Learn Investor's Strategy to De-Risk Your Startup Idea or Business Project

Entrepreneurs, startups, and companies engaged in innovation and venturing should learn ways to de-risk new ideas and projects to reduce failure and accelerate success. From the very start, smart entrepreneurs (and intrapreneurs) reduce uncertainty and make educated decisions through a process of highly focused and iterative decision-making. In this workshop and Q&A session with seasoned startup investor Steve Barsh (DreamIt Ventures fund and accelerator, USA), participants will learn how Dreamit investors analyse ideas and take companies through an extremely focused de-risking process in a compressed time frame. Learning from this tested approach will allow your startup or organisation to "think and act like a startup" and stay focussed on the most critical assumptions behind a new idea or project. Companies often find that this not only helps them dramatically accelerate their projects, but focus energy and reosurces where they are most needed quickly. In this session, you will learn: The 5 most common mistakes business people, technologists, scientists and entrepreneurs make when first starting - and how to avoid them How to identify critical assumptions that can kill an idea When to start speaking with target customers The top 4 unexpected reasons ideas and projects fail 5 great experiments you can use to de-risk the biggest assumptions 7 critical questions to ask early during meetings Q&A Session This talk will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience, enabling attendees to an opportunity to pick Steve's brain! Who Should Attend  This event is open to the public and is expected to be of particular benefit to the following people: Entrepreneurs, startups & university spin-outs Researchers considering commercialisation or active in Dreamit Ventures' key investment areas (see below) Commercialisation managers Current and future investors interested in (early stage) startups Government representatives interested in innovation and entrepreneurship Startup mentors & advisors Startup coworking spaces, incubators, and accelerators Corporates interested in venturing or investing in startups Those interested in the Dreamit Ventures' key investment areas (see below) Key Investment Areas  Dreamit Ventures is a fund and accelerator focused on startups with  HealthTech: including digital health, medtech, medical devices UrbanTech: Property tech, real estate tech, construction tech, smart buildings, and smart cities SecureTech: logical security, including cybersecurity, physical security (e.g., security of people, places, & things), and  Social Security: focusing on counter-measures to fraud, information warfare, disinformation, fake news, and other social security measures   Stay on for Lunch Networking & Designs on Display Following the presentation and Q&A, you can stay on for lunchtime networking and to view    new and innovative design prototypes on display.   About Steve Barsh Steve is a Managing Partner at Dreamit Ventures, a US-based early-stage venture fund. He has over 30 years of experience starting, leading, launching and building multinational companies in the fields of healthcare, real estate/built environment, and security as well as early-stage venture work. Steve has helped launch over 100 companies that have generated over US$1 billion in enterprise value. He is also a special advisor to NASA for its annual NASA Cross Industry Innovation Summit. He has taught in the Wharton MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania and has a BS in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two children. About the Organisers Steve Barsh has been brought to Australia by MTPConnect, and this event is hosted by QUT foundry and Hacking Health Queensland.        Hacking Health Queensland is part of a global network, acting locally to share knowledge and enable innovation and entrepreneurship to advance and improve health and healthcare, including through the design and faciliation of hackathons, design jams, innovation and educational events. We connect and collaborate with the health sector, government, academia, research, startups and industry.  QUT foundry is part of Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) entrepreneurship ecosystem, being a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, serving to inspire, enable, and connect current and future innovators, change agents, social entrepreneurs, and founders. It offers co-working space, events, mentoring, an incubator program, and more to benefit the QUT community and wider ecosystem.   MTPConnect is a not-for-profit organisation aiming to accelerate the rate of growth of the medical technologies, biotechnologies and pharmaceuticals sector to increase commercialisation, collaboration, and establish Australia as an Asia-Pacific hub for MTP companies. Formed in December 2015 as part of the Federal Government's Industry Growth Centres Initiative, MTPConnect is an independent and trusted voice, call for change to support the sector.