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In Week 4 of the 2025 Summer Launchpad (SLP), founders focused on customer acquisition and go-to-market strategy by examining user behavior in greater depth. They mapped the customer journey both before and after users engage with their product, identifying key actions and touch points along the way.
Three guest speaker-led virtual workshops anchored the week, offering practical strategies for building engaged audiences, applying early-stage metrics to track progress, and developing pricing models that support sustainable revenue growth.
Week 4 Recap:
Workshop: Building an Audience Workshop
Caroline Huber (Stern '23)
On July 1, Caroline Huber (Stern ‘23), co-founder & co-CEO of Jones, led a workshop on building an audience through intentional consumer products. Jones, a startup helping people quit nicotine, started during Huber’s own SLP journey with just a landing page and a personal mission.
To find their first users, her co-founder created a Tinder profile inspired by their product, while Huber posted in Reddit communities for quitters. This kind of scrappy, low-cost outreach — from talking to friends to chatting outside CVS — is a recurring theme across SLP workshops, showing how thoughtful connection often goes further than polished campaigns.
The workshop also emphasized “moments of activation” as a key part of community building. During the Q&A, founders explored how to move people from considering a product to actually taking action. For Jones, that meant reaching people during major life milestones — birthdays, graduations, having kids — when they were more open to quitting. From there, new users were welcomed into a mobile app community where quitters support one another, a core feature inspired by Huber’s earliest customer interviews during her SLP days.
Caroline Huber on Community Building:
“Community building continues to be a challenge. It’s not something you figure out once and then you’re set forever. I’d say the constant in business is really about testing and learning.”
Workshop: Metrics That Matter
Andrew Kangpan (Stern '13)
Andrew Kangpan (Stern ‘13), co-founder of MetaLayer Ventures and frequent guest speaker at the Entrepreneurial Institute, returned for a workshop on startup metrics — especially those that matter when fundraising or evaluating early-stage growth.
His session came at a crucial time in the program, as founders are beginning to quantify their work in weekly presentations. Teams are now expected to move beyond ideas and begin measuring goals, response rates and traction using data.
Kangpan stressed that metrics aren’t one-size-fits-all. The right ones depend on the business model — consumer vs. enterprise, software vs. hardware — and should be seen as tools for insight instead of fixed benchmarks. Even for investors, metrics are simply a way to understand what’s happening within a business, not a strict measure of investability.
Andrew Kangpan on the Purpose of Metrics:
“The metrics you set shouldn’t be solely for fundraising purposes. They can help you understand what’s working, where to direct resources, and how to run experiments effectively.”
Workshop: Revenue Models
Phuong Ireland
On July 2, Phuong Ireland from Interplay VC led a workshop on revenue models for the SLP cohort. Ireland, who leads Interplay Incubator as a Partner and works closely with early-stage, high-potential startups, brought insights from her decades-long career to educate the founders on different ways to monetize their customer segments.
Building on Andrew Kangpan’s “Metrics That Matter” session, Ireland's workshop urged founders to choose revenue models tailored to their product, business goals, and target customer. When it comes to pricing, she emphasized that even early-stage founders should charge for their product, testing different models to see what resonates. The goal is to capture value without underpricing, while staying flexible enough to adjust as the business evolves.
Key Takeaways from Phuong Ireland:
- Don’t overthink it; keep it simple
- You should charge
- You should (probably) be charging more
- Keep revisiting your pricing strategy
Stay tuned for more updates from SLP as teams approach their halfway point!
