The Efficient Process of Acquiring a Pilot Customer

129 Pages·2015·7.42 MB·English

The Efficient Process of Acquiring a Pilot
Customer
An Insight Into the Pilot Customer Acquisition
Process for Nascent Entrepreneurs, Located
at Schools of Entrepreneurship
Frøya Hetzel
Gunn-Berit Neergård
Charlotte Irene Sørensen
NTNU School of Entrepreneurship
Submission date: June 2015
Supervisor: Lise Aaboen, IØT
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management

AIM OF THE THESIS

The aim of the master thesis is to investigating how nascent entrepreneurs, located at Schools
of Entrepreneurship (SE) work in the process of initiating Business-to-Business (B2B)
relationships with potential pilot customers.

•   The thesis will be conducted by the completion the following points:
•   A review of the current literature.
•   An empirical study of how nascent entrepreneurs, located at SEs initiate B2B
relationships with potential pilot customers.
•   An analysis of the empirical findings with use of the literature found.
•   Propose a framework for how nascent entrepreneurs located at SEs initiate B2B
relationships with potential pilot customers.
•   Conclusion and implications.

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PREFACE

This thesis is written by three students at the Norwegian School of Entrepreneurship at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and constitutes the master assignment in
the subject “TIØ4945 - Innovasjon og entreprenørskap, masteroppgave”. The purpose of this
thesis is to investigate how nascent entrepreneurs, located at Schools of Entrepreneurship,
initiate B2B-relationships with potential pilot customers, in an efficient manner. This thesis
will examine how this process can be efficient. The literature review in this thesis was
conducted during the autumn of 2014, which served as the project assignment in “TIØ4530
Innovation and Entrepreneurship.” The authors have also prepared for this thesis through a
term paper in “TIØ4535”.

The authors wish to especially thank their supervisor Lise Aaboen for her perseverance, insight
and support throughout the autumn of 2014 and spring of 2015. She has spent many early
mornings and late nights providing the authors with valuable feedback, which has been crucial
for the progress and direction of the work. The authors wish to express gratitude towards all
respondents participating with information and their experiences with the nascent startups, the
Schools of Entrepreneurship and their insights on an efficient process. The Department of
Industrial Economics and Technology Management at the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology supported this thesis financially. This was of great value to the authors, as it
provided the opportunity for the authors to travel abroad to conduct the interviews essential for
this thesis. The authors also wish to thank Stine Mari Sørensen and Aurora Klæboe Berg for
reading through this thesis and providing the authors with an essential external viewpoint.
Finally, a big thanks goes to Eivind Sæter, who has finalized the visualization of models.

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ABSTRACT

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how nascent entrepreneurs, located in Schools of
Entrepreneurship, pursue the process of initiating Business-to-Business relationships with pilot
customers and how this process can be conducted efficiently. Acquiring a paying customer is
the goal of many startups, and involving a pilot customer may be the first step in this process.
This step is therefore of crucial importance for the startups (Jack, 2005), and is one of the
greatest challenges (Aaboen, Dubois and Lind, 2011), due to the little research on the subject
today (Aarikka-Stenroos and Halinen, 2007), the authors have decided to research the purpose
as their master thesis.

Three research questions have been designed to fulfill the purpose. The first one examines how
a nascent entrepreneur initiates Business-to-Business relationships with potential pilot
customers. The second concerns the location of the nascent startup and examines how the
connection to the School of Entrepreneurship affects the process of initiating relationships with
pilot customers. The third and last research question examines the characteristics of an efficient
process when acquiring a pilot customer. The literature study by Hetzel, Neergård and
Sørensen (2014) provides the current theory with a new model to the process of acquiring a
pilot customer. This thesis is partially based on that model, as the authors wish to examine if
the theoretical model is representative for nascent startups located at Schools of
Entrepreneurships.

This thesis has been carried out by two data collection methods, using the theoretical
framework of Hetzel, Neergård and Sørensen’s (2014). The second method consists of
interviews. The content from the theoretical framework is partially derived from the project
assignment in “TIØ4530 Innovation and Entrepreneurship” which was conducted during the
autumn of 2014. Additional literature needed to answer the purpose has been acquired through
searches in “Web of Science”. The interviews were conducted in the spring of 2015 at two
Schools of Entrepreneurship in two different countries. The respondents had one of the
following three roles in the School of Entrepreneurship, staff, mentor or nascent entrepreneur,
which is a student at the School of Entrepreneurship. Respondents were chosen to gain a broad
overview of the School of Entrepreneurship to fulfill the purpose.

The results of the analysis provides a foundation for an updated model on the process when
acquiring a pilot customer, which is shown through the first research question. Through
analysis on the second research question, the authors received results showing that the third
actors are not actor-based, but rather actions-based. This is due to several third actors providing
the nascent entrepreneurs with the same actions. The analysis shows that the main
characteristics of an efficient process is using one’s network and being highly assertive.

This leads to the discussion on relationship management, network overload, learning through
iterations and third actors influencing the process. The discussion shows that relationship
management consists of being active and building one’s network continuously, handling
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network overload through strategic dormant phases, focusing on highly assertive tasks and
acquiring pilot customers based on quality, rather than quantity. Learning through iterations
showed that the nascent entrepreneurs must go through a learning process to find third actors
who can actually be involved in the process and the mentoring function being the most
important one. Actions are presented as far more important than the actors performing them
and, the nascent entrepreneurs should focus on the actions, not actors.

The thesis provides several implication for the nascent entrepreneurs, the staff, the mentors and
the pilot customers. The main implication lies in the nascent entrepreneurs receiving essential
information on how to make the process towards a pilot customer efficient, with especially
focus on network management and being highly assertive. The staff will receive information
on improvements in the structure and management of the School of Entrepreneurship, such as
creating a new process for the mentor allocation. The study does however show that there is
still room for improvements in the theoretical area on the nascent startups located at Schools
of Entrepreneurships, how third actors affect the process when acquiring a pilot customer and
how a nascent entrepreneur can execute this process efficiently. The authors therefore
recommend further research on efficiency to be based on a new model presented in this thesis.
In this way one can validate if the new theoretical model on an efficient process is
representative for the nascent startups located at a School of Entrepreneurship.

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