Speaking and podcasts
I talk about where a technical founder’s next customers come from, for audiences of founders, operators, investors, students and the teams building new lines inside established companies. Keynotes, workshops, panels, firesides and podcast interviews.
Talks I give
The Art of the Pivot. How a medical education company tested its way from 0 of 10 to a buyer paying more than US$10,000 on the spot, one row of the experiment board at a time, with a pass mark set before every test. First given for the Queen’s Venture Network in Toronto in 2016.
Build the basics first, so your tests come back as signal. Why outreach meets dead air when a prospect looks you up and finds too little, and how to build proof, trust and credibility in the first 90 days, before the go-to-market tests begin.
Where will your next five customers come from? The go-to-market assumption portfolio: list every assumption, score the chance it’s wrong times the damage if it is, and test the top ones in two-week sprints.
Cleared. Now who pays? For medical device founders: clearance is one piece. You also need a billing code, a way to reach the people who need it, and a result that moves the needle in value-based healthcare.
Ninety years of customer development. From Kurt Lewin’s 1936 equation through Customer Case Research and jobs to be done to the four forces, and what each one changes about how you sell. The full lineage.
The intrapreneur’s advantage. Teams building something new inside an established company already have paying customers, a known growth and value hypothesis, and a network to draw on. First given as a talk in 2018. The three advantages.
Where I’ve spoken and taught
- “The Art of the Pivot”, Queen’s Venture Network, Toronto, 2016, for alumni and current students of the Queen’s School of Business.
- Lecturer in marketing and customer growth, McMaster University, March to December 2016.
- Executive and guest lecturer in the Queen’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Smith School of Business, and at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University).
- Venture Network Chair, Smith School of Business, October 2018 to December 2019.
- Startup pitch judge for the Smith School of Business MBA, and at the University of Toronto in 2025.
- Chapter Director of Startup Grind Kitchener-Waterloo, hosting the firesides where founders name the problems they’re working on. The problems named on stage.
- Innovation mentor with Lean Startup Machine, coaching intensive three-day workshops on how to build, test, learn and iterate quickly, and a Futurepreneur mentor.
For organizers and hosts
Short bio. Andrew Witchell is the founder of LoopGrow in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. He works with technical founders in tough markets on where their next five customers will come from, and hosts the Startup Grind chapter in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Longer bio. Andrew Witchell is the founder of LoopGrow, where he works with technical founders selling into physical infrastructure, enterprise and regulated markets. As chief operating officer at Medlantis he helped grow the company from 12 hospitals to 143 in 3 years. As vice president of operations at Insight Medbotics he took a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided breast-biopsy robot through U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance, 3 months early and under budget. He holds an MBA from Smith School of Business at Queen’s University and hosts Startup Grind Kitchener-Waterloo.
Photos. Portrait and on stage. Larger files on request.
Formats. Keynote, 30 to 45 minutes. Workshop, 90 minutes to half a day, where the audience leaves with their own ranked list of assumptions. Panel or fireside. Podcast interview, in person or remote. In person in Waterloo, Toronto and Buffalo, and anywhere by video.
Recording. I’m glad to be recorded, and I’ll share the clips I make so your audience gets them too.
To invite me, email andrew@loopgrow.co with the audience, the date and the format.