“Bit by bit, putting it together...
Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just the vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution,
Putting it together, that's what counts.”

― Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George

TIME TO GO FOR VERTICAL

Or in other words, to take what you’ve learned so far in BASECAMP and put it all together, taking the first real step in delivering your technology and launching your venture.

Sound exciting? Ready to go? Excellent. Let’s go.

First, let’s recap what you’ve done here so far:

• You’ve learned about features and why they are critical to your success, plus laid out the high-level concepts of your tech and venture.

• You’ve discovered five new ways to document and explain your technology using systems thinking.

• And you’ve learned the fundamentals of mind mapping, which is how you can capture all of this new information, and easily share it with everyone on your team.

So that’s exactly what we are going to do. Let’s start mapping out your technology and venture and create the first iteration of your product blueprint and roadmap. These exercises will be a challenge. But work through them slowly and thoroughly, and you will gain a whole new mastery that will help you well beyond this program.

We’ll be building on the work you did earlier in Workshop 1: Feature Fundamentals, so now would be a good time to go back and review what you did there so it will be fresh in your mind.

EXERCISE 1: SETTING UP YOUR MIND MAP ROOT

To get started, you’ll need to open the mind mapping tool you have decided to use (Mind Meister, Freemind, or another you’ve settled on). Once you are there, set up a new mind map using the following simple template:

EXERCISE 1 TEMPLATE

Once it is set up, make these further changes to this core (or root) of your mind map:

• Start by replacing the root node with your venture or company name.

• If you expect to have multiple applications or platforms, change APPLICATION to be the type of the main app, like MOBILE APP or WEBSITE. If not, just leave it as APPLICATION here.

• Then add a child node to Title for the name of your technology, service, or platform.

• Add a Tagline (if you have one, totally optional here).

• And then, finally, a brief description of no more than 2-3 sentences. (Remember, we will never use long-form narratives in Vertical! So be clear and concise here.)

It should look something like this when you are done, using Go For Vertical itself as an example.

EXERCISE 1 EXAMPLE

EXErCISE 2: MAPPING OUT WHO IT IS FOR

Next, we’ll map out who your technology is for. Previously, in Workshop #1: Feature Fundamentals, we answered this exact question, so you should have the content for this section readily available. Continue in your new mind map, and add these nodes as shown in this template.

EXERCISE 2 TEMPLATE

Once the nodes are ready, update them with the following:

• The Main User should be who your audience is or who you are targeting for this technology. Again, add a Title and Short Description here.

• Also, add key sub-segments or niches in the second section, including a Title and Description for each.

Once completed, it should look something like this:

EXERCISE 2 EXAMPLE

Again, when you’ve got this section done, send us a screenshot by clicking on the link for this exercise above, and we’ll check it out.

EXErCISE 3: MAPPING OUT WHAT THEY NEED

Next, we’ll map out what this audience needs. For now, we’re just going to focus on the one central, critical task that we identified earlier in Workshop 2: Systems Thinking.

To start, we’re going to make a formatting adjustment to our current mind map. To make more space, we’ll temporarily hide the nodes that we have already created so that we can focus just on this new section. To do this, all you need to do is click on the junction or circle immediately to the right of the node that you want to minimize. When you are done, it should look like this:

Now let’s add another major node for “What They Need,” with these specific children nodes for Title and short Description of the main/critical feature your audience needs for your platform to be a wild success.

EXERCISE 3 TEMPLATE

When you are done, it should look something like this:

EXERCISE 3 EXAMPLE

EXErCISE #4: MAPPING OUT HOW YOU WILL DELIVER IT

Now it’s time to add in more critical detail, specifically how you will deliver this feature and value to our audience. You may recall that we covered this in the Procedural Thinking exercise in Workshop 2: System Thinking. Now we’re going to add it to our mind map.

To begin, add these nodes so your map looks like this.

EXERCISE 4 TEMPLATE

Then replace the step placeholders with the clearest, most concise steps that you will follow to deliver this capability to your audience. When you are done, it should look something like this:

EXERCISE 4 EXAMPLE

With this step done, you’ve just mapped out a high-level overview of your technology. There’s just one more exercise here that we will do next.

EXErCISE #5: HIERARCHICAL THINKING IS WHAT MAKES THIS FOR REAL

While we have all the high-level descriptions of our technology, who it is for, what they need, and how we will deliver it, there is one thing here that we still need to improve. The issue is that this is just for one user and one feature, and of course, any real technology will probably have many different types of users and will definitely have more than one feature.

So to manage this complexity in our mind map, we will use another aspect of Systems Thinking that you’ve learned already, specifically Hierarchical Thinking. You’ll recall that hierarchies are how we relate and connect elements of our technology together so we can “zoom in” to all the detail we need and zoom back out to a high-level view. So we’ll begin that process here by applying some hierarchical changes to your mind map.

What we are going to do is to combine these currently flat elements into a hierarchy like this:

Application >> Who is it for >> What do they need >> How will we deliver it.

In mind map format, that will look like this:

EXERCISE 5 TEMPLATE

The incredible importance of this becomes more apparent when you think of all the features and capabilities you will need to create for your technology. It’s not just one, and it’s definitely not flat. In fact, your technology’s mind map will soon wind up looking something like this:

And this is the beauty of Systems Thinking and Mind Mapping combined right here. You’ve just learned a way to capture all of the complex, layered, hierarchical details of your technology, which is precisely what we will need to build it.

For now, again using our Go For Vertical example, your mind map should look something like this:

When you have completed this, there is just one more thing to do: celebrate!

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve just completed BASECAMP.

And this has some significant implications for you as a founder. With everything you’ve learned here, you can now not only conceive but can map out and begin defining the technology you need to deliver. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what that all means.

So yes, there is some complexity here. But technology itself is complex too. And what we have done here is make all that complexity manageable. And we’ve also made it scalable so that we can use it to map out your entire technology stack in one master document. That is critical because you need a way to create threads and branches for your platform's details.

But most importantly of all, it’s actionable. With all of this mapped out like this, you will be able to share with your team a clear, concise, and complete blueprint and roadmap they will need to deliver the exact solution you and your audience need.

So no more 200+ page narrative requirements documents that no one can read or understand. No more back and forth meetings explaining everything to everyone (you hope correctly), only to discover that you’re getting it all or mostly wrong.

This is how you will get your ideas about your technology and venture out of your head and put them into a functional, actionable model that will allow you to be hyper-lean, deliver your technology, and go to market, no investors required.

You now have the new foundational knowledge you need to become the master of your venture’s technology.

WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE WHAT YOU HAVE learned and created HERE.

We understand that you may consider this confidential or proprietary, but if not top-secret, please feel free to send over a PDF, JPEG, or screenshot of your mind map for us to check out at feedback@goforvertical.com. But for now, congratulations again on completing your first Vertical accelerator course!