February 2021

One of the most important early decisions that a startup can make is who they are setting out to serve. A startup generally is built upon a key hypothesis that someone needs something. Clearly identifying that “someone” sets the stage for testing that hypothesis and eventually being very focused in marketing to the right audience.

Since a key focus for SDG Games is that our games be educational, perhaps our initial target market should be Christian Homeschooling Families. By my estimate, there’s somewhere in the range of 200,000 to 1 million Christian homeschooling households. That’s a big enough market to go after, but a focused enough market to deeply understand and target.

Identifying the target market is good, but to deeply understand the needs of this market, we need to take our thinking down to the level of the individual decision maker and how she will value what we have to offer. We start by creating a persona for our target buyer and then identify the jobs, gains, and pains that drive her decision making. We put it all together in a Customer Profile.

Of course, all of these are hypotheses which will be tested. More about that in my next article in this series.

Read the full article here.

Modern startups recognize that the path from initial concept to successful launch is not a straight line. In fact, it involves almost literally going in circles.

The lean startup methodology replaces the lengthy business plan phase with a period of rapid iteration and learning. For any given hypothesis, the team builds a test, runs an experiment, evaluates the results, modifies the hypothesis, and then repeats the whole process over again until they know what is true. This is called the “build-measure-learn” loop. 

While this lean startup methodology is best understood in terms of product development, I believe that it also applies to strategy.

When I work with startups, I encourage them, very early in their life, to develop what I call the Startup Strategy Strawman. 

The Startup Strategy Strawman captures the key initial hypotheses behind the startup concept, with the expectation and hope that flaws will be found and the overall strategy significantly strengthened before actual business launch.

For this SDG Games startup business idea, the Startup Strategy Strawman is:

• Problem: When most Christians read the Bible, they don’t know much about the geography being discussed, and so they lose important context in the stories that God has provided “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
• Solution: Develop games that Christians of all ages will enjoy playing that will engrain in their minds an understanding of Biblical geography so that they will naturally envision the places and journeys involved as they read God’s Word.
• Cash Flow: We will sell these games for a profit to Christian families.

In the spirit of lean startup and strawman proposals, please let me know your reaction to these hypotheses!

You can read the full article here.

My family really enjoys playing games. Game night is a fun tradition that we all look forward to. Some of our favorite games are those that involve world geography.

So, it was in the course of playing these games that I started to get the idea for a game (or games) that would help give me a sense for Biblical geography.

When I read the Bible, I come across names of places like Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth. Capernaum, Cana, Gadara. I read stories of Jesus or Abraham or Paul traveling from place to place, and I have very little sense for what those journeys might be like.

How would I design a game that would be fun to play, that would teach me about the geography of the places I read about in the Bible, and that would be faithful to God’s Word?

Thus began the concept that is becoming SDG Games (the business) and Journeys with Jesus (the first product of that business).

Read the full article here to learn more, and if you’re interested in the game, sign up at http://sdggames.fun for updates.