Overview

The IYA Venture Pyramid provides an easy-to-understand way to communicate the status and needs of a venture via a score. It also provides a structure for ambitious students to unlock specialized resources (see below) and get from concept to customer traction as efficiently as possible.

The Benefits of Using It: The IYA Venture Pyramid provides a system for IYA faculty and mentors to help founders in a highly targeted way - e.g. via introductions and specialized resource unlocks. Thus, the pyramid is not a presentation that you show to investors or customers. Rather:

• For Internal Purposes - it specifies things to build (the components), and logical sequence to build them in (the stages). It provides a common language around both that IYA faculty and mentors can use when providing guidance to your team. For example, we will likely advise you to complete components in earlier stages before building components in later stages.
• For External Purposes it is a repository of due diligence information that you draw from when creating sales presentations, investor presentations, and investor data rooms.

Each component in the pyramid has been defined using rigorous language and has been carefully placed. Each component is mission-critical to getting to customer traction has been placed in a logical sequence because decisions you make while building Stage 1 components naturally will beget decisions for Stage 2 components, etc.

How Ventures are Scored

The IYA Venture Pyramid format is set up so we can score your venture. The score provides a shorthand that communicates two things:

1. Stage Number - 1-6 (e.g. defining where the venture is in its journey)
2. Component Rating - 1-5 stars (e.g. strength rating of the venture’s current components)

So a venture is described like this: “Stage 2 with 5 star components”. See the Process page for details on How to Submit your venture and the tool that IYA will use to score it.

IYA Venture Pyramid: Stage Numbers

The Stage Number describes where the venture is on the pyramid diagram below*.* Notice that it structured as a “hierarchy of needs” - like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs but for a venture instead of a person. Components built for earlier stages provide foundation that you build upon to get to later stages.

IYA Venture Pyramid: Assessment Rubric

Each Stage on the pyramid is defined by a collection of Components. The specifics of what makes a Component “Excellent”, “Okay”, or “Needs Work” are in Assessment Rubric below:

IYA Venture Pyramid Assessment Rubric