Business Planning and Strategy
Helps founders structure the business model and the plan for actually executing it.
Track
Startup and Technology
Format
In person, 889 Harbourside Drive
Length
Five modules
Taught by
Aragon's mentors
About the course
There is a difference between a business plan written to satisfy a grant application and a business plan a team can execute against. Most early companies have the first one. It sounds convincing, it sits in a folder, and nobody opens it again.
This program builds the second. You will define the business model and test whether the money actually works, validate the market through customer discovery rather than a spreadsheet estimate, and decide how the product reaches its first buyers. From there it moves into execution: a roadmap with owners and dates, the handful of metrics the company runs on, and scenario planning for the assumptions the whole plan rests on. You leave with something specific enough to hire against, raise against, and be held to.
Taught by mentors who have built and run their own companies. It is built for founders with an idea or an early product who need a plan the team can work from.
What Participants Will Learn
- Business model design and validation
- Market validation and customer discovery
- Go-to-market planning
- Strategic roadmapping and risk planning
Course Outline
Module 1: Business Model Design
- The value proposition, and who it is genuinely for
- Testing whether the unit economics work
Module 2: Market Validation
- Customer discovery that produces evidence, not encouragement
- Sizing a market honestly, and what an investor does with your number
Module 3: Go-To-Market
- Choosing channels that fit the product and the stage
- Positioning against the alternatives, including doing nothing
Module 4: Roadmapping
- Quarterly objectives with owners and dates
- Turning the strategy into this month’s work
Module 5: Risk Planning
- Scenario analysis and the assumptions the plan depends on
- Dependencies, and what happens when one of them slips
Who it is for
Founders with an idea or an early product who need a plan the team can work from.
Founders in the Aragon portfolio take these courses as part of the work we already do with them. Courses are also open to founders and professionals outside the portfolio.
Bring your own plan. The sessions work through real businesses, and the more of yours you bring, the more useful the five modules are.