Here at Flashstarts, our 12-week accelerator program is based off of the Lean Startup Model. We encourage the teams in our program to follow this model, as we believe it will help them to scale – or fail – fast.

Developed by serial entrepreneur Eric Ries, the lean startup model “favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development”.

The key to the lean startup model is to get to know your customers well.

Mango Goes to China

Mango, one of our 2014 summer accelerator teams, has a two-sided market: U.S. universities and (to start with) Chinese students. The digital advertising startup has spent the first two weeks of our program studying U.S. universities and will spend Week 3 studying Chinese students.

Starting today, Mango co-founder Kevin Wong will be conducting market research in China, meeting with students to get to know what they’re looking for in universities.

We’re excited to see the lean startup model in action when he returns.