Announcing the 2016 Lean Startup Week Program

 (a.k.a Everything You’ll Need to Think Like an Entrepreneur)

You’ve read the book. Perhaps you’ve also come to one of our Lean Startup Night meetups. You’ve watched our webcasts with the founders of General Assembly and Farmgirl Flowers and experts Ash Maurya and Laura Klein. Maybe you’ve even put what you’ve learned into launching a startup or forming a Lean team inside an enterprise org. But there are always roadblocks, questions, failures, stubborn problems, and stubborn people to solve for.

If you’re serious about proactively shaping your business for the future and equipping your team with the latest tools necessary for long-term, sustainable growth, there’s no other place for you and your team to be Oct. 31-Nov. 6 than Lean Startup Week in San Francisco.

This is our biggest and best conference yet. Lean Startup Week offers even more for your team this year—concentrated strategy sessions, networking opportunities, mentoring sessions, startup and enterprise tracked master classes, keynotes by industry titans, Q&As with Eric Ries, coaches specializing in everything from performance breathing to Lean marketing, coworking sessions, and bootcamps where you can apply what you’ve learned during this full Lean Startup immersion.

Lean Startup Week is more than just a crash course in Eric’s books. This is your rare chance to hear the secrets and winning strategies being used in startups, government organizations, enterprise companies, big tech, and other businesses around the world. You’ll hear their case studies. You’ll learn from their mistakes. You’ll get your burning questions answered from multiple perspectives. You’ll meet like-minded innovators. And you’ll return from this full week of training with actionable plans for how your team will operate in a marketplace where both customer expectations and management practices are rapidly changing.

Welcome to Lean Startup Week 2016

Here’s what to expect during your Lean Startup immersion at the state-of-the-art Pier 27 conference center, with new details regularly being added to the schedule as we get closer to the big week.

Monday, October 31 (Gold Pass): Startup Tours, Enterprise Training, Unconference

We’ll welcome all Gold teams and individual Gold Pass members with a mix of Startup Tours, an enterprise-focused training summit, and an attendee-led Unconference (in partnership with Lean Startup Circle).

Gold Passholders can register early and head off on the track of their choice: either tours of groundbreaking startups like Pivotal and the non-profit Defy Ventures, among other offerings, or enterprise training with Lean Startup Co. at Breather.

The enterprise training session is a new offering this year that we’re especially excited about: our expert faculty will host five hours of customized master classes for corporate intrapreneurs in a limited-capacity, intimate classroom setting. (Signups required in advance, more info to come).

In the evening, we’ll have a Halloween-themed Lean Startup Night happy hour for our Gold Pass holders. It’ll be held at Runway from 5-6:30 pm with special guests (including Eric) to be announced soon.

Tuesday, November 1 (Gold Pass): Healthy Performance Practices, Master Classes, Ignite Talks 

We’ll start with icebreakers that’ll energize your mind and body. Choose from running a 5K with ultrarunner Zoe Romano (who ran the Tour de France route), performance breathing with Stanford’s Robert Lee, or meditation and yoga classes with our awesome Lean Startup team members Stacy Conlon and Dave Cunningham.

At The NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center, Eric will join serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis for a Q&A session with attendees (attendance is limited, you’ll need to register with your Gold Pass to join).

Once we’ve helped you get into the right mental space, we’re diving into a half-day of master classes. These workshops will be led by Lean Startup’s rock star expert network and are dedicated to the issues our community regularly tackles, including:

• Ben Yoskovitz on using Lean Analytics for startup and enterprise organizations, from what makes a good metric to the stages and cycles of Lean Analytics
• Lean Startup Co. faulty member Hugh Molotosi on Lean Startup as a management philosophy
• Amy Jo Kim on the the step-by-step secrets of Superfan Whisperers, and how successful startups courted passionate, high-need customers
• Laura Klein introduces attendees to the User Map, a set of 16 comprehensive questions that help you build the product your customers want
• Justin Wilcox on how to get buy-in on Lean Startup through customer discovery interviews, the three horizons of innovation, and the FOCUS framework
• Moves the Needle co-founders Brant Cooper and Aaron Eden on the business practices that help you create passionate customers

These sessions, which range from the basics of the methodology to more advanced topics, are excellent opportunities for your team to get hands-on Lean Startup training together while interacting with mentors who’ve been with Lean Startup for years.

In the evening, we’ll host our popular Ignite Talks, where select members from our international community have the chance to entertain us with five minute talks about an aspect of Lean Startup pertinent to the work they’re doing. Our Ignite Opening Reception is the official kickoff of Lean Startup Week for all levels of badgeholders. It’s also a great way to learn about all the various ways people are using Lean Startup in a format favoring short attention spans. We pulled from a diverse group of Ignite applicants, folks doing great work in city government, global non-profits, parenting & pregnancy support, and other areas where innovative practices have had a huge impact.

Wednesday, November 2 (Main Conference Day 1, All Pass Holders): Keynote Sessions, Speed Mentoring, Networking Dinners 

Because we have a full week together this year, we decided to kick off the main conference with a single track of activities broken up into four keynote blocks. Now everyone has a chance to hear and absorb a variety of stories and case studies. We have a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers, including industry vets Guy Kawasaki, IBM’s Phil Gilbert, GV’s Jake Knapp, and Microsoft’s Tren Griffin, and rising star founders such as Hint Water’s Kara Goldin, General Assembly’s Matt Brimer, and Breather’s Caterina Rizzi.

Whether these entrepreneurs are speaking about a relatively young business or an internationally established company, the overarching theme here is growing and scaling innovation techniques. It’s no longer enough to have an idea and put a product together. These experts from across industries and around the world will share how they’ve built long-term strategies for innovation into the core and culture of what they do, from tech to telecommunications to government to morning dance parties(!).

Talks by these prophetic leaders will be broken up into the following four sessions: the definition of and practical issues facing the modern startup, the application of Lean Startup with other methodologies, scaling Lean Startup practices, and Lean Startup put into practice, from corporate to government and non-profit.

We’ll also be offering Speed Mentoring on Nov. 2. All attendees will have the chance to work through specific issues with one of 40 amazing experts from a variety of industries in 20-minute sessions (advance registration will be required, we’ll release the list of mentors over the next few weeks).

And we’ll close the day with a conversation between Eric and a Lean Startup Co. faculty member about the current state of Lean Startup.

We’ll have plenty of co-working opportunities throughout the conference, but if you’d like to concentrate your networking skills over dinner and drinks, you can sign up for one of our Lean Startup Week networking dinners on Nov. 2 (details to come).

Thursday, November 3 (Main Conference Day 2, All Pass Holders): keynote talks from Airbnb & GE; breakout sessions on startup, enterprise & DIY tracks; mini-intensive sessions; The Startup Chat live; closing sessions; Startup Grind Happy Hour  

Nov. 3 will be a day of breakout sessions—discussions, presentations, and fireside chats—themed along specific tracks so you can choose the topics most applicable to your organization. We’ve labeled these sessions as startup, enterprise, or DIY. DIY is meant to cover a number of different topics, from design to government to funding, as well as the future of work, social good, and government. (Kelvin Kwong of Jawbone will discuss how to design behavior changes in your customers, for example.) The startup track will feature founders from places like Kit (acquired by Shopify) and 18F sharing how they’ve built their organizations so you can learn how they’ve achieved their level of success. For enterprise sessions, we have some great case studies from pros inside Pearson, Telefonica, and Cisco who’ll also discuss team collaboration and leadership development.

Although we’ve focused these groupings for easier scheduling, we highly recommend crossing the hall between startup, enterprise, and DIY chats to get a little of everything—or send your team members to different sessions and compare what you’ve learned at the end of the day.

In the late afternoon, we’ll host intensive sessions at Breather. These four 45-minute interactive discussions will take small groups through such specific topics such as Lean marketing, Lean government orgs, and the founding of Breather.

Also on Nov. 3, we’ll have two special keynotes: from Joe Zadeh, VP of product at Airbnb, and Viv Goldstein from GE’s FastWorks program who will also engage in a joint conversation about intrapreneurship in their organizations.

Throughout the day, we’ll also have some quickie sessions on offer, where you can learn about, say, best practices for live blogging or take a stab at meditation during your lunch hour. And speaking of eating, we’ve invited some of San Francisco’s tastiest food trucks to park on the Pier 27 lot, so there’s no way you’ll go hungry.

We’ll close out the day with AOL co-founder Steve Case, Eric, and MIT Sloan Management Review editor-in-chief Paul Michelman in a sure to be fascinating conversation about the future of entrepreneurship (and, if you’ve been following Eric’s work this year, you know the future of the Long Term Stock Exchange will be involved in that discussion, too).

And then all attendees will have the option of spending happy hour with Startup Grind.

Friday, November 4-Sunday, November 6 (Gold Pass): 500 Startups’ WMD conference, Techstars’ Startup Weekend bootcamp

Your Gold Pass also gives you access to 500 Startups’ WMD, a one-day conference focused on specific tactics for growing and scaling your startup.

Or if you’d like some team time to collaborate on ideas cooked up during Lean Startup Week, we’re offering coworking options at WeWork and RocketSpace for the day.

Finally, put everything you’ve learned with us into action during a Techstars’ Startup Weekend bootcamp to close out Lean Startup Week. This is an excellent opportunity for Gold Pass teams to put ideas into motion and test out those new Lean Startup tools in an environment that fully supports trial, error, and rapid experimentation.

Wanna get more involved with Lean Startup Week? 

We’re putting a call out for Lean Startup Ambassadors, an intimate group of dedicated Lean Startup practitioners across a variety of sectors who will help guide attendees through the conference program. Ambassadors gain special benefits by representing Lean Startup Co., sharing their insights, and engaging with the broader Lean Startup community. Learn more and apply here.

Questions? What haven’t we covered here that you’d like to know about the conference? You can email us with general inquires [email protected]. If you’re interested in becoming a Lean Startup Week sponsor or want to buy a group ticket bundle for your team, email [email protected] and we’ll point you to the right direction.

Don’t wait another year to train your team on lasting, sustainable innovation. Grab your ticket to Lean Startup Week today. Fall pricing ends October 15.

We’ve got a pass for everyone:

• Gold Pass – Get the full experience of Lean Startup immersion on Oct 31 – Nov 6. Best for serious entrepreneurs and teams who want to bring practical skills and lessons back to their organizations.
• Silver Pass – Get access to the main conference on Nov 2 & 3. Best for those who want to get inspired with a taste of what we offer in two jam-packed days.
• For those who are in early-stage startups, nonprofit orgs, or are full-time students, apply for a Bootstrapper Pass or get involved as volunteer.
• And if you just can’t make the trip to San Francisco this year, join or host one of our livestream meetups happening around the world on Nov 2nd.

Can’t wait to see you in SF this fall,
The Lean Startup Week Team