Scale Up With AstroLabs Acceleration Workshop on Scaling Online Startups
Scale Up With AstroLabs Acceleration Workshop on Scaling Online Startups
I was lucky enough to attend this amazing startup training workshop by AstroLabs, organized and led by ex-Namshi guys: Louis Lebbos and Muhammed Mekki.
Prior to the training, they connect with participating startups, get a look at their websites/apps, conduct a quick analysis, ask them about their challenges, and needs to make sure that they all really fit in this kind of training.
The whole training is so practical and analytical. It focuses on the framework of Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) & Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) for web startups. How to measure them, how control them, and how to utilize your startup resources to reduce CAC and increase CLV.
Then the training takes you into how to scale your marketing efforts efficiently and how to manage your channels and KPIs. How to really benefit from google analytics and its reports. They brought an experts from Google Analytics and from PayPal to take us through these details. We also discussed several aother analytics and dashboard system that can be used.
They also brought experts in Social Media to give participants quick tips and tricks to better manage their social plans. The list goes on and on for other aspects of startups they’ve covered in the workshop such as payment, logistics, conversion optimization, customer service, viral marketing and free PR, and of course teams. And you get great recommendations on the best tools, platforms, and service providers to use for each of the above startup functions.
The workshop is conducted over a weekend. It was organized in Dubai, now in Beirut at Coworking +961, and it’s planned in Riyadh and Amman soon. Only 10–12 startups are usually selected to attend that are referred by AstroLabs local partners.
One more thing I loved about this is the emphasis on reading related books. They not only have recommended great book, but also brought copies for everyone. We discussed: Lean Analytics, Venture Deals, Landing Page Optimizations, Delivering Happiness, and Startup Owner’s Manual.
On the other hand, the workshop is too short, only 3 days, you only get to know about amazing stuff, but you will not become good at it by the end of the weekend. So it’s more of an awareness workshop more than an actual hands-on training because of the time limit. I would definitely recommend expanding it to 3 weeks or maybe 3 months (virtually) and even be more practical by going through each startup’s details.
One more thing I noticed and is worth considering for next workshops is that it’s mostly focused on Direct e-Commerce. This is obvious knowing the trainers background at Namshi. But I would strongly recommend segmenting the workshop and have one that is dedicated for e-commerce startups only, and then one for content and media startups, one for platforms, one for B2B, etc…
My overall experience was really great, this is one of the few analytical training programs in Arabia that a startup can get. It’s so motivating to be surrounded by likeminded people who pay attention to the details, analyze and keep experimenting. The amount of sharing inside the room by the participating startups is enough by itself!
It’s definitely a go if you’re lucky enough to get an invite to attend, even if you’re a VC.
Moreover, if there will be any e-commerce startup accelerator in the MENA region, these guys are the right ones to do it!
Finally, hats off for those who made it happen: Local Partners: IDAL, Bader Young Entrepreneurs and the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region, and Regional Partners: Google For Entrepreneurs and PayPal.
