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Step by Step Guide

Page history last edited by Tristan Kromer 11 years, 2 months ago

* This guide is meant to be updated. If you have suggestions, please add them.

 


Customer Development

 

Before you go out, set up a lot of infrastructure, and book a 3000 seat venue, remember that your group is a startup! So do it lean.

 

First, get out of the building and talk to the local entrepreneurs.

 

Who are they? Hackers? Hustlers? Designers?

 

What do they want? Speakers? Workshops?

 

Customer discovery is your first step to make sure you're not going to build something no one wants.

 

Setup Your Meetup Group

 

Once you know what you need to build, it's time to set up some basic infrastructure and make sure you have at least a landing page where people can sign up and find your group.

 

Setting up your meetup group is a bit tedious, but shouldn't take too long. We recommend using meetup.com and you can use our list of recommended settings and the branding guide. However, some groups run straight off of facebook or their own infrastructure.

 

Promote Your Group

 

Once you have a place to signup, you need to drive some traffic and awareness. There's a list of suggested tactics and tips, but your own experience doing customer development is your best guide to promotion. If you've been talking to people, you have already found some early adopters, so invite them to your group and get them to help spread the word.

 

Choose a Format for Your Meetup 

 

There are a lot of different ways to structure your meetup group depending on what people want, what resources you have, and how many entrepreneurs you'll be hosting. There's a list of suggested formats, but of course you need to use what you learned during customer discovery to create the right format for your group.

 

Find a Venue

 

Finding a venue is obviously very location specific, but there are usually a few good places to go. Make sure you pick a venue the right size. A venue for 200 people will make a group of 20 people feel uncomfortable. Same with 200 people in a room made for 20.

 

  • Co-working spaces
    • These spaces make their money off of renting desks to entrepreneurs, so they're very happy to have you bring a whole bunch of entrepreneur's to their space. They should give you the space for free. Don't let them charge you. 
  • Local companies with a lean approach 
    • A company in the middle of recruiting likes to let people know what they're up to. Companies often want to recruit people who already fit with their company culture. So if there are companies out there operating lean and trying to grow, they'll want to give you their space to promote their recruiting efforts. Again, they should give you the space for free. 
  • Lawyers 
    • Some law firms specialize in startup law and will want to present a friendly face to the local community. They also have a lot of money. Make them pay for the beer too. 

 

Run your First Event 

 

Running your first event can be a bit overwhelming so get prepared beforehand. Checklists may seem silly, but they use them on the space shuttle so don't knock 'em.

 

We have some standard checklists in word format as well as some graphics for signs you can use, but you'll probably want to customize them. We've also started a page for organizers to put tips and tricks.

 

(needs to be expanded...)

 


 

Additional Links

 

 

Questions? Contact us!   

 

 

 

 

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