Simple Startup Principles for Strategic Project Planning with Chris Salter (July 12, 2022)

More than two decades ago, entrepreneur Chris Salter was introduced to a simple but fresh approach to planning that changed his life. In a session with master planning facilitator Randolph Craft, he learned about a strategic project planning process that could help startups guard against Murphy’s Law: the idea that “what can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Salter used the project planning process to design and execute his first startup, Piano Wizard, a piano learning software that converts songs into video games to help people learn how to play piano.

“It changed everything for me as a startup,” Salter says. “When stuff is poorly planned we financially absorb tons of mistakes. But as a startup entrepreneur, I didn't have money to repay programmers to redo stuff. It's very, very costly for a startup not to have explicit end goals and action steps.”

Now Salter is passing that knowledge on to Founders Network members. On July 12, Salter will be hosting a webinar where he’ll detail the principles of strategic project planning. The approach uses parts of speech as a metaphor to help startup founders mind map a successful project.

At his webinar, Salter will also cover:

• How to mind map the end items of a successful project
• How to identify prerequisites and the actions necessary to achieve end goals
• Useful planning tools, including mind mapping tools, PERT software, GANTT software and spreadsheets

Chris Salter

Chris Salter is an experienced entrepreneur and Longmont Startup Board member, who has run a series of informative extracurricular sessions for entrepreneurs for the last 5 years. Founder of several startups, he shares lessons from the good, the bad and the ugly parts of his startup journeys. His focus is in simplifying key concepts and then sharing with entrepreneurs touchstones, concepts and tools that help them analyze and resolve the common problems all startups face.

His mentor, Randolph Craft, ran the Pacific Planning Institute consulting firm for decades, teaching these principles to entrepreneurs via such organizations as CEO Space, Money and You, and mostly Excellerated Business School, in China, the US, and Malaysia for over 20 years. He in turn had studied with D Edward Deming and Buckminster Fuller. The planning principles, learned early in Salter’s entrepreneurial career, helped him raise millions of dollars and produce award winning products, where many other fellow entrepreneurs failed.

Guests Are Welcome!

Please bring a guest! Every member can bring one (1) guest to each event. Each guest must be a full-time tech startup founder so they can bring new perspectives, skillsets, and experience to your chapter.

All guests must be full-time tech startup founders and you can register them directly on this function page. See How to Register a Guest here.

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