Launch a Month - First Proposal

Learn to launch your first product within one month, while learning about technologies and skills you care about.

We're an anti-disciplinary technology incubation platform, where we assist aspiring hackers to learn the necessary skills, launch their first product, and ultimately deliver a glimpse of the impossible to the world. Without the bullshit.

To be very clear, we're NOT teaching how to build startups. We never believe in the current world of cash-burning reckless startups, and we're tired of that.

Instead, we teach people to solve specific problems with tech in their domain, whether it be automating the sciences, assisting small businesses, improve people's quality of life and more.

We provide a gamified online platform, where you'll receive a daily mission to go on a journey to launch your products.

You'll receive a big question each day and participate in online workshops with your teams. You'll get to match with a mentor to assist you on your journey.

If applicable, you'll be able to join an offline workshop hosted near you as well in the future.

Our core focus is for hackers to learn new skills together by building products.

We're an inclusive community of aspiring hackers where we host offline workshops and fellowship programs. People of all ages, genders and races are welcome to learn and grow together.

We especially encourage high-school students and university students to come join us!

Extra: We provide tools and materials for doing online workshops as well.

T-31: Orientation Day

To the launchers of tomorrow: welcome!

The orientation talk is a 25-minute short live talk, to give an overview on what Launch a Month is. Class starts tomorrow.

On your Orientation Day, there are small tasks you have to do. Rest easy.

Monthly batches start on first day of each month. However, if you already have a team, you can join at your own pace. Feel free to follow-up later if you have errands to attend to.

Mastery-based -> Knowledge Gap "Motivation"

T-30 (Day 1): What are your themes?

Question: What are the domains of problems you're most interested in?

Mission: Choose your themes and teams!

Outcome: You'll get the domain that you'll be working on, and find the team which you'll be working with.

Are there any domains where you have experienced a problem in by yourselves, or has a passion or domain expertise in?

Is it research? industry? automating sciences? games? visual novels? internet of things? agriculture? finance? legaltech?

Legality of business -> ธุรกิจผ่าน regulator ยัง?

Remember that anti-disciplinary means there does not need to be one domain, but you can mix-and-match the arts and sciences to craft your product.

Explore the themes in the current tech industry and research sectors
Select the themes that you have the most idea in. This is just for brainstorming ideas.
You'll match with a group of 5, and help brainstorm the ideas for the themes.
The ideas for each batch will be listed on a board, where you can rank the top 5 domains or ideas you're interested.
From there, we'll group you into clusters based on your interests.

Then, we'll have a team-matching session, which can be either online or offline.

If you already have a team, you're all set.
If not, you can meet people in your batch and decide if you want to work together for the month. You'll match up from your specific interests and expertise.
The team size can be from 3 to 6 people.
The team and networking sessions will always be open through the duration of the batch.
If you don't like the way things are anymore, no worries. You can pivot or leave the team anytime!

Let's meet your first mentor!

On Day 1, your team will get to meet with your first mentor, who'll be assisting you through your workshop and your journey to launch your very first product.

Homework: Research and think of some problems that people and businesses have faced in those domains.

T-29 (Day 2): What's your problem, and who has it?

Question: What's the problem area you're interested in doing, and who has experienced this problem?

Mission: Define your problem statement and customer persona.

Outcome: You'll have your first short problem statement that shows what your problem is, and first description of who is your most extreme customer (or "Cookie Monster").

Note that this is just a proto-persona, and your later ideas WILL definitely be changed later based on the increased amount of data. Don't get too stuck on this!

For the rest of this program, we'll start fast with the Lean Startup model for fast iteration and validation, and use the Design Thinking framework and Lean Canvas as a general guideline. We'll learn about UX for user research and crafting user-centric experiences.

We prioritize extremely fast iteration above anything else. The quicker you can develop the prototype and validate, the better. After all, we only have 30 days before launch :)

We prioritize Hacker Culture in Launch a Month. Don't sit around and fill canvases all day. Make sure you iterate and pivot as fast as you can, and don't stick to an idea!

We expect you to have your first paper prototype by Day 4. Let's go!

Introduction to Lean & Javelin Board

Customer, Problem, (Solution), Assumption, Method/Criteria
Result, Decision, Learning

First Experiment - Problem Brainstorming (20 min)

This is the empathize phase of design thinking.

Typically, the iteration speed should be super fast, so we should be able to get 1 experiment every 20 minutes.

The first experimentation sprint will take the longest. Let's start with selecting the problem.

Review the ideas from yesterday's brainstorming session. You can view the ideas from previous batches as well.

Do a 10-minute problem silent brainstorm.

Write down any ideas you have on the voting tool.
While you write, you can mark Thumbs Up on the ideas you liked, or Concern on the ideas you still have doubts on.
Everyone can help add a Tag to any ideas for grouping.
Don't jump on to the solution yet! Focus on validating if the problem exists first.

After the 10-minute brainstorming mark is done, a 10-minute voting period begins.

Make sure to vote the ideas you like!
You can group ideas by adding a new tag.
Feel free to discuss with your team here.
If you're interested in an idea or if it's not clear, you can Ask for Clarification. This is to avoid everyone speaking the obvious and save time.
If you have additional ideas, feel free to keep adding new ones here.

By the end of the 10-minute voting period, the team decides on the final vote to pick the idea.

The rest of the ideas goes into the idea pile, sorted by votes. When we decide to pivot, we select a new ideas from this pile.

First Experiment - Quick Proto-Persona (14 min)

Refer to Javelin and the Diamond Diagram. We got the problem, so let's move on to the customer.

Who is the Cookie Monster, or the extreme user for our cases? Who are most likely to love this problem to be fixed?

Can you think of someone close to you, or that you know personally? Write out a short description of them that others can empathize with.

// Learn about how to build your first proto-persona. This should be brief, as it's not validated.

Now, let's run a 7 brainstorm - 7 vote sprint. This will take 14 minutes.

First Experiment - Assumption

We now have our problem statement and proto-persona. Cool!

Now, what is the "riskiest" assumption that we don't have data on, that can invalidate the problem if the assumption is not true?

For example, a teacher don't need extra sleep time if they already got plenty.

Discuss with your group, and choose one.

First Experiment - Method and Criteria

How are we going to validate this?

One way is to interview someone...

Ask if there are any person in the batch who matches our problem and persona. If there are, why not try to interview them!
Call up one of your friends and interview them.
Get out of the building! Let's meet IRL, and interview someone.
Post an online posting to interview.

Another way is by doing research on the internet...

Look up queries and stats on Pantip, Gartner, etc.

How do we interview and gather insight?

Quick Guideline on How to Interview. Gathering insight is the most important part here!
Write 10 interview questions you and your team are going to ask.

Setting a Success Criteria

How do you consider your experiment a success or not? Set a criteria.

First, set how many people you are going to interview in each experiment. 5? 10? 15? 20?

Then, determine your success criteria. For example, if 10 out of 20 people agree, we have a successful experiment. Otherwise, it failed.

Don't be afraid to fail. You WILL fail on your first try and that's to be expected, period. You WILL fail countless times. Don't worry about it and just pivot.

Let's try it out!

Have a look at the board. If you match one of the personas AND/OR has a problem similar to the written problem statement, mark Me too! to let them know someone in the batch had this problem. Then, try to interview them!
You can try to interview your friend in the team if they match the persona as well, as a practice round.
However, most of the time this does NOT happen! So, write an Interview Plan on how, where or whom you're going to interview for the time being.

Result and Decision

After you've interviewed them, determine the result based on your criteria. There are two choices you can make, pivot or presevere.

If your criteria is 10 out of 20:

If 10 or more customers agree there is a problem, you should presevere. Continue the next experiment with this problem. You can dig down and prove more assumptions, or think of a solution and show it to those customers.
Otherwise, if below 10 customers agree, you should pivot. Try another experiment with another problem statement.

Homework: Prepare to go through at least 4 experimentation, interview at least 20 customers, and come up with a clear-cut, 10-word problem statement.

T-28 (Day 3): How do you prove your niche exists?

Mission: Prove that your niche exists by:

Going through at least 4 experimentation sprints
Interviewing at least 20 customers by today and come up with a clear-cut, 10-word problem statement. Make sure to gather enough insight and take notes of it!
Make a quick report/presentation to show the rest of the batch!

Outcome: You'll get REAL insights if your problem exists.

T-27: Who is your ?

Mission: Make a persona