What's with the change?
Like a new suit, hair cut or fresh coat of paint, a new blog theme and location is just the kind of mix-up that can reinvigorate and bring clarity to why I blog in the first place: to give you a small peeks into the world as I see it.
What's with the new name?
"Theory & Arbitrage" seems to capture a lot of my affect here on the interwebs: I theorize (passionately, analytically and sometimes critically) about how think the world works and my 2 cents about others ways I think it could work. Arbitrage lends itself (roughly) from the early 20th century economic theory about the role of the entrepreneur in the economy, largely someone who spots price differences in the market and acts on them to make a profit. This notion is the foundation for a major pillar in modern entrepreneurship theory: Entrepreneurial Alertness. It's academic speak for spotting opportunities to make money (aka "hustle"). Arbitrage nowadays is associated with the economically destructive nature of options trading on Wall Street. Nonetheless, the ironic and somewhat two-sided nature arbitrage both harks to Joseph Schumpeter's notion of Creative Destruction has applicability in other areas outside of entrepreneurship and economics and it's that dynamic I hope to capture on the new blog.
I hope you accept my invitation to share in the discovery and conversation at my new blogging home:
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
AOM 2011: Parting Shots
Did you know that San Antonio loves God, Country and Free Enterprise?
Neither did I until a massive billboard with this message on the side of the freeway at 3:58 AM this morning on my taxi ride to the airport caught my attention.
Here's some more things I learned on the trip:
But I learned a lot about academics that I didn't know was there. Once you go into academics, there's no "going-and-coming-as-you-please" with the professional world. You often have to make a choice between scholarship and teaching and that affects school choice since brand equity and reputation is all you have in academics. On the flip side, I might be better off putting all my eggs into my professional career and then going after a PhD later in life. There are a number of things that I need to consider about what I really want to do to make a contribution to the world. As my friend Gary put it: "If I wanted to make a contribution to the social entrepreneurship realm, I wouldn't write a paper that adds to the literature, I would just fly to Africa and start a social enterprise that changes lives."
I'm very lucky. Truth be told, I shouldn't be where I'm at given what I deserve. At 24, I have a slew of opportunities to choose from. For me the quagmire is trying to decide which opportunity would best accomplish my commitment to making a dent in the trash can that is the world. This week in San Antonio helped me realized that I am lucky to have the choices that I do but attempting to live an intentional life doesn't make finding the road less taken any easier. Especially when it's a 51-49 kind of choice.
Neither did I until a massive billboard with this message on the side of the freeway at 3:58 AM this morning on my taxi ride to the airport caught my attention.
Here's some more things I learned on the trip:
- The temperature difference when you go in/outside a building is about 30 degrees. The experience is like a punch to the gut.
- Gary spends almost as much time playing Angry Birds on his iPad as he does fixing his hair to make it look like he didn't fix it.
- Rob compulsively hides things behind the TV... like the iron.
- He's also got the best presentation skills of anyone in the Academy. Seriously, it's like Shaq dunking on midgets... like Gary.
- When it comes to partying, academics beat fraternities hands down. They are PRO and have a system when it comes to effective (and long-lasting) partying. They are happy to share this information at will.
- We have a list of great inside jokes and stories. My favorite is from the first day when I gave someone a Dash & Cooper business card and they thought it was a dog-walking business. Classic.
- I'm convinced Howard Haines is a retired ninja. There wasn't a morning, regardless of hour, that I heard him get ready or leave the room for the day.
- I'm addicted to the hot sandwiches from The Filling Station. So much so that I'm talking to the owner about franchising with another location in Salt Lake. So if anyone wants to help me start that company, let me know.
- I sat next to a senior researcher from Harvard in one of my neuroscience workshops. Nothing really interesting came out of that but I thought it was cool.
But I learned a lot about academics that I didn't know was there. Once you go into academics, there's no "going-and-coming-as-you-please" with the professional world. You often have to make a choice between scholarship and teaching and that affects school choice since brand equity and reputation is all you have in academics. On the flip side, I might be better off putting all my eggs into my professional career and then going after a PhD later in life. There are a number of things that I need to consider about what I really want to do to make a contribution to the world. As my friend Gary put it: "If I wanted to make a contribution to the social entrepreneurship realm, I wouldn't write a paper that adds to the literature, I would just fly to Africa and start a social enterprise that changes lives."
I'm very lucky. Truth be told, I shouldn't be where I'm at given what I deserve. At 24, I have a slew of opportunities to choose from. For me the quagmire is trying to decide which opportunity would best accomplish my commitment to making a dent in the trash can that is the world. This week in San Antonio helped me realized that I am lucky to have the choices that I do but attempting to live an intentional life doesn't make finding the road less taken any easier. Especially when it's a 51-49 kind of choice.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Requests for Advice (Part II)
Part deux in the "Advice Regurgitation Series".
Creating a startup is a process. It is one filled with ambiguity and uncertainty. You'll be continually making decisions in what seems like a fast-paced, highly-dynamic environment without even a fraction of the information that you wish you had. This is the reality for being in startups and it doesn't change regardless of how "skilled" of an entrepreneur you become. Simply said, no one knows how your startup is going to go down, so be wary of people who claim to be experts.
Your startup is a collection of assumptions and hypothesis. Whether you are in the idea stage or making 50M a year, you are continually making assumptions about your customers (who they are, what they want/need, how much they are willing to pay, etc), your competition, you/your organization's ability to execute and deliver. Some of these assumptions are known, others are hidden and undeclared, resting in your subconscious aka your "blindspots." This is stuff you don't know you don't know. Managing the startup process is setting up cheap, iterative experiments to uncover and incorporate the things you are ignorant about your market and how your product/service fits it.
The mainstream talking heads call the process of creating a startup "business discovery". There are many people out there who talk about the business discovery process (Marc Andreessen's "Product-Market Fit", Steve Blank's "4 Steps to the Epiphany", Eric Ries's "Lean Startup Movement"). I invite you to read their blogs and familiarize yourself with what they talk about as they are useful frameworks to gain access to your blindspots. This is why I have never done a business plan for any of my companies: it changes as soon as you take the first step.
Business discovery is actually a derivative of learning to execute precisely. I touch about this in one of my recent posts, we aren't as good at managing as we think we are when the guard rails are removed (often the biggest difference between Corporate America and StartupLand). As such, we have a lack of integrity (think data integrity, not morality) around simply doing what we say we'll do. It is the main premise of the Foundry that continuously searching for and uncovering all of the known and unknown "unknowns" and simply doing the unseen, unglamorous work of getting on the court, stating the step you think you should take and then just *stepping* will allow a business to fall out. Even if you don't know where to step for the the first few weeks, the act of doing so will reveal much more about the reality of the space and thus whether or not you will be able to accomplish what you have in your head at this point in time.
Creating businesses as a "hard" entrepreneur is no different than a "soft" entrepreneur. It just costs more and you have less degrees of freedom. All businesses (and I mean every single one) have underlying commonalities to them. Kind of like "The Last Samurai" and "Bad Boys II" are both buddy flicks, all businesses share a motif of figuring out what to sell, to whom, for how much more than it cost you to produce and how to do so such that the firm can sustain itself from operations and hopefully grow and expand. There are many ways to navigate this process, all lead to the same destination.
Over time, you begin to develop the mental muscles necessary to spot and evaluate opportunities before exploiting them - I am on my third business in a year. I have probably advised for about 100 different companies solving different problems in different markets at different stages of life (most in the earliest stages). The overall impact of this to my bank account has been $0. However, my ability to parse through convoluted information to learn new underlying relationships in the world, especially those contradicting existent knowledge, has expanded and I am finding that I am getting better at spotting which assumptions matter and which hypotheses make the most sense to test next as well as how to do so in a way that you uncover the most knowledge with expending a lot of time and resources and possibly even make a profit. Though I haven't yet financially benefited from these actions, I view it as "start up practice" to better prepare me when I find a big opportunity to go after. Because the truth of the matter is that I'm not going to wake up on the day that opportunity comes and suddenly be an expert entrepreneur. There is no some day.
Failure is the path from novice to master - You may or may not succeed on your first startup, but your probability of succeeding after *n* tries will be higher. In this regard, early-stage entrepreneurship is largely democratic - it doesn't require that you be "special" or be "good' at anything, but that you simply get on the court and stay there long enough for the distinctions to take hold and the world begins to occur differently for you. This is the difference between a novice and a master.
Creating a startup is a process. It is one filled with ambiguity and uncertainty. You'll be continually making decisions in what seems like a fast-paced, highly-dynamic environment without even a fraction of the information that you wish you had. This is the reality for being in startups and it doesn't change regardless of how "skilled" of an entrepreneur you become. Simply said, no one knows how your startup is going to go down, so be wary of people who claim to be experts.
Your startup is a collection of assumptions and hypothesis. Whether you are in the idea stage or making 50M a year, you are continually making assumptions about your customers (who they are, what they want/need, how much they are willing to pay, etc), your competition, you/your organization's ability to execute and deliver. Some of these assumptions are known, others are hidden and undeclared, resting in your subconscious aka your "blindspots." This is stuff you don't know you don't know. Managing the startup process is setting up cheap, iterative experiments to uncover and incorporate the things you are ignorant about your market and how your product/service fits it.
The mainstream talking heads call the process of creating a startup "business discovery". There are many people out there who talk about the business discovery process (Marc Andreessen's "Product-Market Fit", Steve Blank's "4 Steps to the Epiphany", Eric Ries's "Lean Startup Movement"). I invite you to read their blogs and familiarize yourself with what they talk about as they are useful frameworks to gain access to your blindspots. This is why I have never done a business plan for any of my companies: it changes as soon as you take the first step.
Business discovery is actually a derivative of learning to execute precisely. I touch about this in one of my recent posts, we aren't as good at managing as we think we are when the guard rails are removed (often the biggest difference between Corporate America and StartupLand). As such, we have a lack of integrity (think data integrity, not morality) around simply doing what we say we'll do. It is the main premise of the Foundry that continuously searching for and uncovering all of the known and unknown "unknowns" and simply doing the unseen, unglamorous work of getting on the court, stating the step you think you should take and then just *stepping* will allow a business to fall out. Even if you don't know where to step for the the first few weeks, the act of doing so will reveal much more about the reality of the space and thus whether or not you will be able to accomplish what you have in your head at this point in time.
Creating businesses as a "hard" entrepreneur is no different than a "soft" entrepreneur. It just costs more and you have less degrees of freedom. All businesses (and I mean every single one) have underlying commonalities to them. Kind of like "The Last Samurai" and "Bad Boys II" are both buddy flicks, all businesses share a motif of figuring out what to sell, to whom, for how much more than it cost you to produce and how to do so such that the firm can sustain itself from operations and hopefully grow and expand. There are many ways to navigate this process, all lead to the same destination.
Over time, you begin to develop the mental muscles necessary to spot and evaluate opportunities before exploiting them - I am on my third business in a year. I have probably advised for about 100 different companies solving different problems in different markets at different stages of life (most in the earliest stages). The overall impact of this to my bank account has been $0. However, my ability to parse through convoluted information to learn new underlying relationships in the world, especially those contradicting existent knowledge, has expanded and I am finding that I am getting better at spotting which assumptions matter and which hypotheses make the most sense to test next as well as how to do so in a way that you uncover the most knowledge with expending a lot of time and resources and possibly even make a profit. Though I haven't yet financially benefited from these actions, I view it as "start up practice" to better prepare me when I find a big opportunity to go after. Because the truth of the matter is that I'm not going to wake up on the day that opportunity comes and suddenly be an expert entrepreneur. There is no some day.
Failure is the path from novice to master - You may or may not succeed on your first startup, but your probability of succeeding after *n* tries will be higher. In this regard, early-stage entrepreneurship is largely democratic - it doesn't require that you be "special" or be "good' at anything, but that you simply get on the court and stay there long enough for the distinctions to take hold and the world begins to occur differently for you. This is the difference between a novice and a master.
Requests for Advice (Part I)
Over the last few weeks, I've had a few people stumble over this blog and contact me directly to ask for my thoughts on a few things. For one, I try not to be an "expert" on anything and most of what I say is simply a regurgitation of those who have accomplished far more than I ever will.
Yet, as I was writing my second message I noticed that I was roughly saying the same things and because I have a perpetual mini-Adam Slovik on my shoulder reminding me that I'm not being very productive and doing it very much WRONG, I have decided to post them here. Most advice, I believe, is indefensible, contains a lot of bias, is typically self-serving and no way applies to every situation in the world. There, I think I've covered my bases.
There's no such thing as a silver bullet - There's no right way to do anything. Trust me, I've looked and tried. Success is essentially persevering long enough so that the lessons of your mistakes have time to take root and start paying off. Over time, you gain enough scar tissue to develop more intelligent intuition. I've talked to tons of entrepreneurs, investors and academics. This is true regardless of where you go or what you do, be it arts, science or business.
The world changes - A lot of the established academics are confronting the fact that we are now able to do many of the things that were previously thought impossible. Some are struggling to keep up in raw production output because of technological advances (namely, programming's ability to capture and manipulate large amounts of data). This may be a generational thing but my familiarity and comfort with technology is setting me up to overtake what is par for the course as far as data quality and size which means that I put up high volume output compared to my relative age and lack of experience. The difference between me and them is not raw talent but they have more scar tissue and know how to navigate the nuanced systems of bureaucracy and taste-making (there is no short-cut for that). Conversely, I will need to stay relevant with the changes as I get older because the rate of change is increasing at an increasing rate.
The world doesn't change - no matter what field or industry you go to, there will always be those on the inside and everyone else. People who are in power often construct systems to perpetuate their hold on power and limit insiders. This is not as evident as it seems and you might find yourself from time to time in possession of power. Remember that power, like most anything in life, is not real but a game that we've made up and decided to continue to play. I personally don't have a lot of patience for the system. Call it personality flaws or immaturity but I just have a hard time fitting within it. I'd rather create better systems. Focus more on being the counter example. Everyone will be nipping at your every flaw and weak point but at least you are doing something they aren't: something interesting.
Be up to something big in life (really) - You have one life, might as well as doing something really big with it. Someone once told me "if you aren't crapping yourself with fear and excitement, your ideas aren't big enough. I encourage you to enter a much larger discourse in your life and surround yourself with people who are interested in doing big things and not just eking out a living." It's kind of like a "Matrix moment" but essentially you need to be really trying to make something much much bigger than, you to actually be physically tangible in the world. This will force you to start shedding some of the hold habits and perspectives and start creating a new version of you. This is not a bad thing.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with - this is very true, in all aspects. I have gone through many sets of friends and are very selective about who I choose to spend time with since my habits and perspectives are continuously shaped by our conversations and my fellowship with them.
Stay relevant - the world moves much faster than it did 3-4 years ago. I recommend reading blogs (via Google Reader) and getting an account on XYDO. I'll also recommend some books.
Blogs:
Yet, as I was writing my second message I noticed that I was roughly saying the same things and because I have a perpetual mini-Adam Slovik on my shoulder reminding me that I'm not being very productive and doing it very much WRONG, I have decided to post them here. Most advice, I believe, is indefensible, contains a lot of bias, is typically self-serving and no way applies to every situation in the world. There, I think I've covered my bases.
There's no such thing as a silver bullet - There's no right way to do anything. Trust me, I've looked and tried. Success is essentially persevering long enough so that the lessons of your mistakes have time to take root and start paying off. Over time, you gain enough scar tissue to develop more intelligent intuition. I've talked to tons of entrepreneurs, investors and academics. This is true regardless of where you go or what you do, be it arts, science or business.
The world changes - A lot of the established academics are confronting the fact that we are now able to do many of the things that were previously thought impossible. Some are struggling to keep up in raw production output because of technological advances (namely, programming's ability to capture and manipulate large amounts of data). This may be a generational thing but my familiarity and comfort with technology is setting me up to overtake what is par for the course as far as data quality and size which means that I put up high volume output compared to my relative age and lack of experience. The difference between me and them is not raw talent but they have more scar tissue and know how to navigate the nuanced systems of bureaucracy and taste-making (there is no short-cut for that). Conversely, I will need to stay relevant with the changes as I get older because the rate of change is increasing at an increasing rate.
The world doesn't change - no matter what field or industry you go to, there will always be those on the inside and everyone else. People who are in power often construct systems to perpetuate their hold on power and limit insiders. This is not as evident as it seems and you might find yourself from time to time in possession of power. Remember that power, like most anything in life, is not real but a game that we've made up and decided to continue to play. I personally don't have a lot of patience for the system. Call it personality flaws or immaturity but I just have a hard time fitting within it. I'd rather create better systems. Focus more on being the counter example. Everyone will be nipping at your every flaw and weak point but at least you are doing something they aren't: something interesting.
Be up to something big in life (really) - You have one life, might as well as doing something really big with it. Someone once told me "if you aren't crapping yourself with fear and excitement, your ideas aren't big enough. I encourage you to enter a much larger discourse in your life and surround yourself with people who are interested in doing big things and not just eking out a living." It's kind of like a "Matrix moment" but essentially you need to be really trying to make something much much bigger than, you to actually be physically tangible in the world. This will force you to start shedding some of the hold habits and perspectives and start creating a new version of you. This is not a bad thing.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with - this is very true, in all aspects. I have gone through many sets of friends and are very selective about who I choose to spend time with since my habits and perspectives are continuously shaped by our conversations and my fellowship with them.
Stay relevant - the world moves much faster than it did 3-4 years ago. I recommend reading blogs (via Google Reader) and getting an account on XYDO. I'll also recommend some books.
Blogs:
- Ben Horowitz
- Chris Guillebeau
- Seth Godin
- HumbledMBA
- "Change This" Manifesto
- Both Sides of the Table
- A VC
- VentureBeat
- VentureHacks
- Orgtheory.net
- Organizations and Markets
- Steve Blank
- Eric Ries
- TED Talks
- How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work - Kegan & Lahey
- High Output Management - Andy Grove
- The Goal - Eli Goldratt
- Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done - Bossidy & Charam
- How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer
- Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki
Sunday, August 14, 2011
AOM 2011: My Birthday and Making a Contribution.
For those of you following along I am still in San Antonio, enjoying the crash course in academia. For those of you on Facebook, it told you that today was my birthday. This happens to be, objectively, true. While I reflect on what I've done in the last 24 years, I care more about what I'll do in the next 24.
In my last post, I talked about the difficulty in distinguishing what is really a contribution to canon and what is not. This post provides some insight about what's an important contribution in the entrepreneurship literature, an area that I'm interested in.
On Saturday morning, I sat in a workshop that discussed using computer simulations and models to develop entrepreneurship theory. A big reason for creating and using the models is that the real world is dynamic and it is very hard to get enough solid, real world data (the academic phrase is legitimate construct) to analyze and make meaningful inferences.
This is true of academia in general: finding data that accurately captures the chaos of the real world yet provides enough structure that patterns can be distinguished.
In the session, there was a panel discussion about what was a really big contribution and an editor from one of the distinguished journals responded about the lack of knowledge about how the entrepreneurial process works. There are many theories that describe the importance of the process and even attempt to parse the process into stages. But there's nothing solid about it.
Enter the Foundry, along with the recent emergence of startup incubators provides a test site to begin peaking into the block box that is the business discovery process.
What's interesting is that this not a new statement, a quick search on Google Scholar shows a number of publications from the mid-1980's about the use of incubator and accelerator programs for further entrepreneurship research.
So why was this forgotten? Well it's likely because most of the publications that were the impetus for the (re)emergence of entrepreneurship theory weren't written for another 10-15 years. Futhermore, we didn't have a lot of business discovery frameworks presented by Silicon Valley that we have today (since entrepreneurship is so hot right now).
It's my opinion that it's time to begin looking at incubators as data-producing power houses to begin documenting the process as it is happening in real time and start understanding what the difference between success and failure is once someone makes the leap.
For a long time, we viewed the inner workings of the brain as a "black box". Psychology simple observed behavior and tried to infer broad theories about how the brain worked. Still, the brain remained a black box until the fMRI was invented and more commonly used. We can now document what is happening in the brain in real time and start shedding more light on its "black box-ness". The same is true for entrepreneurship. We now have incubators as tools to look into the black box. For the sake of the economy and literature, I say it is time we started making better use of them.
In my last post, I talked about the difficulty in distinguishing what is really a contribution to canon and what is not. This post provides some insight about what's an important contribution in the entrepreneurship literature, an area that I'm interested in.
On Saturday morning, I sat in a workshop that discussed using computer simulations and models to develop entrepreneurship theory. A big reason for creating and using the models is that the real world is dynamic and it is very hard to get enough solid, real world data (the academic phrase is legitimate construct) to analyze and make meaningful inferences.
This is true of academia in general: finding data that accurately captures the chaos of the real world yet provides enough structure that patterns can be distinguished.
In the session, there was a panel discussion about what was a really big contribution and an editor from one of the distinguished journals responded about the lack of knowledge about how the entrepreneurial process works. There are many theories that describe the importance of the process and even attempt to parse the process into stages. But there's nothing solid about it.
Enter the Foundry, along with the recent emergence of startup incubators provides a test site to begin peaking into the block box that is the business discovery process.
What's interesting is that this not a new statement, a quick search on Google Scholar shows a number of publications from the mid-1980's about the use of incubator and accelerator programs for further entrepreneurship research.
So why was this forgotten? Well it's likely because most of the publications that were the impetus for the (re)emergence of entrepreneurship theory weren't written for another 10-15 years. Futhermore, we didn't have a lot of business discovery frameworks presented by Silicon Valley that we have today (since entrepreneurship is so hot right now).
It's my opinion that it's time to begin looking at incubators as data-producing power houses to begin documenting the process as it is happening in real time and start understanding what the difference between success and failure is once someone makes the leap.
For a long time, we viewed the inner workings of the brain as a "black box". Psychology simple observed behavior and tried to infer broad theories about how the brain worked. Still, the brain remained a black box until the fMRI was invented and more commonly used. We can now document what is happening in the brain in real time and start shedding more light on its "black box-ness". The same is true for entrepreneurship. We now have incubators as tools to look into the black box. For the sake of the economy and literature, I say it is time we started making better use of them.
Friday, August 12, 2011
AOM 2011: A Different Kind of Book Smart.
It's Sunday and I am enjoying a brief slowdown in midst of the busy session schedule I picked out for myself. There are many emerging customs here at AOM, one of which is that the two undergrads go down to the lobby to respond to email, wrap up projects that we are working on and get prepped for the next day. During this time, Gary and I often decompress from the day's bustle and just do what's easy: normal work.
It's also a time for us to talk about our experiences and the generalizable take-aways. This is a subtle, yet valuable habit the two of us honed through our Foundry experience: group learning. Though we have different interests (Gary's into social entrepreneurship and I tend to be drawn to theory and methodologies), we often share the evolution of what we are up to and discuss insights. One particular insight Gary mentioned was how hard it is to succeed in this space.
After being heavily immersed in the sheer complexity of ideas, problems and the equal complexity of the possible combination of methods to solve them, we were remarking how tough it is to be a successful scholar.
For one, it's extremely difficult to find a question that makes a real contribution to the literature. Everyone that you are competing with is as smart as you are, thinking as hard as you are and bringing as much to bear as you are. Sure you might be able to find that some things are linked together but it's likelihood of making a significant difference is little - that's exactly how high the level of work is being produced. Furthermore, even if you do find something that WILL make a meaningful contribution, the likelihood of actually accomplishing it is another thing entirely.
Writing A-class papers is a lot like starting companies. They require as much commitment and cognitive effort and takes just as long to get into publication (~36 months, 18 of it in the review process alone). Even then, you have to write and present your ideas in such a way that someone who doesn't know the intricacies of your space can easily make the connection.
The other complaint (one that I held for a while) is that it seems so little of academic production translates into practical implications for the real world. At first glance, this seems obvious. But the more that I discover about the nature of the work, the more Emerson comes to mind:
It's also a time for us to talk about our experiences and the generalizable take-aways. This is a subtle, yet valuable habit the two of us honed through our Foundry experience: group learning. Though we have different interests (Gary's into social entrepreneurship and I tend to be drawn to theory and methodologies), we often share the evolution of what we are up to and discuss insights. One particular insight Gary mentioned was how hard it is to succeed in this space.
After being heavily immersed in the sheer complexity of ideas, problems and the equal complexity of the possible combination of methods to solve them, we were remarking how tough it is to be a successful scholar.
For one, it's extremely difficult to find a question that makes a real contribution to the literature. Everyone that you are competing with is as smart as you are, thinking as hard as you are and bringing as much to bear as you are. Sure you might be able to find that some things are linked together but it's likelihood of making a significant difference is little - that's exactly how high the level of work is being produced. Furthermore, even if you do find something that WILL make a meaningful contribution, the likelihood of actually accomplishing it is another thing entirely.
Writing A-class papers is a lot like starting companies. They require as much commitment and cognitive effort and takes just as long to get into publication (~36 months, 18 of it in the review process alone). Even then, you have to write and present your ideas in such a way that someone who doesn't know the intricacies of your space can easily make the connection.
The other complaint (one that I held for a while) is that it seems so little of academic production translates into practical implications for the real world. At first glance, this seems obvious. But the more that I discover about the nature of the work, the more Emerson comes to mind:
"Tis the good reader that makes the book."
Just reading academic work requires a higher level of cognitive effort. Not to say that academics are elitist but, to reference Sir Isaac Newton, not a lot people are in the practice of thinking really hard about big problems. Furthermore, we take a lot of what we think about the world (our personal truths) for granted. If we tried to actually go prove most of what we say about how the world works, we'd be saying a lot less with even less certainty.
"The world is a complicated place" is a common saying we have here and finding the balance between realism and rigor is not as simple as conducting an experiment and writing about it. I have a newfound respect for academics and the pursuit of meaningful scholarship. Some time it just takes walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
On another notes, everyone has been largely accepting (if not surprised) of my presence and gracious enough to lend their time and attention to converse and in doing so advise on how to avoid their pitfalls and offer other pieces of "scar tissue advice".
I am certainly a better man for having been here.
"The world is a complicated place" is a common saying we have here and finding the balance between realism and rigor is not as simple as conducting an experiment and writing about it. I have a newfound respect for academics and the pursuit of meaningful scholarship. Some time it just takes walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
On another notes, everyone has been largely accepting (if not surprised) of my presence and gracious enough to lend their time and attention to converse and in doing so advise on how to avoid their pitfalls and offer other pieces of "scar tissue advice".
I am certainly a better man for having been here.
AOM 2011: Day 1
Greetings again from San An-muggy-o.
Day one is almost in the bag and there is so much to talk about that I have a hard time even knowing where to start. So I’ll just summarize the main highlights (and lessons learned) of the day.
Academics are really smart – to get published, you must satisfy a number of ambiguous, yet rigorous objectives during the review process. The reason for this is that each paper is simply a brick in the narrative of human history and it needs to be able to be built upon by other bricks of the scholars-to-be. The point is to not be “the guy” but rather produce something that can be a strong platform for others to stand on. Your contribution is making a breakthrough for other research to happen, not being the one with the right answer. On that note...
I am a diaper baby – it’s important to note that academics have been speaking at a wavelength I couldn’t hear for the majority of my undergrad career. Even worse, because I thought that my education was about equipping me for getting a job, I made them wrong for not providing me information easily found on Google. While places like Google and Udemy can teach me how to code or apply the accounting equation, my teachers have been trying their best to goad me into thinking about who I am going to be in the next 10 years. I’m not saying that’s always happened, but then again I haven’t been listening very hard for it. Someone left a comment on my previous post about how easy it is to buy a “Dr.” title. I guess that I didn’t effectively communicate my sarcasm for being someone who is in my head all the time. Even so, 8 months ago I would have agreed but after spending a lot of time on a research team, seeing them interact and produce research, the sheer complexity of the space is requires more than just brute intelligence and improvising ability. This coming from a guy who scored high in both of these areas on a personality test used for one of my neuroscience workshops. As such, I am humbled and extremely grateful for the patience many of my professors had when I was making them wrong in the classroom and trying prove to everyone I was the smartest person in the room.
The nature of research is shifting, fast – while academics are incredibly intelligent in their knowledge and use of theory and methods, technology is changing the game. As is evidenced by my observation of their (in)ability to use presentation software and computers in general, a scholar’s ability to wield the power of technology (particularly programming) in addition to staying current in theory, methodologies and taste-making is going to be the defining difference in the next generation of scholars. While that stuff is the future, anyone who can get up to speed now (in the next 3 years), will be a very strong candidate for making massive contributions. For example, I know enough about neuroscience and decision-making to contribute (generatively) to a conversation when everyone tries to settle on the mind’s “black box”.
That’s it for day one. Much to process, much to be thankful for. But it’s a highly stimulative place to be and I’m looking forward to my sessions tomorrow:
*Using Simulation Experiments to Build and Test Entrepreneurship Theories
*Austrian Economics and Entrepreneurship Studies
*Rethinking the Role of Neuroscience in Strategic Management
*Entrepreneurship Social Event
Also, Howard Haines (fellow Foundry F1 OG and newly minted U of Oklahoma PhD student is here) so it Foundry F2 guy Gary Jense. Needless to say, we are getting (some of) the band back together. Thanks for all your individual correspondence and support since I got here, I am a lucky guy. Also, if you've sent me something and I haven't responded in my normal time frame, I apologize. The schedule here is like a Fast and Furious sequel and I'll be doing my best to get back to you in between sessions and social receptions.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
AOM 2011 and Trending to a PhD
"If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.'' - Sir Isaac Newton
I have just arrived into hot and muggy San Antonio for the 2011 Academy of Management annual meeting. For "manglement" scholars, it's a big deal where most of the big names in management research come together and nerd out on fantsy pants jargon and various statistical methods.
How exactly I got here has been an unexpected path, but the gist of it goes like this:
I know a guy.
This guy asked me to help on a research project with a looming, near impossible deadline.
I say "Maybe".
He says "How about $1000?"
I say "Works for me."
Two weeks of sleepless nights later he presents the stuff (I get an invite, not common for data monkeys).
Everyone loves it, he and his boss give me a personal shout out (also not common).
They ask me to do more projects.
We eventually have a conversation about getting a PhD after my undergrad.
I think it's a neat idea (researching complex ideas is pretty fun).
I somehow convince the University it's a good idea to fly me to AOM.
So that's about it. I thought really hard during a series of punctuated efforts. Did my best to produce good work and now I'm here largely because some people who are in charge of stuff thought that I was good enough to keep around and let me do things not a lot of people my age get to do.
It's transformed my undergraduate experience and I am forever thankful to the University of Utah to have me involved as much as I have been and underwrite some of the opportunities to let me do what I love doing.
But I'm not a PhD student yet. First, I have to finish my undergrad (this December), I also have to apply with a 700 or higher GMAT score.
Other than that, it's possible that I might be entering the 2012-13 school year as a PhD student at the University of Utah. I'll keep everyone updated as the situation progresses.
But here I am in San Antonio. Eating food, sweating a lot and using my best media training (thanks Foundry). So while I'm here, I'll be updating the blog with the sessions that I am attending and my thoughts about what's interesting about them as they relate to the "real world" and the research I'd eventually like to contribute to the conversation.
So far I've split my time between three themes: entrepreneurial theory, neuroscience and strategy, building and incorporating robust empirics into your research.
Needless to say I have plenty of time and people to get all nerdy with. But since I try to make sure that what I am doing in life has some generalized practical application, the point of being here is to think really hard about what problems I could work on so that my work (and Foundry experience) might simultaneously achieve many subtle aims like touching the next generation of entrepreneurs (mine).
So with that, I hope you stay tuned to hear some of the stuff I'll be participating in. And if you happen to be here at AOM, feel free to connect via Facebook or email to collude session schedules... I'll be in the back sitting quietly, NOT making a scene.
I have just arrived into hot and muggy San Antonio for the 2011 Academy of Management annual meeting. For "manglement" scholars, it's a big deal where most of the big names in management research come together and nerd out on fantsy pants jargon and various statistical methods.
How exactly I got here has been an unexpected path, but the gist of it goes like this:
I know a guy.
This guy asked me to help on a research project with a looming, near impossible deadline.
I say "Maybe".
He says "How about $1000?"
I say "Works for me."
Two weeks of sleepless nights later he presents the stuff (I get an invite, not common for data monkeys).
Everyone loves it, he and his boss give me a personal shout out (also not common).
They ask me to do more projects.
We eventually have a conversation about getting a PhD after my undergrad.
I think it's a neat idea (researching complex ideas is pretty fun).
I somehow convince the University it's a good idea to fly me to AOM.
So that's about it. I thought really hard during a series of punctuated efforts. Did my best to produce good work and now I'm here largely because some people who are in charge of stuff thought that I was good enough to keep around and let me do things not a lot of people my age get to do.
It's transformed my undergraduate experience and I am forever thankful to the University of Utah to have me involved as much as I have been and underwrite some of the opportunities to let me do what I love doing.
But I'm not a PhD student yet. First, I have to finish my undergrad (this December), I also have to apply with a 700 or higher GMAT score.
Other than that, it's possible that I might be entering the 2012-13 school year as a PhD student at the University of Utah. I'll keep everyone updated as the situation progresses.
But here I am in San Antonio. Eating food, sweating a lot and using my best media training (thanks Foundry). So while I'm here, I'll be updating the blog with the sessions that I am attending and my thoughts about what's interesting about them as they relate to the "real world" and the research I'd eventually like to contribute to the conversation.
So far I've split my time between three themes: entrepreneurial theory, neuroscience and strategy, building and incorporating robust empirics into your research.
Needless to say I have plenty of time and people to get all nerdy with. But since I try to make sure that what I am doing in life has some generalized practical application, the point of being here is to think really hard about what problems I could work on so that my work (and Foundry experience) might simultaneously achieve many subtle aims like touching the next generation of entrepreneurs (mine).
So with that, I hope you stay tuned to hear some of the stuff I'll be participating in. And if you happen to be here at AOM, feel free to connect via Facebook or email to collude session schedules... I'll be in the back sitting quietly, NOT making a scene.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
You Don't Get What You Deserve
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain
Sometimes you have days where you exclaim what a friend of mine puts succinctly as "thank goodness I didn't get what I deserved." Two events reminded that today was one of those days.
First, I had brunch (yes, brunch.. don't judge) with a great friend and former professor who had made a large contribution in functionally saving my life a few years ago when I was (hopefully) a much different person dealing with the consequences of making much worse decisions than I do now.
Though we don't get together as frequently now (my fault), some portion of the conversation are dedicated to updating him on what I am up to. Because these conversations act as snapshots of my current life, we both reflected on where I was when our friendship began and the path to where I am now. I was humbled and reminded of the fact that there were a lot of people from '08-'09 willing to see beyond the scared, angry kid I was and instead focus on my potential and help me move from the former to the latter.
The funny thing about memory is how much of the total situation falls away to the point where you recall only a few fragments (usually the ones that cause the smallest amount of emotional upset). The other funny thing is how all the details come rearing back in vivid detail simply through conversation with the people that were there.
As we wrapped up our conversation and departed from the restaurant, I took stock of where my life is now and what it was just a few years ago. All of my relationships are fantastic (at least they are for me), I am awash with more opportunities than someone my age should be getting and have made enough progress as a human such that there are slightly more people who have nice things to say about me behind my back than those who feel inclined to say otherwise. Considering all the selfish, hurtful things I've done in the past, I am thankful that I have not gotten the full brunt of what I deserve.
This is what I was thinking about when I stumbled upon this:
That's right, a free skateboard with about 8 skateboard decks underneath sitting right in front of my apartment building. Double. Winning.
Life has a funny way placing things into motion such that your life works out the way it does. Sometimes you miss a deadline by a few seconds or make a wrong turn or you decide to have some agency and overcome that fear of making a connection with someone. All the little inches in life put you in place to give you the hand you have today. Everything that didn't work out (both good and bad) is giving you everything that is working out (again, both good and bad). The free skateboard I got today after brunch is a function of a desperate email I sent in November 2008. I didn't deserve it, but I'll took it anyway.
Some people may say that Karma is a bitch but I think that she's a pretty decent gal. I'm sure that if we look over our lives we'll realize that we a got a decent amount of good stuff and avoided at least 10x of the bad stuff we deserved through the same channel: serendipity ...or fate, if you are so inclined.
In either case, be thankful. Life is short. Continuously performing gap-analysis and complaining about how things "should" be is not good stewardship of your life. But if you must do it, then at least acknowledge the negative consequences that could have very well played out to make the life you have now a blessing.
Sometimes you have days where you exclaim what a friend of mine puts succinctly as "thank goodness I didn't get what I deserved." Two events reminded that today was one of those days.
First, I had brunch (yes, brunch.. don't judge) with a great friend and former professor who had made a large contribution in functionally saving my life a few years ago when I was (hopefully) a much different person dealing with the consequences of making much worse decisions than I do now.
Though we don't get together as frequently now (my fault), some portion of the conversation are dedicated to updating him on what I am up to. Because these conversations act as snapshots of my current life, we both reflected on where I was when our friendship began and the path to where I am now. I was humbled and reminded of the fact that there were a lot of people from '08-'09 willing to see beyond the scared, angry kid I was and instead focus on my potential and help me move from the former to the latter.
The funny thing about memory is how much of the total situation falls away to the point where you recall only a few fragments (usually the ones that cause the smallest amount of emotional upset). The other funny thing is how all the details come rearing back in vivid detail simply through conversation with the people that were there.
As we wrapped up our conversation and departed from the restaurant, I took stock of where my life is now and what it was just a few years ago. All of my relationships are fantastic (at least they are for me), I am awash with more opportunities than someone my age should be getting and have made enough progress as a human such that there are slightly more people who have nice things to say about me behind my back than those who feel inclined to say otherwise. Considering all the selfish, hurtful things I've done in the past, I am thankful that I have not gotten the full brunt of what I deserve.
This is what I was thinking about when I stumbled upon this:
That's right, a free skateboard with about 8 skateboard decks underneath sitting right in front of my apartment building. Double. Winning.
Life has a funny way placing things into motion such that your life works out the way it does. Sometimes you miss a deadline by a few seconds or make a wrong turn or you decide to have some agency and overcome that fear of making a connection with someone. All the little inches in life put you in place to give you the hand you have today. Everything that didn't work out (both good and bad) is giving you everything that is working out (again, both good and bad). The free skateboard I got today after brunch is a function of a desperate email I sent in November 2008. I didn't deserve it, but I'll took it anyway.
Some people may say that Karma is a bitch but I think that she's a pretty decent gal. I'm sure that if we look over our lives we'll realize that we a got a decent amount of good stuff and avoided at least 10x of the bad stuff we deserved through the same channel: serendipity ...or fate, if you are so inclined.
In either case, be thankful. Life is short. Continuously performing gap-analysis and complaining about how things "should" be is not good stewardship of your life. But if you must do it, then at least acknowledge the negative consequences that could have very well played out to make the life you have now a blessing.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Regarding Discipline and Precision Execution
Right discipline consists, not in external combustion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities. -Bertrand Russell
Whenever someone asks what skills I bring to the table I do not return with something that is broad and craft-based. I don't say that I have sales or marketing skeelz. Nor do I try to inflate any position held to somehow convey leadership, management or operations expertise. I think that all of that stuff is important and I harbor deep respect for the titans of these various disciplines, but I view expertise in a particular field as the product of task-dependent learning.
Colin Camerer's seminal 2005 paper on how neuroscience can inform economics included an A/B comparison of brain activity images taken when a subject was playing tetris (Gameboy, natch). In the paper, one image shows a large portion of the brain lit up when first playing the game while the other image shows little activity after weeks of playing the game. The (admittedly) simplistic heuristic here is that when you spend enough time in a space that you start understanding and mastering all the nuances and not-so-obvious *why* behind many of the quirky behaviors. It's the 30,000 ft perspective of what we know about how humans learn and it drives a lot of what we do - whether we do it consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously.
While I don't make any claims towards field-specific expertise (marketing, sales or operations), I do attempt to convey that I know something about executing. It's a *small* something, but still a something. I think that it's the fundamental difference from anything that works versus anything that doesn't work. I personally believe that precision execution is the source of any forward progress. It applies to any industry, any business discipline and at all stages of the venture, government and military process.
Truth be told, I totally lucked into this. Learning to execute with precision is a fundamental core Principle (with a capital P) taught at the Foundry and I happen to have been around when it got started. Ergo, I got imprinted (for better or for worse) with the nuances of precision execution. Nevertheless, it's power and efficacy supercedes the needs for resources, permanent space and mentors. It is the refining fire that transforms cookie-dough diaper babies (like me) into capable and effective individuals who know something about the difference between motion and progress.
We don't need software, fancy flowcharts, books or consulting services to help augment the Precision Execution Principle - it's so hardwired into the architectural and cultural design of the program that the participants hardly notice it... except for the discomfort you feel when you subtly (or not) realize that you aren't as good of a manager as you thought. I personally remember what it felt like to realize that I wasn't as disciplined as I pretended to be. Getting present to the reality that I had much difficulty accomplishing a meaningful chunk of the things I committed to doing sucks and it's not fun. But focusing on just completing the things that I said I would do turned out to be the very thing that started churning out businesses or helping me realize (quickly) when to kill one.
Just the other day, I reviewed one of the early documents that Dr. Robert Wuebker wrote in the early days of the Foundry. The document (coupled with the Foundry experience) will likely serve as the most influential touch points in my professional career. Here's an excerpt:
Foundry management practices teach you precision execution—the capability (forged through practice and reflection) of individuals, teams and companies to predictably achieve the outcomes they want. Curiously, if your company can begin to deliver predictably, we have found that this capability also happens to enable breakthrough outcomes for teams. Thus discipline, incremental learning, and breakthrough innovation are a part of one continuous “management strategy” that full participation at the Foundry teaches you.
So if I believe that much in the power of the Foundry process and its core principles then why do we have nearly 50% wash out in the first six weeks? I'm not sure but I have a few conjectures:
I personally struggled (and still struggle, if I'm not cognizant) with all of the above bullet points. Every participant faces it. Some push through to the other side. Some don't. But the irrefutable observable that Foundry demonstrates is that anyone starting any business, regardless of socioeconomic status, background or expertise who participates fully and musters the necessary discipline to do what they say they will do (even if they have no idea where to start) WILL discover a durable business hardwired with operational rigor and integrity OR they will quickly kill one that will not work. It's irrefutable because we've been measuring outcomes since day one.
For the 30%-50% who stick around I am lucky to be considered part of the small (and slowly growing) community of individuals who are imprinted with the natural inclination to contribute to others and the capability to coalesce the disparate and ambiguous into increasingly predictable (and scalable) results. It's a growing crew of quiet professionals... and I'll take them over anyone else any day of the week.
If any of this sounds interesting to you or you are an entrepreneur that has no idea where to begin and are looking for a community to help see you through. Drop me a line and we'll talk about how to get you plugged in.
Whenever someone asks what skills I bring to the table I do not return with something that is broad and craft-based. I don't say that I have sales or marketing skeelz. Nor do I try to inflate any position held to somehow convey leadership, management or operations expertise. I think that all of that stuff is important and I harbor deep respect for the titans of these various disciplines, but I view expertise in a particular field as the product of task-dependent learning.
Colin Camerer's seminal 2005 paper on how neuroscience can inform economics included an A/B comparison of brain activity images taken when a subject was playing tetris (Gameboy, natch). In the paper, one image shows a large portion of the brain lit up when first playing the game while the other image shows little activity after weeks of playing the game. The (admittedly) simplistic heuristic here is that when you spend enough time in a space that you start understanding and mastering all the nuances and not-so-obvious *why* behind many of the quirky behaviors. It's the 30,000 ft perspective of what we know about how humans learn and it drives a lot of what we do - whether we do it consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously.
While I don't make any claims towards field-specific expertise (marketing, sales or operations), I do attempt to convey that I know something about executing. It's a *small* something, but still a something. I think that it's the fundamental difference from anything that works versus anything that doesn't work. I personally believe that precision execution is the source of any forward progress. It applies to any industry, any business discipline and at all stages of the venture, government and military process.
Truth be told, I totally lucked into this. Learning to execute with precision is a fundamental core Principle (with a capital P) taught at the Foundry and I happen to have been around when it got started. Ergo, I got imprinted (for better or for worse) with the nuances of precision execution. Nevertheless, it's power and efficacy supercedes the needs for resources, permanent space and mentors. It is the refining fire that transforms cookie-dough diaper babies (like me) into capable and effective individuals who know something about the difference between motion and progress.
We don't need software, fancy flowcharts, books or consulting services to help augment the Precision Execution Principle - it's so hardwired into the architectural and cultural design of the program that the participants hardly notice it... except for the discomfort you feel when you subtly (or not) realize that you aren't as good of a manager as you thought. I personally remember what it felt like to realize that I wasn't as disciplined as I pretended to be. Getting present to the reality that I had much difficulty accomplishing a meaningful chunk of the things I committed to doing sucks and it's not fun. But focusing on just completing the things that I said I would do turned out to be the very thing that started churning out businesses or helping me realize (quickly) when to kill one.
Just the other day, I reviewed one of the early documents that Dr. Robert Wuebker wrote in the early days of the Foundry. The document (coupled with the Foundry experience) will likely serve as the most influential touch points in my professional career. Here's an excerpt:
Foundry management practices teach you precision execution—the capability (forged through practice and reflection) of individuals, teams and companies to predictably achieve the outcomes they want. Curiously, if your company can begin to deliver predictably, we have found that this capability also happens to enable breakthrough outcomes for teams. Thus discipline, incremental learning, and breakthrough innovation are a part of one continuous “management strategy” that full participation at the Foundry teaches you.
So if I believe that much in the power of the Foundry process and its core principles then why do we have nearly 50% wash out in the first six weeks? I'm not sure but I have a few conjectures:
- It's not fun giving up the perspective of being "right", "having it all figured out" and being an "expert."
- People choose to engage with the Foundry like do with most of their life: at half speed.
- They simply do not understand that becoming resourceful is more powerful than having resources handed to them.
- It's really REALLY uncomfortable to thrash about in front of your peers.
- Fill in the ________________.
I personally struggled (and still struggle, if I'm not cognizant) with all of the above bullet points. Every participant faces it. Some push through to the other side. Some don't. But the irrefutable observable that Foundry demonstrates is that anyone starting any business, regardless of socioeconomic status, background or expertise who participates fully and musters the necessary discipline to do what they say they will do (even if they have no idea where to start) WILL discover a durable business hardwired with operational rigor and integrity OR they will quickly kill one that will not work. It's irrefutable because we've been measuring outcomes since day one.
For the 30%-50% who stick around I am lucky to be considered part of the small (and slowly growing) community of individuals who are imprinted with the natural inclination to contribute to others and the capability to coalesce the disparate and ambiguous into increasingly predictable (and scalable) results. It's a growing crew of quiet professionals... and I'll take them over anyone else any day of the week.
If any of this sounds interesting to you or you are an entrepreneur that has no idea where to begin and are looking for a community to help see you through. Drop me a line and we'll talk about how to get you plugged in.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Respect Thy Path.
A few weeks ago, I read a post that my friend, Lisa (from Synergy Impressions Photography) wrote on her blog (which you can read here, I recommend you follow it). I'll share one of my (many) favorite parts from the post:
Yesterday, I witnessed a long standing goal of mine suddenly become a tangible reality as I unlocked the photo studio yesterday. I sat for a quiet moment and thought about how much work, time, fear, challenges, growth, learning curves, technical purchases, new information and continued inspiration the last few years have afforded me... I smiled. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
It was one of those things that I could relate to only in my own, seemingly trivial moments: when I held my first Dash & Cooper shirt. Seeing all the core Foundry guys present at the U of U Board of Trustees annual meeting. The post-presentation dinner at Winter Strategy Conference.
To understand the full meaning of aforementioned moments, you'd have to walk a few months or years in my shoes. I think that everyone, on some level, can point to a few experiences in their life and say that is was then - for a brief moment - that they had arrived.
I don't mean "arrived" in the sense that Corporate America's proverbial marketing department has convinced most consumers of their arrival (hint: involves some combination of the following: zip code, location of bank account, tax bracket, vehicle, any membership that has the name "elite", "premier", "gold" or "platinum").
I'm talking about the people that have decided to, as Lisa put it "reject the idea of walking in the grass next to the path most are travelling."
The whole of society makes it easier to buy one's way out of a problem or discomfort - that includes taking a job where you work within tightly defined guardrails. In fact the academic literature has shown that the self-employed, on average, make less than their corporate counterparts. Given that your income is higher and you are largely hedged against the downside risk of making your own decisions it's not hard to understand why that path Lisa talks about is so well worn.
It also helps explain why the seemingly trivial (getting keys to a photography co-op, holding a shirt), means a lot to those who walk in the grass: getting that stuff done is really hard work. The learning curve is steep and long. It involves more sacrifice than you usually think you can make. It affects your personal relationships, your financial situation and requires you to dig ever more deeper for energy, creative intelligence and emotional fortitude.
It's easy to scoff about how easy it is to run a cafe until you actually attempt to do it. It's easy to complain about the price and quality of something purchased by a non-mulinational company until you've actually attempted to deliver it better and cheaper.
Which is why I respect anyone who continually gets up and goes to the whiteboard after a failed business venture: they are doubling-down on their decision to walk in the grass. I may not understand the space you are operating in but I respect thy path. Because once you've tasted the infrequent, punctuated upside of making your own decisions and the constant feeling fear and ambiguity become normal, you can never return to the well-trodden path with guardrails.
There is no stronger drug than pointing to something and saying "I made that." It's a reality that no one can refute or take away from you.
As for having a sense of "arrived", I've defined it as any time that I am able to notice the length of grass beneath my feet and the distance between my and the path that most are traveling. For I too reject the reality society so readily spoon feeds the masses and substitute my own.
Yesterday, I witnessed a long standing goal of mine suddenly become a tangible reality as I unlocked the photo studio yesterday. I sat for a quiet moment and thought about how much work, time, fear, challenges, growth, learning curves, technical purchases, new information and continued inspiration the last few years have afforded me... I smiled. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
It was one of those things that I could relate to only in my own, seemingly trivial moments: when I held my first Dash & Cooper shirt. Seeing all the core Foundry guys present at the U of U Board of Trustees annual meeting. The post-presentation dinner at Winter Strategy Conference.
To understand the full meaning of aforementioned moments, you'd have to walk a few months or years in my shoes. I think that everyone, on some level, can point to a few experiences in their life and say that is was then - for a brief moment - that they had arrived.
I don't mean "arrived" in the sense that Corporate America's proverbial marketing department has convinced most consumers of their arrival (hint: involves some combination of the following: zip code, location of bank account, tax bracket, vehicle, any membership that has the name "elite", "premier", "gold" or "platinum").
I'm talking about the people that have decided to, as Lisa put it "reject the idea of walking in the grass next to the path most are travelling."
The whole of society makes it easier to buy one's way out of a problem or discomfort - that includes taking a job where you work within tightly defined guardrails. In fact the academic literature has shown that the self-employed, on average, make less than their corporate counterparts. Given that your income is higher and you are largely hedged against the downside risk of making your own decisions it's not hard to understand why that path Lisa talks about is so well worn.
It also helps explain why the seemingly trivial (getting keys to a photography co-op, holding a shirt), means a lot to those who walk in the grass: getting that stuff done is really hard work. The learning curve is steep and long. It involves more sacrifice than you usually think you can make. It affects your personal relationships, your financial situation and requires you to dig ever more deeper for energy, creative intelligence and emotional fortitude.
It's easy to scoff about how easy it is to run a cafe until you actually attempt to do it. It's easy to complain about the price and quality of something purchased by a non-mulinational company until you've actually attempted to deliver it better and cheaper.
Which is why I respect anyone who continually gets up and goes to the whiteboard after a failed business venture: they are doubling-down on their decision to walk in the grass. I may not understand the space you are operating in but I respect thy path. Because once you've tasted the infrequent, punctuated upside of making your own decisions and the constant feeling fear and ambiguity become normal, you can never return to the well-trodden path with guardrails.
There is no stronger drug than pointing to something and saying "I made that." It's a reality that no one can refute or take away from you.
As for having a sense of "arrived", I've defined it as any time that I am able to notice the length of grass beneath my feet and the distance between my and the path that most are traveling. For I too reject the reality society so readily spoon feeds the masses and substitute my own.
Monday, May 30, 2011
From Students to CEOs
It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side
- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Foundry has officially made it through its first year. What began as an experiment with 18 undergrads meeting on Mondays in a borrowed conference room in Draper, UT has evolved into something that is being more and more integrated into the U of U's entrepreneurship pedagogy.
Our third cohort, F3 held its first meeting last week and as a Foundry "OG" participating with a new company, I am reminded of the power the program has to produce capable managers. The delta between the green newcomers and the graduates that have re-upped with their current startups (or new ones, if you've killed a few like me) is evident and I am reminded of my own diaper baby qualities.
For those of us there at the beginning, we are clear that the Foundry began without any idea of how long it would last or what it could become. Save for a few things, most of the Foundry's design was discovered by accident and none of us thought that it would produce the results that it did. A lot has changed over the last twelve months, but some of the few intentional design features remain. Ranging from local executives to heads of PAC-12 business schools, one common reaction from the community about the Foundry graduates is amazement at the operational and management rigor they bring to anything they touch, a result of going through the Fight Club-esque gauntlet that is the Foundry system. They are amazed because the average age of a Foundry graduate is about 24 or 25.
This is the result of an intentional design feature, hardwired in the DNA of the Foundry social system. I am going to talk about how we do it.
My friend, Dr. Robert Wuebker, post-doc professor at the University of Utah and faculty member who co-created the Foundry with the participants recently reminded me of the power of designing organizational roles to pull people to live into.
Upon induction, it is made clear to Foundry participants that they are no longer regarded as students. They are CEOs. Every communication, every interaction - from the emails to the meeting to the project reviews - sees the participants as CEOs and relates to them as CEOs. You are not an intern. You are not a student-founder. You are a capable, high-functioning CEO and are treated as such. Equivalently, you are expected to relate to everyone else as a CEO. This is a subtle but powerful distinction and I think that its effect on Foundry's outputs is critical albeit intangible.
When everyone relates to you like a CEO, (curiously) you start occurring as a CEO. When you have the experience of 30-45 people, from the other Foundry CEOs to community professionals and venture investors, all relating to you like you are at the helm of a company you want to be starting - it catalyzes transformation in some people that is absolutely astounding.
A classic example is from the original cohort: one of the most successful companies was led by an art major that had never had any business training at all - he did $12k in his first two weeks in the Foundry. While there are plenty of other stories like this in the Foundry, Nick just happened to get the most media attention. I recommend that you read one of many of his articles here.
However, we are careful to ensure that we do not just bolster egos. One ethos of the Foundry is that you develop self-efficacy by executing with precision. When you say that X will happen and X does happen, you gain power in your ability to call your shots. This is as simple as turning a management report in on time or accomplishing what you said you would do in your management report. The access to this type of operational/organization integrity (think databases, not morality) is our simple-yet-potent weekly management reporting technology which clearly demonstrates to you (and everyone else) exactly what you are getting done (or not). It also involves a lot of failure and not being your word and not executing precisely. It is this painful experience that catalyzes learning and thus the observable is that participants demonstrate some sort of mastery over the form (wax on, wax off).
The Foundry system provides the experience of you being your word and the power that comes when you believe yourself to be a person that follows through on what they commit to (hint: this belief is not mystical, it is realized when you do the act of following through). Layered on top of that is the shared experience of the group engaging in the same activity and finally a community that chooses to see you as someone who is capable of executing precisely (doing what you say you will do).
Human potential is the greatest, most abundant resource in the world. Few organizations know how to tap it and unleash it productively (Apple, Google, Stanford and MIT come to mind). Foundry aspires to be an organization that sees a human, a nascent entrepreneur as someone who is fully empowered to get for themselves anything that they want (in our case it is in the context of a new company). It is one of the fundamental (and intentional designs) of the system. Dr. Wuebker planted the seed of this design element, the early participants took it on and ran with it and as the graduates go on to create their own "Foundries" or emulate the social system design in their own companies, I whole-heartedly believe that it will be one of the greatest contributions to the lives of the scores of people that have and will pass through the Foundry...
..if they so choose to be imprinted upon by the system.
It is a subtle but important distinction: a constant choice of the group to be stand for people living into the role that they assume when accepted into a Foundry cohort. It is difficult to do as we naturally try to hide our flaws and our shortcomings or hide in the comfort of silence and not calling someone out (or be coachable when getting called out). Some will opt in for this type of experience, others self-select out of it (which is why we say this is not for everyone). But those that decide to double down and play for keeps are the ones that keep the program attract to newcomers. It is an individual choice and each person faces that decision in their own way and their own time. When you aspire to be something great (like a CEO), you must be willing to place something great on the alter (some perspective of who you thought you were).
- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Foundry has officially made it through its first year. What began as an experiment with 18 undergrads meeting on Mondays in a borrowed conference room in Draper, UT has evolved into something that is being more and more integrated into the U of U's entrepreneurship pedagogy.
Our third cohort, F3 held its first meeting last week and as a Foundry "OG" participating with a new company, I am reminded of the power the program has to produce capable managers. The delta between the green newcomers and the graduates that have re-upped with their current startups (or new ones, if you've killed a few like me) is evident and I am reminded of my own diaper baby qualities.
For those of us there at the beginning, we are clear that the Foundry began without any idea of how long it would last or what it could become. Save for a few things, most of the Foundry's design was discovered by accident and none of us thought that it would produce the results that it did. A lot has changed over the last twelve months, but some of the few intentional design features remain. Ranging from local executives to heads of PAC-12 business schools, one common reaction from the community about the Foundry graduates is amazement at the operational and management rigor they bring to anything they touch, a result of going through the Fight Club-esque gauntlet that is the Foundry system. They are amazed because the average age of a Foundry graduate is about 24 or 25.
This is the result of an intentional design feature, hardwired in the DNA of the Foundry social system. I am going to talk about how we do it.
My friend, Dr. Robert Wuebker, post-doc professor at the University of Utah and faculty member who co-created the Foundry with the participants recently reminded me of the power of designing organizational roles to pull people to live into.
Upon induction, it is made clear to Foundry participants that they are no longer regarded as students. They are CEOs. Every communication, every interaction - from the emails to the meeting to the project reviews - sees the participants as CEOs and relates to them as CEOs. You are not an intern. You are not a student-founder. You are a capable, high-functioning CEO and are treated as such. Equivalently, you are expected to relate to everyone else as a CEO. This is a subtle but powerful distinction and I think that its effect on Foundry's outputs is critical albeit intangible.
When everyone relates to you like a CEO, (curiously) you start occurring as a CEO. When you have the experience of 30-45 people, from the other Foundry CEOs to community professionals and venture investors, all relating to you like you are at the helm of a company you want to be starting - it catalyzes transformation in some people that is absolutely astounding.
A classic example is from the original cohort: one of the most successful companies was led by an art major that had never had any business training at all - he did $12k in his first two weeks in the Foundry. While there are plenty of other stories like this in the Foundry, Nick just happened to get the most media attention. I recommend that you read one of many of his articles here.
However, we are careful to ensure that we do not just bolster egos. One ethos of the Foundry is that you develop self-efficacy by executing with precision. When you say that X will happen and X does happen, you gain power in your ability to call your shots. This is as simple as turning a management report in on time or accomplishing what you said you would do in your management report. The access to this type of operational/organization integrity (think databases, not morality) is our simple-yet-potent weekly management reporting technology which clearly demonstrates to you (and everyone else) exactly what you are getting done (or not). It also involves a lot of failure and not being your word and not executing precisely. It is this painful experience that catalyzes learning and thus the observable is that participants demonstrate some sort of mastery over the form (wax on, wax off).
The Foundry system provides the experience of you being your word and the power that comes when you believe yourself to be a person that follows through on what they commit to (hint: this belief is not mystical, it is realized when you do the act of following through). Layered on top of that is the shared experience of the group engaging in the same activity and finally a community that chooses to see you as someone who is capable of executing precisely (doing what you say you will do).
Human potential is the greatest, most abundant resource in the world. Few organizations know how to tap it and unleash it productively (Apple, Google, Stanford and MIT come to mind). Foundry aspires to be an organization that sees a human, a nascent entrepreneur as someone who is fully empowered to get for themselves anything that they want (in our case it is in the context of a new company). It is one of the fundamental (and intentional designs) of the system. Dr. Wuebker planted the seed of this design element, the early participants took it on and ran with it and as the graduates go on to create their own "Foundries" or emulate the social system design in their own companies, I whole-heartedly believe that it will be one of the greatest contributions to the lives of the scores of people that have and will pass through the Foundry...
..if they so choose to be imprinted upon by the system.
It is a subtle but important distinction: a constant choice of the group to be stand for people living into the role that they assume when accepted into a Foundry cohort. It is difficult to do as we naturally try to hide our flaws and our shortcomings or hide in the comfort of silence and not calling someone out (or be coachable when getting called out). Some will opt in for this type of experience, others self-select out of it (which is why we say this is not for everyone). But those that decide to double down and play for keeps are the ones that keep the program attract to newcomers. It is an individual choice and each person faces that decision in their own way and their own time. When you aspire to be something great (like a CEO), you must be willing to place something great on the alter (some perspective of who you thought you were).
Thursday, May 26, 2011
An Ode to Non-Technical Entrepreneurs
I'm a non-technical startup guy. When selecting my major, I was given the choice between an engineering path and a business path. I opted for business because I like the thrill of hustling and as a kid I was always figuring out how to put extra money in my pocket in addition to my weekly allowance.
I'll admit that I have some irrational fear of programming. After a weekend spent on w3schools.com learning HTML and CSS, I pathetically bumbled my way through setting up and editing a wordpress site. And along each step of the way, I could hear the proverbial ghost of every programming nerd who had their lunch money stolen in high school sneering at me. Like the IT guy from the SNL skits, I felt that no matter what I was doing someone, somewhere was having a vindicated laugh at my expense. Again, irrational. But admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?
However, I will be starting to learn Ruby on Rails with a group of other non-technicals at school so I am relieved that misery will have company. I must admit that not knowing a programming language is the equivalent to not knowing Word or Excel a decade ago. I feel that in order stay relevant, I'm going to need to just get over my childish fears and start being able to have some basic programming skills so that I can have an intelligent conversation with my future engineering guys when.. you know.. I'm COO of a 50M startup.. someday.
With all that being said, here are my thoughts about the unsung heroes of startup world: the operators. The VP-of-get-shit-done guys (and gals). I also have something to get off my chest:
I am sick and tired of hearing about someone farting a new Web 2.0 company every 30 seconds and presenting it at some overblown conference where everyone's tweeting and retweeting the same crap like it's the next Facebook or Groupon or totally pushing the edge of augmented reality. Creating a new way to send a text message is not interesting. We have text messaging. And stop calling is a mobile communications platform.
I love reading VC blogs as much as the next guy but just once I want to hear someone say, "I'm investing in the social layer because anything that requires hard goods and inventory makes me sick to my stomach."
Don't get me wrong, I would love to get investment from Mark Suster or Ben Horowitz, but it seems like unless you are an internet-based company or green-tech startup you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any attention.
Last time I checked, the water bottle I drink out of isn't composed of C++. My jeans aren't written in Java and the individual apple I ate this morning came from a tree, delivered by truck, sold by a real person and did not have a "post to Facebook" function on it.
The point I'm making is that there are a number of things that the twitterverse takes for granted that gets a little more difficult once you step away from your screen:
1. Try getting the door slammed in your face - getting to product to market-feedback is easy when you are shielded behind a username and have a delete key at your disposal. It's a lot harder when you are in the person's office, having the conversation in real-time, looking for non-verbal cues to gauge what you should say next and personal rejection to stomach (coz they aren't buying the product, they are buying you - ask any salesperson what I'm talking about). I would love for Eric Ries or Steve Blank to try and talk as flippantly about "sell, design, build" after attempting it in the real world: cold-calling for three weeks and then going on a 1 week sales meeting bender. Month in and month out.
2. A new product is not necessarily innovative - I am thankful for the tech industry, the innovations in business models over the last decade are pretty novel. And while they might be saturating the industry, they have yet to be implemented in existing industries. Want to see a highly disruptive opportunity that will make VCs craploads of money? Find a team that is employing the freemium model with hard goods (it's the future). I personally know a team (pair of undergrads) that is tinkering to find a way to give road bikes (quality ones) away for free and still have the firm make money.
3. "Hard" entrepreneurs are operational gladiators - going "lean" is a lot harder when you are dealing with inventory and not a lot of cash. You have to be more intentional about your actions and you aren't afforded the privilege of being completely at the beck-and-call of the market, sometimes you got to move product and hustle. That being said, any freedom that the firm has to pivot is the result of operational prowess. Striking a balance between organizational agility and efficiency when working with hard goods, takes a REALLY smart person (Google: "G Score") with the cahones to even attempt it in the first place.
I'm not advocating that "hard" entrepreneurs are better than technical, "soft" entrepreneurs or that the Web 2.0 surge hasn't benefited the nation. I'm simply attempting to shed light on the fact that there are number of entrepreneurs who are quietly hacking away at innovative non-technical problems in "mature" industries. It requires someone with well-rounded knowledge and competency in areas that are "boring" and "non-sexy": accounting, operations management, and sales. And it will be these entrepreneurs who will take the learnings from the tech industry and apply them to the rest of the world (yes, there is a world outside of Stanford's walls).
And here's my strong claim: while we spent our endowment on Facebook and Twitter, China doubled down on it's clean tech investment. China is working on gaining mastery of a hard problem, cheaply producing things that tend to be expensive. The US is mastering the art of coding an app over the course of a weekend.
In the coming years, "hard" entrepreneurs are going to be more critical if the US wants to remain an economic player in the world. Maybe we should start thinking about providing them with the support mechanisms that technical entrepreneurs have been enjoying for the last decade. Places like the Foundry are a good start and we'll be reporting AUTM numbers for our first year soon. Hopefully, it will serve as an example of what is necessary to support entrepreneurial development in a non-technical realm (hint: it doesn't involve money or resources).
I'll admit that I have some irrational fear of programming. After a weekend spent on w3schools.com learning HTML and CSS, I pathetically bumbled my way through setting up and editing a wordpress site. And along each step of the way, I could hear the proverbial ghost of every programming nerd who had their lunch money stolen in high school sneering at me. Like the IT guy from the SNL skits, I felt that no matter what I was doing someone, somewhere was having a vindicated laugh at my expense. Again, irrational. But admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?
However, I will be starting to learn Ruby on Rails with a group of other non-technicals at school so I am relieved that misery will have company. I must admit that not knowing a programming language is the equivalent to not knowing Word or Excel a decade ago. I feel that in order stay relevant, I'm going to need to just get over my childish fears and start being able to have some basic programming skills so that I can have an intelligent conversation with my future engineering guys when.. you know.. I'm COO of a 50M startup.. someday.
With all that being said, here are my thoughts about the unsung heroes of startup world: the operators. The VP-of-get-shit-done guys (and gals). I also have something to get off my chest:
I am sick and tired of hearing about someone farting a new Web 2.0 company every 30 seconds and presenting it at some overblown conference where everyone's tweeting and retweeting the same crap like it's the next Facebook or Groupon or totally pushing the edge of augmented reality. Creating a new way to send a text message is not interesting. We have text messaging. And stop calling is a mobile communications platform.
I love reading VC blogs as much as the next guy but just once I want to hear someone say, "I'm investing in the social layer because anything that requires hard goods and inventory makes me sick to my stomach."
Don't get me wrong, I would love to get investment from Mark Suster or Ben Horowitz, but it seems like unless you are an internet-based company or green-tech startup you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any attention.
Last time I checked, the water bottle I drink out of isn't composed of C++. My jeans aren't written in Java and the individual apple I ate this morning came from a tree, delivered by truck, sold by a real person and did not have a "post to Facebook" function on it.
The point I'm making is that there are a number of things that the twitterverse takes for granted that gets a little more difficult once you step away from your screen:
1. Try getting the door slammed in your face - getting to product to market-feedback is easy when you are shielded behind a username and have a delete key at your disposal. It's a lot harder when you are in the person's office, having the conversation in real-time, looking for non-verbal cues to gauge what you should say next and personal rejection to stomach (coz they aren't buying the product, they are buying you - ask any salesperson what I'm talking about). I would love for Eric Ries or Steve Blank to try and talk as flippantly about "sell, design, build" after attempting it in the real world: cold-calling for three weeks and then going on a 1 week sales meeting bender. Month in and month out.
2. A new product is not necessarily innovative - I am thankful for the tech industry, the innovations in business models over the last decade are pretty novel. And while they might be saturating the industry, they have yet to be implemented in existing industries. Want to see a highly disruptive opportunity that will make VCs craploads of money? Find a team that is employing the freemium model with hard goods (it's the future). I personally know a team (pair of undergrads) that is tinkering to find a way to give road bikes (quality ones) away for free and still have the firm make money.
3. "Hard" entrepreneurs are operational gladiators - going "lean" is a lot harder when you are dealing with inventory and not a lot of cash. You have to be more intentional about your actions and you aren't afforded the privilege of being completely at the beck-and-call of the market, sometimes you got to move product and hustle. That being said, any freedom that the firm has to pivot is the result of operational prowess. Striking a balance between organizational agility and efficiency when working with hard goods, takes a REALLY smart person (Google: "G Score") with the cahones to even attempt it in the first place.
I'm not advocating that "hard" entrepreneurs are better than technical, "soft" entrepreneurs or that the Web 2.0 surge hasn't benefited the nation. I'm simply attempting to shed light on the fact that there are number of entrepreneurs who are quietly hacking away at innovative non-technical problems in "mature" industries. It requires someone with well-rounded knowledge and competency in areas that are "boring" and "non-sexy": accounting, operations management, and sales. And it will be these entrepreneurs who will take the learnings from the tech industry and apply them to the rest of the world (yes, there is a world outside of Stanford's walls).
And here's my strong claim: while we spent our endowment on Facebook and Twitter, China doubled down on it's clean tech investment. China is working on gaining mastery of a hard problem, cheaply producing things that tend to be expensive. The US is mastering the art of coding an app over the course of a weekend.
In the coming years, "hard" entrepreneurs are going to be more critical if the US wants to remain an economic player in the world. Maybe we should start thinking about providing them with the support mechanisms that technical entrepreneurs have been enjoying for the last decade. Places like the Foundry are a good start and we'll be reporting AUTM numbers for our first year soon. Hopefully, it will serve as an example of what is necessary to support entrepreneurial development in a non-technical realm (hint: it doesn't involve money or resources).
Friday, April 29, 2011
Fear.
Maybe then honesty need not be feared as a friend or enemy.
- The Fray
It lets you know that something important to you is at play.
Fear indicates there's fertile ground for a breakthrough.
Fear reveals an opportunity to expand your contributive capacity as a human.
Fear indicates something real.
Fear also indicates something unreal.
Fear appears to be a brick wall that's actually paper thin.
Fear is a means to an end - not the end itself.
Fear is an open gate, not a closed door.
Fear means that you are attempting to live your life.
For most people, fear finds them.
Be the person that lives in such a way that fear is found - uncovered, like a diamond in the rough.
Let fear be your friend. Get to know its intricacies and quirks, its truths and its fallacies.
Have long, deep, deconstructive conversations with fear.
Treasure the honesty and clarity in which fear communicates with you.
Fear knows you better than you do, trust its feedback.
Bond and grow in your relationship with fear. For it may be the best relationship you will have.
If you're willing to let fear be a friend and not a foe.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Don't Shoot the Messenger
I was reminded of an article I read in Harvard Business Review titled How to Handle Surprise Criticism. There's a lot of good advice in the article but the most poignant bits are:
- Look beyond your feelings.
- Look beyond their delivery.
- Don't agree or disagree. Just collect data.
It was written about 6 months ago, the day before I shelved my first startup. I was in the thick of a new normal in my daily life experience: I receive a lot of surprise criticism - and I haven't historically been the best at taking it. However, in my quest to be an effective entrepreneur and executive, I've realized that the key is being coachable. Always.
I have found that this is a rare quality among managers and leaders since the autocratic, appeal-to-authority approach is the default mode for most people. I always thought that taking a stand, being vocal and challenging the conventional thought process was a form of strength. It's lionized in movies and NYT bestsellers. Yet I've realized that it takes quite a bit more strength to be cognitively flexible and emotionally mastered in the face of a critical onslaught... especially from someone with formal or institutional power.
For entrepreneurs that operate in the earliest stages of business discovery, you are confronted with a lot of passionate feedback about everything that you are doing wrong. People in general, are not emotionally mastered and they relate to their feelings, thoughts and perspectives as if it is the undeniable reality of what is happening (rather than coming from the perspective that they are just feelings and thoughts, separate from reality). When given the chance to make you wrong, most people will take it. Anyone who has been a server knows this. And I think it's mostly subconscious - most people would be disgusted with themselves if we showed a video of them ripping into someone without the power to defend themselves or dole out retribution.
But we don't have that luxury. What now?
Being able to take criticism as data collection by separating what's being said, how it's being said and the emotional undercurrent of the message connotes, to me, someone committed to mastering the art of living. Here's some recent examples in my life that reminded me of the value this skill will deliver:
* Hearing the faculty constantly create a new complaint about the coffee I deliver (for free) to them while I worked on my laptop in the lobby were it was served. No change was made to the coffee, yet the complaints would change every day. It's interesting hearing what people say about you when they don't think you are around. And over time I learned which ratio of grounds-to-water delivers the least amount of complaints.
*I watched, and loved, the TED Talk that General Stanley McChrsytal delivered on what he's learned in leadership. I've had a number of responses, ranging from inquisitive to cautionary, about McChrystal's questionability as a leader. Frankly, I don't care. Remember, it's about objective data collection - McChrystal gives a great speech AND he's got a questionable past. Sounds like every other human I know.
I learned about the literary fallacy of ad hominem when I got a C on one of my high school english papers. From that point, I opt to separate the message from the messenger. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that holding two seemingly conflicting notions in your mind at the same time is a sign of marked intelligence.
You are free to discount someone based on the way they deliver the message or the fact that they made mistakes at some point in their life. As a result, you may just be missing out on a highly valuable (though poorly packaged) idea or perspective that could make a big difference in our life. You may also be signaling the upper bound of your ability to learn - a potential bottleneck if you want to significantly alter the trajectory of your life.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Leadership is Listening.
I taught a class last week. A class that I've been enrolled in for 13 weeks now.
The people I presented to know me (or about me) more than I know them and it's not fun being in a class with me. For a week they knew that I would be teaching a class on sales/hustling.
There were no adults, grades were already given out and there was nothing preventing them from not showing up. Half the class showed.
Given all the things they could be doing on a Wednesday night, I asked why they showed up to a class that was technically over. The answer amazed me.
They wanted to hear what I had to say.
They granted me 2 hours of their life. 2 hours they could have spent somewhere else doing something more interesting than witnessing me struggle to keep a lively dialogue going.
It was my first true leadership experience. I was their peer, I have no formal authority over their lives to make them doing anything, much less show up. I was overwhelmed with gratefulness.
But they showed up anyway and listened and participated. It was in that moment that I realized that leadership is the simply being granted the listening of the community you serve.
Think about it. Have you ever had a boss that has formal authority (a title) that everybody pretends to listen to but goes back to 'business-as-usual' once their back is turned? That is a leader who has lost the listening of the people he or she leads.
Ever known someone who has no control over anything material in your life and yet you would swallow your fear and show up to contribute to whatever that person needed you to?
That's leadership. It's a powerful feeling when you have it.
Powerful in that your gratefulness is only outweighed by your sense of responsibility.
And that weight is heavy.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Stanley McChrystal: Listen, Learn. Then Lead
"[The new changes in warfare and digital communication] also produced something that I call an 'inversion of expertise'. We had so many changes at the lower levels in technology and tactics, that suddenly the things we grew up doing were no longer what the force was doing anymore. So how does a leader stay credible and legitimate when they haven't done the thing the people you are leading are doing?"
Friday, April 1, 2011
The Next Generation of Entrepreneurs: Drug Dealers and Hustlas
If colleges and non-profit programs want to capture and equip the next generation of entrepreneurs, they can start with their local teenage drug dealers.
Yep. Drug dealers. I'm not alone on this one and there appears to have been some research on the linkage between drug-dealing as a juvenile and self-employment as an adult.
I am fortunate to have had a post-hoc peek into the underworld of localized drug dealing through some acquaintances who are ex-dealers. Most of them are now self-employed legitimately (I think). Listening to them talk about their experience is simply inspiring. Talk about resourcefulness:
By the time they graduate high school, these teenage drug dealer know more about margins, sales, customer relationship management, building a brand, strategic alliances, viral marketing, inventory management, supply chain management, product-market fit, negotiations and government regulation than most second-year MBAs. They have more experience in strategic decision-making and maintaining competitive advantage in a fiercely hostile commodities market than 2/3 of academia and know precisely what contributes to the local economy.
My conjecture is that if we tell them to keep doing what they are doing and simply replace the drug(s) they are hustling with some other hard good of their interest, we would see a HUGE spike in high growth startups and innovative revivals in mature/dying sectors like manufacturing and retail. Detroit anyone?
My point is that we as a society should not take a position of moral opposition to their current activities but rather praise their resourcefulness and make an attempt to show them the possibility of "legal" enterprises. Based on my discussions with people who have dealt drugs as teenagers, most grew bored with society's traditional models of classroom learning and mind-numbing lever-pulling jobs at minimum wage. Overall, they have vocalized disgust for anything that appealed to authority or followed general consensus.
Conversely, the University of Illinois at Chicago after conducting research on local dealer behavior and impact to the economy found that archetypical drug dealers in depressed metropolitan areas were not motivated to destroy the community but rather (highly) motivated by the same things as "the rest of us" and were simply presented with different opportunities.
My intuition is that drug dealers, regardless of demography, get a high from hustling. This something that I've experienced first hand - a little of which you can read here. There's something about making things happen, making connections, finding a need and delivering on it - and doing so faster, at better quality with the least amount of resource expenditure as possible. Hustling is a form of creating, it is the feeling of being the exception to the Theory of Impossibility, the sense of personal fulfillment when you break the First Law of Thermodynamics: creating matter - economic value - by taking ideas, relationships conversation and resources and rearranging them in a way that only you can. All this to create the existence of dollars in your pocket and happy customers.
There is simply nothing like it. It doesn't matter what you are hustling, simply being in the midst of the process (e.g. "the game", "the grind") is addictive.
This is a good thing. It is at the core of all entrepreneurial individuals that have a chance of doing something impactful and this country has no idea how to channel this type of energy, intelligence and potential. The best that they've come up with so far is ADD/ADHD medicine and sending drug dealers to jail. I have some theories about possible solutions but nothing solidly based in fact.
Except that you could send them to the Foundry.
As I surveyed the landscape for resources/programs that would help me sharpen my talent potential, nothing seemed very interesting. It all occurred to me as another version of a class project: hypothetical and detached. I discovered that there were other students who were going through the exact same experience. This, in part, led to 20 undergrads co-inventing the Foundry with some super cool (and super smart) "adults" about a year ago.
Hustler's like the "realness" of the grind: fear, risk, uncertainty, ambiguity. Everything looked to me like another appeal to authority: some judge or mentor who as no idea who I am or what I've done is in a position to say what is good and what is not.
This is not the way to teach entrepreneurs and it is not the way to allow hustlers and drug dealer to see the possibility of applying their skills, expertise and talents where this country really needs it: job creation.
I think this is why Foundry attracts a certain kind of individual and why graduates weigh in heavily on the cohort formation process: hustlers like being around other hustlers. Iron sharpens iron. We select for people, not for companies because hustlers can hustle anything, whether it's weed and ecstasy or water bottles and recycling bins.
Again, we don't have a resource problem. In fact, I don't think we even have a resourcefulness problem. We have a training problem. Yes it's scary to think about the prospect of training drug dealers to be contributing business leaders. Yes, drug dealers can be dangerous (a function of being in dangerous work) and can smell a feeb from a mile away. The don't appeal to authority (they actually subvert it) or listen to the general consensus about how things should happen. They have a different relationship to fear than most people and definitely not interested in the hokey pokey of Cubiclelandia that modern society has been offering for decades.
Judging by the current state of the union, it seems that even the President agress that we could use less of the lever-pulling types and more of the lever-creating types.
If you are, or know, a 20/30/40-something drug dealer/hustler that might be interest in a new career opportunity hustling something other than drugs and be part of a group where your skills, perspectives and overall approach to life are praised and sought after, Foundry is actively recruiting for people to fill our summer cohort: F3. Feel free to contact me directly or you can submit an application here.
Just leave your drugs and weapons at home - and please don't take my lunch money.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The Foundry: A Word on Resources
I am fully aware of my bias and propensity to brag about The Foundry's accomplishments. Over the last 10 months, there have been some very interesting results generated from the peer-mentorship model and our unorthodox use of resources (which I'll get to in a second).
To this point, some agencies and sophisticated investors are taking note and want to give resources to the program which I think is great. The only advice that I give to any "adult" (whatever that means) is simple: slow down and listen.
My experience in the Foundry taught me that entrepreneurs don't have a resource problem but a RESOURCEFULNESS problem. When I first started Dash & Cooper, I thought that a substantial round of funding would help me solve all my problems. But thanks to the forced scarcity of the Foundry model and culture, I learned that there were a number of smaller, cheaper steps that I could take to incrementally move from the place I was (high ambiguity, anxiety, fear) to the place where most of my business classes start with (defined product perfectly matched with a defined market).
If I had been given a 5-figure investment at the beginning of the program in exchange for equity like most other accelerator/incubator programs do, my inevitable failure would have been amplified, not solved. I was (and still am) a diaper-baby and had no idea what I was doing. Forced to solve the problem with little more than $500, I broke through all the commonplace barriers that people use to explain why starting a company is hard. Being resource starved forced me to be resourceful and in the process I learned something new about myself.
Every person within every Foundry cohort faces this gauntlet. It also helps explain why the participants emerge unstoppable because we have seen (and created) what the world looks like when creative willpower combined with a social system committed to you (not just your company) gets applied to any "problem".
Of all the things that an entrepreneur can receive from the Foundry, the distinction of Resourcefulness (with a capital R) is the most valuable mainly because it costs you the person you thought you were. Which might help to explain why the underlying connection each cohort has with each other is the respect for this process - and why we, the participants, vehemently defend against thoughtless application of outside financing or other resources. Resources rob participants of the precious and painful opportunity to awaken something in yourself that wasn't there before.
They also attract the wrong crowd.
Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't have resources. There are some world class executives circling the Foundry and I would be delighted if the money showed up to bring these people in full-time. I'm sure Matt would appreciate better filming and editing equipment for his videos. Paid subscription to various software-as-a-service products, used laptops, computers, projectors and whiteboard pens have been the most useful for participants and administrators.
And food. Foundry has been known (allegedly) to run up monstrous tabs at Eva's, The Wild Grape and Dick n Dixie's - so I know that this would consume a large line item in any budget ;-)
These are the high leverage items in which resources would make a difference. And that's about it.
Now to address the issue of equity financing and attracting the wrong crowd.
Anyone that want to ports a seed fund on top of the program simply has no idea how a Foundry participant gets imprinted and this becomes the type of entrepreneur investors want to give resources to. Programs that offer resources attract people that want resources. Notice that Foundry doesn't offer resources...
The reason why Foundry participants show up, start companies, and help manage 80% of administrative tasks despite a schedule that juggles full-time school, full-time work, and family life is because they want to get what no other program offers (hint: not resources). Foundry's lightweight and methodical process of repeatedly bathing participants into the nit-and-grit of discovering businesses from scratch is the reason why it exists. It was born of unmet demand not fulfilled by other programs. Not that the other programs are wrong or not valuable - it's just that a year ago 20 of us wanted to start companies, looked around at what was available, voted with our feet and with the gracious help of Rob Wuebker, Matt Hoffman, Ken Krull, Todd Dauphinaus, Brent Thompson and Adam Slovik we invented the Foundry.
There are plenty of places for entrepreneurs to get resources, they are called business plan competitions. And we actually have a business that can help win any competition at will - CupAd. The Light brothers are happy to coach you to win competitions because we, the children, know that those things are not real life, just another variant of class - and thus don't treat them seriously.
There's nothing wrong with investing in strong teams progressing fundable ideas - Foundry is full of these types of teams and there's nothing wrong with being interested in and having financing discussions with a team or company that you want to invest in. There's also nothing wrong with getting a return on one's portfolio, it is the point of a seed fund and the fiduciary responsibility of its managers.
But if your motive is to profit from a bunch of 20-somthings or be a guy that "has a say" without regard to the process that produces the results that got you interested in the first place, then it is a signal to the *participants* that you are "Not Foundry". One earns this scarlet letter by clearly demonstrating that they don't understand (and not interested in understanding) what is involved in the 'forge' part when we say that "Foundry exists to forge entrepreneurs for life."
Focusing on the entrepreneur creates a fundable company as a catalytic byproduct. Fundable companies are the means, not the end.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
How to Get Good at Making Money
Hear them haters talk
but there ain't nothin you can tell em
just made a million..
got another million on my schedule.
-Wiz Khalifa, Black and Yellow
I just finished reading a really, REALLY good article from Jason Fried, CEO of 37Signals. His article on Inc.com titled How to Get Good at Making Money follows his innocent and curious exploration of sales and enterprise during his childhood. Here's some of my favorite quotes:
...people are happy to pay for things that work well. Never be afraid to put a price on something. If you pour your heart into something and make it great, sell it. For real money. Even if there are free options, even if the market is flooded with free. People will pay for things they love.
.. charging for something makes you want to make it better... after all, paying for something is one of the most intimate things that can occur between two people. One person is offering something for sale, and the other person is spending hard-earned cash to buy it. Both have worked hard to be able to offer the other something he or she wants. That's trust-and, dare I say, intimacy. For customers, paying for something sets a high expectation.
When you put a price on something, you get really honest feedback from customers. When entrepreneurs ask me how to get customers to tell us what they really think, I respond with two words: charge them. They'll tell you what they think, demand excellence, and take the product seriously in a way they never would if they were just using it for free.
This article was very insightful and endearing to me as it helped crystallize some "forgotten" lessons from my childhood. As a youngster, I loved making money and was always knocking on doors to shovel people's walk or rake their leaves. The feeling of money in my pocket was great - especially because it signified that I had earned something.
Later on, I had moved into trading cards - first with Pokemon and later on with Star Wars, as the franchise reboot happened when I was in fifth grade. I liked the competition of playing the games (yes there were games to be played) and acquired a large enough collection to let people borrow the minimum required deck size to play and would teach them.
I remember going to Scout summer camp and teaching other boys in my troop (we had about 100 enrolled any given time) and other kids from out of state at the commons area. I picked them because everyone in my neighborhood was already playing Star Wars and the likelihood that they would be interested in buying from me was low. Plus, when you are camping somewhere in Idaho or Wyoming, scout camp provides very little non-scout-related entertainment, thus there was little to do but play card games.
As kids learned the game, I started selling them at a premium since there wasn't any trading card shops immediately available. I could also upsell "foil cards" that were strategic game-makers at multiples of the price of a pack of 10 cards (each pack contained at least one *surprise* foil card).
My parents would marvel at the fact that I would come home with more money after camp than they gave me.
I echo Jason's insight that you have to sell the things that you love yourself - because otherwise nothing gets sold. Even then, you aren't even having a sales conversation as it is traditionally known.
Here are entrepreneurial lessons from my childhood that still show up today:
1. Go where the ground is fertile. - I knew I couldn't sell in my neighborhood because everyone was doing it and there was a card shop nearby so there was little that I could offer them. I had to go someplace where people would be open to a new kind of card game and could easily catch the fever. Scout camp was great because card games were a great way to pass the time when you decided to skip out of your merit badge classes.
2. Enroll, entertain, teach. - I think it's important to find way to get people's attention for just long enough and then you have to do everything possible to make sure that they enjoyed their time with you. You've got to give them the dopamine charge - the "happy-feel-good" experience that leaves them wanting more. When you get permission to have more of their time - that's the perfect opportunity a great opportunity to introduce some of the dry "learning" that is necessary for them to be pleasantly hooked on what you are up to. It's important to love what you are selling because your natural passion is what people are playing off of when you are teaching them about your product.
3. Let the value proposition present itself. - After playing the game a few times, I would typically offer a "premade" deck for sale - mentioning it would take more time and money to construct themselves. By allowing them to participate for free, they could easily see the benefit of having their own deck to curate - rather than some fixed deck that I constructed.
4. Let the users interact. - After I had sold about 8 decks of cards, I organized tournaments with a "heavily stacked" deck as the prize for the winner. This would usually draw small crowd of curious boys who would watch, ask questions and then would want to purchase a deck from me. Because I removed myself from the equation and let kids from different troops battle it out, the players would have their friends show up and I could easily offer the same access to the fun to those who showed up - this saved me a lot of time and effort by letting my customers do most of the work for me.
All in all, I agree with Jason Fried that the skills we build can start at anytime but that we are always practicing them. This has certainly been the case for me. I think that our childhood lessons should be taken at face value simply because they capture the essence of doing business and human interaction. As adults we have a nasty habit of over-complicating things - which can be detrimental when you are leading an early-stage startup with limited resources to use in the quest to find product-market fit.
Thanks Jason for the article. I recommend that you all go check it out and see what shows up for you.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Foundry Company: Coverstruck
He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
CoverStruck, an audio/video startup founded by Foundry F2 member, Garrett Smith is like Youtube for the musically talented to showcase their artesian recreations of popular songs and support each other. I was surprised to note that Garrett has somehow locked down performance licenses from the three biggest music rights management companies so that users can upload their "interpretations" without fearing The Man.
CoverStruck is now saved in my favorites and I plan to use as I do work on my laptop - sort of like a Pandora for song covers (it's that good).
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
With this new batch of Foundry miscreants halfway through their cohort, F2 tends to be more tech-oriented than the F1 guys that preceded them. Which means that they are smarter and spend their time mulling their baggy eyes through lines of code at weird times during the night - eating $5 pizza and "liberated" Rockstar Cola that mysteriously showed up on Foundry's footsteps last July.
While I can definitely see the benefit to "yet-to-be-discovered" musicians and their desire to not be sued, I found the user experience for non-musical norms like myself to be very intuitive. The front page has a rolling feed of videos that are on the site, it's addictive (kinda like Facebook's newsfeed) and I found myself returning to it to see what else was going to pop up.
What also cool is the way that the site is designed to encourage exploration. While the video is playing you can see who else has covered the song, who has covered other songs by the same mainstream artist and how many covers the particular musician has covered.
To give an example, I found a piano cover of "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon and while I was watching the video, I noticed a tab that showed there were three other covers of that particular song. So once the first video finished, I checked out who else had done the song and then moved on to other Kings of Leon covers.
Surprisingly, I spent much more time than I planned to on the site and I think that speaks to the way Garrett is thinking about the user experience on both sides of the spectrum: the musicians and the music lovers.
I recommend that you check them out and encourage your musician friends to be soothed by their ability to legally express themselves online.
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