On February 20-22, 2015, Willis F. Jackson III will host Las Vegas Startup Product Camp at Work In Progress.
Willis Jackson III is CEO & Founder of Proof Development and is visiting Las Vegas from Kansas City.
“Successful startups have a relentless focus on customers, their problems, and how the product fits into the lives of their customers. Most startups fail because they don’t make the right decisions,” Willis Jackson III said. “Proof exists to teach founders how to make the right product decisions. We do this by showing you how to prioritize for your most dangerous risk and to design experiments that find actionable feedback.”
He first visited the #VegasTech ecosystem during Tech Cocktail Celebrate 2013 and hearing Tech Cocktail CEO Frank Gruber talk about Vegas for years.
“I really enjoyed myself at Celebrate and the community vibe,” he said. “I decided that this was a place we could really contribute and make a difference for entrepreneurs.”
Willis Jackson III is coming to Las Vegas to spend time working with local entrepreneurs on their products, showing entrepreneurs the skills and philosophies they need, and giving one on one help implementing it all.
“Our blend of customer development, lean, and our own tools will help you hone your product into a winner,” Willis Jackson III said. “The bootcamp is geared towards teaching people how to make better product decisions. Thus means we will be teaching how to understand and prioritize assumptions, how to turn assumptions into the right experiments, and most importantly, how to interpret the results of experiments.”
When it comes to mistakes he sees entrepreneurs make when building products, he points to unintentional hubris, not being organized and intentional when gathering market feedback, and not being critical enough of feedback.
“I want to see people at this bootcamp who really want to figure out the right way to make decisions,” he explained. “The currency of a startup is the quality of its’ decisions, and most startups are very poor. Beyond that, we want to see startups that have built an MVP and struggled to get adoption through the Series A funded companies that have hit a plateau and are struggling to grow. These are the people that we can most help.”
“I’m excited that we are hosting a Startup Product Camp here at Work In Progress in February,” said Sara Hill, Director of Entrepreneurship at Work In Progress. “This deep dive weekend bootcamp is a great opportunity to do intense work on your product and customer development strategy.”
