Are you looking for new ways to think about starting your own business? How do you learn from your experience and your mistakes?

At the next Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club meeting on Feb. 12, meet speaker Andrew Londre, who works for Couleecap Inc. as the organization’s Business and Income Developer. He provides a wide range of services to entrepreneurs in four counties: Crawford, La Crosse, Monroe, and Vernon. Basic services include, writing business plans, conducting market research, and finding funding.  He also is a big believer in a new method of starting businesses, called the Lean Startup Method, an emerging alternative to the rigid traditional startup method.

Londre will explain the basics of the Lean Startup Method and describe how it differs from the traditional method of starting a business. He will also share a new tool, the Business Model Canvas, that will allow you to put all of the critical components of your startup onto a single sheet of paper.  The Lean Startup method for business development stresses experimentation and exploration, iterative product releases, and “validated learning.” The fundamental idea is to stop building businesses on hundreds of assumptions and guesses which lead to products no one wants.

The Lean Startup Method was born in 2011 when Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries adapted the idea of lean manufacturing to the world of entrepreneurism. Over the last three years, Ries has sparked a global movement for a new way to think about starting a business.

The heart of the Lean Startup Method is in getting out of your office, getting customer feedback, failing early, adapting your product, testing assumptions, knowing when to pivot, all so that you will end up designing a product/service that people will eventually pay for.

The meeting will be held at the Food Enterprise Center, 1201 North Main St., Viroqua.  Meetings are free and no reservations are required.  Networking starts at 5:30 p.m., the program begins at 6 p.m.

The I&E club is organized jointly by the Crawford County Economic Development Corporation, Vernon Economic Development Association and Viroqua Chamber Main Street.

For more information, contact David Connolly at dcnnlly@gmail.com or 326-0234, Susan Noble at snoble@veda-wi.org or 638-8332, or Emily Rozeske at viroquapartners@gmail.com or 637-2575.