There will be a few hands on exercises.

We’ll also have lightning talks, MVP presentations, and the traditional lean repast of beer and savory pies.

ABOUT ALEX COWAN:
Alex is the CTO of Leonid Systems, an enterprise software startup with offices in the Bay Area, Washington, Toronto and various points abroad. Leonid works with communications and SaaS providers on innovative solutions to leverage and growth their franchise. He’s also the Author of ‘Starting a Tech Business‘ (Wiley, 2012), a primer for non-engineers who want to up their game with the latest techniques and foundations concepts in product development.

LOCATION:
Meetups are held at RUNWAY, a brand-new 30,000 square foot incubator and co-working space at 1355 Market Street (the new Market Square development). Tenants in the building include Twitter, Yammer, and One Kings Lane. The building is the centerpiece of a new startup hub in the mid-market section of San Francisco.

DIRECTIONS:
The venue is conveniently located one block away from the Civic Center/UN Plaza Station. The building has two lobbies; however, you must enter through the lobby closer to the corner of 9th & Market.