{"id":357,"date":"2017-02-16T10:37:50","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T10:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/startup-blog\/?page_id=357"},"modified":"2017-05-26T11:00:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T11:00:21","slug":"enterprise-ireland-new-frontiers-programme-phase-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/enterprise-ireland-new-frontiers-programme-phase-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers Programme Phase 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2017, I attended Phase 1<\/a> of the New Frontiers Programme<\/a> which is run by Enterprise Ireland<\/a>. The programme ran two nights a week over six weeks. There was no fee to attend. I would highly recommend this programme to anyone starting a new enterprise, whether your idea is just an idea or is a semi-developed product. What follows is a series of posts which give an outline of course material for each night. Included in the posts are\u00a0some interesting points that I\u00a0found very beneficial.<\/p>\n

There are 11 posts in total but I will be publishing one every few days. Each of the speakers and facilitators are aware of my posting these pieces.<\/p>\n

Niall<\/p>\n

Night 1 – Introduction<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Opening night was very encouraging. The session started at 5.30pm but as soon as\u00a0I arrived at 5.20pm I was in a room with 21\u00a0entrepreneurs chatting. I immediately learned that the course was not open to all and that some attendees knew of people that applied that didn’t get accepted. This was encouraging to hear. Our facilitators for the evening brought…Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 2 – Idea Exploration and Creative Thinking<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Tonight was our first night in The LINC Blanchardstown<\/a>\u00a0and the topic for the evening was Idea Exploration and Creative Thinking. The session was hosted by John O’Loughlin<\/a>. Before our session started it was explained to us that we should see challenges to our business ideas as positives. Essentially, it is good to get negative comments as it is a way for us to discover…Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 3 \u2013 Market Opportunity Problem \/ Pain ID<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Ron got us thinking about our elevator pitches. The elevator pitch should succinctly cover the first three points. At this point, he asked everyone to briefly describe their product\/service. My answer was \u2018An online appointment booking system\u2019. This got me thinking, though, that I need a better description. So here is… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 4 \u2013 Market Analysis \/ Customer Identification<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On the way to tonight\u2019s talk, I had an interesting thought, \u201cWhat is the next step for this startup and what, if anything is stopping me getting there.\u201d Nothing too groundbreaking but a worthwhile exercise to answer this every few weeks. Tonight\u2019s facilitator was Roddy Feely. I was… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 5 \u2013 Route To Market<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

For the second session in a row, tonight\u2019s facilitator was Roddy Feely. Roddy started off by explaining what he meant by the term Route To Market (RTM). Essentially, the route to market is how you go about getting your product or service in front of your customer. Much of tonight\u2019s… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 6 – Lean Business Model Canvas<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Early on in the talk, Alan mentioned how our businesses must be \u2018Repeatable and Scalable\u2019, in other words, we cannot be tweaking the product for each prospect\u2026this struck a cord with me on today of all days. Alan then said \u2018most startups fail from a lack of customers rather than a lack of development\u2019, again this was very much on the topic from where my head was at…. Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 7 \u2013 Marketing Communications<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In preparation for tonight’s class which was again facilitated by Roddy Feely, it was requested that we read an extract from What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School. The lesson seemed to be the importance of knowing your customer and knowing your market. As an illustration of this point…. Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 8 – Legal Issues<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Tonight’s talk was given by Fred Logue (Twitter, LinkedIn). Fred is a former engineer turned solicitor (with FP Logue Solicitors) and he managed to make what, to me, is an uninteresting subject relatively lively and upbeat. Fred covered many topics and answered questions from the group as well as he could. However, as we only had two… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 9 \u2013 Business Case Document and Team Makeup<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Alan then spoke about the different types of growth that startups can experience and referenced the hockey stick graph versus a straight line growth graph. After a further group exercise around The Lean Canvas, some useful and informative interaction occurred between Alan and the group. Some takeaways from this were… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Night 10 \u2013 Financial Planning<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

There was an interesting point made right at the start, 97% of Irish employment is through small and medium enterprises. With that in mind, no two small firms are the same so direct advice should be sought as opposed to copying second-hand advice. In the first half of the evening, Gail spoke about the differences between acting as a sole trader… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nights 11 & 12 \u2013 Presenting The Case<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The final two nights of the course require the participants to present their project to a panel. The presentations were supposed to last for four minutes and be followed by a few short questions. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the first night of presentations… Read More<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2017, I attended Phase 1 of the New Frontiers Programme which is run by Enterprise Ireland. The programme ran two nights a week over six weeks. There was no fee to attend. I would highly recommend this programme to anyone starting a new enterprise, whether your idea is just an idea or is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-357","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/357\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookinghawk.com\/online-booking-system\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}