Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, and Startups Learning Cohort: Jobs to be Done and Customer Discovery Best Practices

Session Description: Jobs to be Done and Customer Discovery Best Practices.

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, understanding your customers' needs and desires is paramount to success. Join us for an enlightening educational session designed for entrepreneurs seeking to elevate their customer-centric strategies. This session will delve into two pivotal aspects of customer-driven innovation: "Jobs to Be Done" theory as conceptualized by Clayton Christensen, and best practices for effective customer discovery.

Discover the groundbreaking concept of "Jobs to Be Done" and how it revolutionizes the way we understand customer needs. Delve into the essence of this theory, which focuses on the notion that customers "hire" products or services to accomplish specific tasks or solve problems in their lives. Learn how this framework transcends traditional demographic segmentation to reveal the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of customer needs.

Embark on a journey of effective customer discovery, a process that empowers entrepreneurs to intimately understand their target audience and validate assumptions. Explore strategies to initiate meaningful conversations, gather actionable insights, and refine your business offerings based on authentic customer feedback.

Learn how to seamlessly integrate the Jobs to Be Done framework into your customer discovery efforts. Understand how uncovering customers' fundamental "jobs" can guide product innovation, create competitive advantage, and foster customer loyalty.

Cohort Overview: A growing number of startups are emerging from universities and research institutes — young enterprises that are accelerating innovation and changing the game in social entrepreneurship and in every field imaginable. Increasingly, graduate students are the founders or co-founders behind these new businesses.At Princeton, there is a robust innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem that connects graduate students, postdocs, alumni, faculty, venture capitalists, and industry.

During the course of 8 weeks, this program serves as a “crash course” for understanding the world of entrepreneurship, VC funding and startups. You will learn about the lingo, the economics, the process, and the landscape—and meet members of the broader innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. You will also hear first-hand from graduate alumni founders about their entrepreneurial journeys -- and all of the challenges and successes they had along the way. The cohort culminates with a group project where graduate students will work across disciplines to synthesize and apply their learnings.

Cohort sessions are led by Princeton alums Jim Cohen ’86 and Mark Poag ’93, general partners of Fitz Gate Ventures. Fitz Gate Ventures is an early stage, network-driven venture capital firm.

For the first time this year, the cohort will include two guest lectures taught by Christina Pellicane, Assistant Director of Innovation at Princeton and Lead Instructor, NSF I-Corps Northeast Hub.

By participating in this cohort, you will see why the Venture Capital and Startups Learning Cohort has become one of GradFUTURES’ most popular offerings and why Jim and Mark were each awarded the Clio Award from the Princeton Grad School for the value this cohort has brought to Princeton graduate students over the years.