Clean Tech Entrepreneurship Bootcamp

Are you getting ready to create a clean technology product or service? Are you exploring clean energy opportunities? Is your company exploring entering the clean energy economy? Do you have a clean tech idea and need to build a solid business plan?

Do you want to build your clean tech business plan and get ready to raise funds from venture or angel or corporate investors?

This is a 5-day workshop that combines Tony Seba’s 3 Stanford entrepreneurship courses:
- Clean Energy Market and Investment Opportunities
- Strategic Marketing of Clean Tech and High Tech
- Finance for Entrepreneurs, Strategic Marketing, and Engineers

Here’s a sample description of the 5-day schedule

Day 1 - Exploration of Opportunities.

What are the market needs? What is the future of energy? Where are the large market opportunities today and into the future?

We start with Tony Seba’s Clean Energy Opportunity Framework – a clear and concise view of clean energy and clean tech  from generation to transmission to storage to use.  We  look at the present and the future architecture of energy including sources, financial viability, technologies, and scalability.   We look at the opportunities in the short-term (today there are billions of dollars in unclaimed market opportunities); in the medium term; and in the long term (over the next four decades.)

Drawing from Seba’s real-life clean energy entrepreneurial experience, as well as case studies, examples, and frameworks that the instructor developed for his Stanford course and his recently published book “Solar Trillions – 7 Market and Investment Opportunities in the Emerging Clean-Energy Economy” – ” we analyze opportunities worth more than $35 trillion in the build-out of the clean energy economy over the next four decades.

Take away from day 1: ideas for where the markets are and where you could develop a clean technology product or service.

” It was an amazing experience and one that I won’t forget anytime soon. Your passion, caring, and deep industry knowledge are simply astonishing.”
Joshua Hurst, Oracle

Days 2 & 3 – Market Strategy and Business Plan Development.

How do you go successfully from idea or technology to product launch to broad market adoption?  Where is your first market opportunity? How do you build a strategy to create or sustain a winning product in new, fast-growth high tech or clean tech markets in a business environment facing rapid globalization, accelerating innovation, disappearing industry boundaries, and relentless competition from new and established players?

You will discover the fundamental rules, tools, frameworks that lay the groundwork for a winning business and product marketing strategy. We will systematically analyze how to turn an idea, technology, product, or service and turn it into a winning business. The course framework methodically breaks down the strategy building process so you can learn how to create adoptable products and services, how to look for the most attractive market, clear positioning, how to find the right customer base, how to build the right product, how to size an emerging market, how to expand profitably, how to build the right partnerships, how to price for success, develop the right channels at the right time, how to brand, and promote the product cost-effectively and efficiently, how and when to use social media marketing. 

We draw from Seba’s real-life clean tech and high tech entrepreneurial experience, as well as research, case studies, examples, and frameworks that the instructor developed for his Stanford course and his book “Winners Take All – 9 Fundamental Rules of High Tech Strategy”

“What I have learned in your classes has been helping me in project after project after project. I recently built a product that already generates $80 Million in annual sales by following most of the rules that you outlined and by sticking with the decision process you recommend.”

- Stoyan Kenderov, Director of Product Strategy, Amdocs

Take away from days 2&3: your market strategy and most elements of your business plan are sketched out: The Opportunity, The Customer, The Pain/Market Need, The Product, Value Proposition, Market Size, Pricing Strategy, Distribution Channel Strategy, Partnership Strategy, Positioning, Branding, Promotion…

“I really liked the fact that, with some swift penmanship and open eyes, I could rough out the strategic marketing plan for our new robotics product right there in the class as you taught it.”
– Glen Slater, CEO, INRO – Robotic Vehicle Automation

Days 4 & 5 – Finance: Understanding Investors; Developing Capital and Cash Budgets and Financial Projections; Getting Ready to Fundraise.

On days 4 & 5 we give you the core knowledge, language and tools of finance to:

• Prepare entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to raise funds for new products, projects, and companies.
• Understand the financial tools, language and perspectives that investors, CFO, and CEOs use when evaluating new products, projects or deals.
• Build superior cash budgets and capital budgets for strategy development and business planning.
• Use financial tools to make value-based decisions on product development, project development, business plan development and market strategy.

Participants learn key concepts in finance such as cash budgeting, capital budgeting, time value of money, discounted cash flow analysis, break-even analysis, sensitivity analysis, scenario analysis, ROI, NPV, IRR, payback, management options, and growth models. The difference between cash and profits, ways to value a venture, deciding and prioritizing multiple projects or products.

Take away from days 4&5: financial tools and language you’ll need to build the business plan and fundraise.

“Tony Seba has given us both the strategy and implementation methods we needed to completely transform our business with clarity and confidence.”
- Richard Gill, CEO, Cyberglue Software Ltd

(Optional Day 6 - Pitching to Investors.)

Put together all of the above and pitch your business to investors.  Can you pitch your new business in a clear, concise, and compelling way to attract investor interest?  Can you do it in 6 minutes?  How about 3 minutes?  Can you state your value proposition in 12 seconds or less? Can you do this without giving technology details?

The Clean Tech Entrepreneurship Bootcamp has given you all the elements you need to do this:  you’ll know the customer pain and need, you’ll have a clear value proposition, you’ll be able to communicate the market opportunity, you’ll have the financial projections and know the language to express it.

This optional day (or half day) will give you the opportunity to put it all together, pitch your business, and get feedback to improve the message and delivery.

Sample schedule for the 5-day bootcamp:

This 5-day workshop that combines Tony Seba’s 3 Stanford entrepreneurship courses. Find more details on each of these courses by following these links.
- Clean Energy Market and Investment Opportunities
- Strategic Marketing of Clean Tech and High Tech
- Finance for Entrepreneurs, Strategic Marketing, and Engineers

Day 1

• Clean Energy – myths, secrets, and the coming clean energy infrastructure boom.
• Why many things are not what they say and why this presents entrepreneurial opportunities.
• Clean Energy Choices – what are our energy choices? How do we choose? Wind, geothermal, hydro, bio-energy, green nuclear, clean coal, and solar? What are the limits and viability of each one?
• Clean Energy and Clean-tech Trillion-dollar Opportunity Framework.
• Utility Scale Opportunities.
• Industrial Scale Opportunities.
• Island Scale  and Village Scale Opportunities.
• Commercial and Residential Scale Opportunities.
• Energy Storage Opportunities.
• Clean Water Opportunities.
• The Smart Grid Opportunities.

Day 2

• Are you selling a technology or a product? Do you have the right product for the right market? Why most companies still sell the wrong products.
• Understanding how customers want you to build the product.
• Understanding tech customer needs and how to create the right value proposition. How to identify the most promising customers and markets.
• Prioritizing customers, market segments, technology development, product development, application development. Where are the right market opportunities. How do you decide on the most profitable market to target? Total Addressable Market and market sizing: how do you believably measure the size of a market that doesn’t yet exist?
• Strategic positioning. Getting past the clutter and into the mind of the customer and the market. Why it’s important to build a positioning matrix.
• How to make your product easy to buy. Developing products that are easy to adopt.
• What is the right pricing strategy? Understanding economic value to the customer, switching costs, and externalities and their implication in setting the right pricing strategy. Skimming vs. penetration pricing. How to set and maximize prices. Setting the right global pricing strategy.
• How to build the right sales and distribution channel strategy. How do you decide what channels to use? When do you use each channel? A simple framework can help you decide.
• How to build winning partnerships. The most important reason to partner in high-technology markets. Who should you partner with? How do you manage partners the right way?

Day 3

• Product categories. How do you know if you might be in a new product category? (Hint: it’s not about ‘radical’, ’subversive’, or ‘revolutionary’ technology!)
• What’s wrong with the technology adoption lifecycle? The right way to build a strategy throughout the adoption lifecycle. How to grow and expand your markets profitably.
• Competition in high tech.
• Case Study: building a profitable, growth-oriented strategic partnership program in the enterprise software market.
• Building a winning branding strategy – without advertising, without a large budget. Why brand names matter and why most companies do it wrong. The importance of stories. Branding vs. Positioning.
• Case Study: pricing a new product in a global market for a small biotech company.
• How to build a winning promotion strategy – without a big budget. How to use Social Media. Content and engagement. Do you need to advertise? When and how?
• Go-to-market strategy. Putting together the strategic marketing plan.

Day 4

• Understanding Financial Statements – Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement. How are these connected? Annual Reports.
• Understanding Performance analysis and ratios – Profitability, liquidity, leverage, and activity ratios
• Cost of capital, Economic Value Added (EVA)
• Understanding Cash Management – Cash budgeting, working capital, cash conversion cycle.
• Understanding Time Value of Money – Time Value of Money, Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis, Present Value (PV), Future Value (FV).
• Selecting and prioritizing investment alternatives to increase shareholder wealth – Capital budgeting, payback, NPV, IRR, MIRR.

Day 5

• Building Capital budgets and Cash budgets
  • Capital budgeting with timing and risk
  • Sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis
• New Product Finance
  • Developing a capital budget for a new product or company
  • Building, valuing, and prioritizing the investment – what a new product proposal should incorporate
• Venture Capital Finance
  • Company Valuation, Acquisition Valuation
  • Case: Valuation of Venture Capital deals
• Project Finance
  • Project Finance, Project Valuation, Selection Case
  • Case: Valuation of a Solar Power Plant Project
• Selling on a Value Basis
  • Analyzing and building a product/customer ROI case.
  • Case: software or telecom product ROI analysis