Seeing the Future Isn't Enough
Startup founders can see the future clearly. They can see the massive opportunity, the path to transformative change, the potential for incredible impact.
But most of the time, in the early stages, things do not go as planned. Despite the vision, the thinking, and all of the work and determination, you can hit walls that stop you dead in your tracks. The gap between possibility and reality feels frustratingly wide.
Yes, there's endless startup advice out there. Books, podcasts, accelerator programs - they all promise the formula for success. But as you dive deeper into developing your startup, the reality becomes all too clear: generic advice only gets you so far.
Your real challenges are far more nuanced, more complex, and more specific to your unique situation.
Some things are harder than expected
Finding Your People
Let's be direct: without customers, you don't have a business. You need validation that people will pay for your solution. Maybe you've landed some early customers, but sustainable growth can be sporadic and elusive. Why isn't it scaling like you expected? What's missing?
Making the Right Decisions
Your resources are limited. Your time is precious. Your team is stretched thin. With a thousand possible actions you could take, which ones will actually matter? This isn't just about working harder - it's about knowing where to focus your limited resources for maximum impact.
Getting Through to People
Your vision is crystal clear in your head, but are others really getting it? Whether you're talking to potential customers, partners, or investors, their response tells the whole story. If your message isn't landing, if people aren't lighting up with understanding, something's off. Maybe it's the audience. Maybe it's the messaging. Maybe it's the underlying logic. But until you crack this code, everything else stays harder than it needs to be.
Raising Money
Even if you have a great story, raising money is difficult, particularly in this environment. How much do you really need? What is missing from your pitch? What is the right approach to raise the funds you need?
Venture Design: A Path to Clarity and Precision
Venture design is the design discipline for startup company development. It is a combination of strategic frameworks, systematic validation, and evidence-based decision-making to create a clear path through the uncertainty of early-stage development. You can create a context for decision making and have a structured approach to testing your assumptions, understanding your market, and building something people actually want.
Seeing the complete venture design of your startup will help you:
- See your biggest risks and core assumptions in a new light
- Identify and plan experiments that generate real insights
- Clarify and validate your core assumptions
- Make strategic decisions based on evidence and context, not guesswork
- Get more specific in order to craft messaging that resonates with your target audience
- Craft a capital strategy that matches with your venture design and makes sense to investors
Think of venture design as your map and compass in the wilderness of early-stage development. It won't eliminate uncertainty - nothing can do that - but it will give you the context and tools to make better decisions, move with more precision, and dramatically increase your odds of hitting your more crucial success metrics.
Our Venture Design Methodology
The KeyChange methodology organizes the key models in a framework to help you see the whole venture design. These models are used to identify risk and provide a context for prioritization for early-stage learning activities.
Customer Model: Who you are creating value for, the situation they are in, and, in their own words, the problem that needs solving
Market Model: Map the landscape of existing alternatives the customer sees, and understand how you can positioned against or alongside incumbents to maximize success
Business Model: Describe how you create, deliver, and capture value
Financial Model: Answer the question “Is this worth it?” and “How much is it worth?” This is important because the founder is the first investor. This will help you determine your capital strategy and communicate effectively with investors.
If you have the question "What is "Venture Design?" Find out more here
What to expect
We offer our suite of services either directly to founders as private clients or to program managers to add to their curriculum. You can count on us for:
- Dignity. We value your unique perspective and are committed to hearing about your journey, where you want to go, and what is important to you about how to get there.
- Tools. We will equip you with the right tools that increase your competency as a founder. We bring the tools and you bring the knowledge of your case. Together we will see more clearly.
- Structure. Our trusted process, staged approach, and precise vocabulary will give you the clarity and confidence to know what to do next.
- Collaboration. We are on your team. We will be your thought partners and collaborators as you take on finding what works.
Maksim Soltan
Founder, Avro.ai
"KeyChange transformed how I now view creating and running a startup.”
Ashleigh Marie Brown
Founder & CEO,
CLAIRE Fertility
"The KeyChange team is a wealth of precise and applicable information for founders."
Jameson Pitts
Co-founder at Lynx
"We credit the KeyChange method almost entirely to the early traction that allowed us to raise our pre-seed round from an institutional investor.”
Who We Are
KeyChange is a venture design practice that helps early-stage startup founders model their company, find customer traction, raise the right capital, and get to product-market fit.
We specialize in equipping founders with the language, tools, and strategies to more effectively translate imagination and ingenuity into the bright and sustainable future they want to build for all of us.
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