The Starting Blocks program teaches customer discovery and market fit to university researchers and innovators.

The Starting Blocks Customer Discovery Workshop is a three-day virtual workshop with customer interviews designed to help scientists and engineers of all types find a market for their innovations. The core concept encourages inventors to get out of the lab and talk to industry decision-makers to find out what problem the industry needs their product to solve. 

Starting Blocks is the shortest, introductory version of the National Science Foundation's I-Corps methodology, which helps inventors build a customer discovery toolkit and learn to talk to industry and business funders about their technologies. 

The virtual workshop will take place from 9 a.m. to noon on Thursdays, Nov. 4, 11 and 18. There is no cost to participate.

The program consists of:

• Three half-day lectures on customer discovery and interviewing
• Five to 10 interviews during the week done in a target industry
• Weekly check-in meetings with instructors and staff

Want to learn more? Contact Program Director Emily Klein at eklein@colorado.edu.