The first #PNSummit – Are you ready to report for BootCamp? Yes, that's right. BootCamp. For Product Leaders.

It has been a pretty frenzied two weeks or so for us #PNSummit volunteers, but here we are, and we have something to show you and the world. 

But first, what went into it.

We brainstormed. We chatted. We argued. We used all that, and combined that with actual user feedback gleaned from the dozens of Playbook RoundTables, meetings conducted by iSPIRT.

The whole team put their thinking caps on, and the most important question was which was the best format to adopt. To reiterate, we wanted to ensure that every single participant of the #PNSummit can take away not just valuable insights, but stuff they can put to work the very next day. Stuff that’s been home cooked by product entrepreneurs and is enhanced by the flavour of intense brainstorming.

So this was the aim.

We arrived at the BootCamp format.

Why?

We want the people who go through #PNSummit to come out changed. As people, as entrepreneurs, as innovators, as doers. Like the United States’ Delta Force. Very few even get into training. Very few pass out. None of them are ever the same people.

We want to do that, except for entrepreneurs, and with a lot less running and shooting.

The #PNSummit will home in on Product Entrepreneurs, and will lead them through two critical stages of the startup life cycle –

1.       Customer Discovery Hacking, or getting razor sharp on getting paying Customers. Repeatedly. This is the Day 1 event and has cohorts of 20 folks only. Only a 100 Startups will be attending. If you are here, you’d be typically 9-12 months in operation, with a ready product. You have zero customers, or very few maybe.

2.       Scale Hacking. The secret sauce of turning on the afterburners of your jet engine and skyrocket your startup. This launches on Day 2 of #PNSummit and has groups of 20. Only 80 Startups will be attending. If you are here, you’d be doing INR 2 Lacs in monthly revenue, more than a year in business, and have raised (a little) funding.

You can attend any one of the above tracks, depending on where you think you are.

The sessions will be interactive and actual case driven. We are looking at one on one interaction, problem resolution and immediate, actionable, specific insights through learning that you experience.

Which means the people invited to the #PNSummit will be less; this will be a curated group, hand-picked from the many that would want to attend.

And that is by choice. We want it to be this way.

Military boot camps are successful for a reason. Every soldier is given his due; every soldier has to carry his kit and run miles.

We are hoping that with a small group of committed, curated product people, each one of them gets his due, each one of them goes back with answers to his specific questions, and each one has a plan to implement for the next few months.

We are putting together a bootcamp that is special, unique and completely volunteer driven. Volunteers are folks in the same product ecosystem that you come from. You can even connect with them here to know more about #PNSummit. If you want to attend, hurry and request for an invitation right here. If you have been to a iSPIRT Playbook Roundtable earlier, just type “Roundtable” when you fill in “Referred By” in the form.

And yes, you can tweet about this… use the hashtag #PNSummit. We’ll be listening!

About the author

Sairam Krishnan