Resource Maps and Founder Journeys

Building Stronger Information Maps for Founders

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This chapter is a part of the book “How to Build University Start-up Ecosystems: Five Information Patterns for Success.”

One of the key differences between Peter and Liam’s experiences in the University of Michigan’s entrepreneurship ecosystem was that Liam had a boyfriend who started a company at the university the previous year. This enabled Liam to have a better sense of where he should put his time and energy.

Meanwhile Peter did not know what he should focus on during the Michigan Business Challenge (MBC) and after the competition ended, Peter did not know any steps he could take to continue his path forward. This ambiguity led to inaction. In Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal’s book The Human Element, they speak about ambiguity: “Think about the first explorer to navigate new terrain, or a rat exploring a maze for the first time. If you don’t know the way, you have to discover the path for yourself. It means trial and error. It means false leads and dead ends” (Nordgren). All of this searching for the correct route takes energy that ultimately makes it less likely that the first-time explorers will find their way. In entrepreneurship, places of ambiguity lose founders time and money which increases the likelihood that they will shut down their companies.

After Community Information Designers (CIDs) align goals and share data across programs, the next step is to create thriving entrepreneurship ecosystems is to help founders cut down on ambiguity. This can be done by creating roadmaps between resources to help first-time founders navigate their school’s entrepreneurship ecosystem more like second-time founders, helping them turn an unknown maze into a familiar route.

Step 1: Collection and Filtering

The first step to create more effective information maps for students is to gather together all of various different centers and organizations related to entrepreneurship that have deadlines or only happen at certain times in the year. This can be done in conjunction with the development of a Collaborative Toolbox, but this exercise gives greater emphasis on helping founders know when to use certain resources instead of what resources to use.

These resources might include hackathons, business plan competitions, weekly pitch events, accelerators, entrepreneurship classes, law clinics, amongst many others. Once you have this collection of resources, you will need to tag and structure this data in a slightly different way than with the Collaborative Toolbox.

Tags for this data:

• Name of Resource
• Short description
• Website
• Relevant Fields (Is this resource primarily relevant to only certain disciplines?)
• Relevant Programs (Is this resource only available to undergrads, grad students, Ph.Ds. etc. )
• Recurring (Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, etc.)
• Does acceptance into this resource need an application? If so, list application dates
• Acceptance numbers. Is there a cap to the number of people that can use this resource? If so, what is the number?
• If this event happens once a year (ex. a hackathon), list specific date of event
• Requirements: Are there necessary requirements, like a team, an MVP developed, or a certain level of customers before a founder can access this resource?
• Stage: Early (Discovering an Idea), Middle (Developing a Product), Late (Scaling to Customers)

Filters:

• Program Categories. Is this a resource that is only available to certain students? ex. Undergrad, Graduate, Ph.D, Alumni.
• Field. Is this resource meant for students that are in a certain discipline? ex. Architecture, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Data Analytics, etc.
• Recurring. Does access to this resource occur once or several times throughout the year? Ex. Weekly, Monthly, once a year.
• Application. Is there a necessary application to gain access to this resource?
• Stage. Is this resource meant for founders at a certain stage?

Display:

The most effective way to display this data would be in an information structure called a filterable matrix. This user interface element allows for dynamic filtering and sorting of data so that founders can easily find precise resources. This interface is typically composed of a grid of elements (here the elements would be specific resources) on the right and filter options on the left. When a specific filter option is selected, the grid should respond in real time to only show resources that correspond to the selected filters. This helps founders more quickly understand what and when resources are available to specifically their field and stage.

Step 2: Build out a Founder’s Journey Map

Once you have collected all of these resources, you should map out three different potential routes through the ecosystem to understand places where founders might face resource gaps. The simplest way to do this is to utilize typical founder archetypes that are common in your university’s ecosystem.

Three potential archetypes for this scenario:

• A Ph.D. student that has developed a technology but is unsure whether it can be commercialized.
• A grad student that has identified a need in their field but does not know how to build a solution.
• A technical undergrad who has finished their first hackathon and wants to continue to develop their idea.

Start by listing out where each of these students would go to:

A. Find a co-founder

B. Design a Launch page

C. Develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

D. Register an LLC

E. Create a Business Model

F. Find a Customer

G. Sell to a Customer

H. Find Investment

When you have listed each step of how each of these students would progress from idea to development to scale, underneath each put what resource the university provides to help founders in that stage.

Some questions that can help you build out stronger maps for your founders:

• Are there large resource gaps where there are no university resources at all?
• Are there long stretches of time between when a founder can access resources?
• Are there scheduling conflicts between closely linked resources?
• Are there large difference between the maps for each founder archetype?
• Are there places where many founders are fighting for access to a single resource?
• Are there some founder archetypes that have a lot of resources while other archetypes have few resources?

Once you have developed an idea of how founders navigate through the system, it is best to also interview real founders as they are going through these programs. This can be done via survey or through casual conversations. Your work here is similar to the process of customer discovery founders themselves do to create winning products, but you are applying this methodology to an ecosystem.

Some questions you might ask:

• If you need a 3D printer to develop a model of your product, where would you go?
• If you need audio-visual equipment, where would you go?
• If you needed a connection to someone in the industry, where would you go?
• If you needed to patent a technology, where would you go?
• If you needed a co-founder, where would you go?
• If you worked on a project that you think could become a company, what would your next step be?
• If you want to understand how to sell to a customer, where would you go?
• If you want to register your company as an LLC, how would you do this?

Once you have interviewed several founders (more than five), look at how their information maps differ from the ones you created to notice similarities and difference. The next chapter delves into how to analyze these results to find places for improvement.