ANTIFRAGILE - Personal RISK (Not at the Expense of Others) & SOUL in the GAME!

From Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The LEAN Startup Checklist

• https://medium.com/@davidjbland/7-things-i-ve-learned-about-lean-startup-c6323d9ef19c#.23k8qswi9

I’m an early adopter of Lean Startup. Ever since Eric Ries starting writing about his thoughts on the Startup Lessons Learned Blog, I was hooked.

I was hooked because he just made sense. Eric put a language to concepts I had believed in ever since the first startup I joined in 1999 pivoted from B2C to B2B. Of course we didn’t call it a pivot back then, nor did we base it on any meaningful data. When we realized we were B2B, then that’s when things took off, we survived the dot com bubble and were acquired in 2006.

Since 2009, I’ve read everything I could find from Eric Ries / Steve Blank / Kate Rutter / Laura Klein / Janice Fraser / Alexander Osterwalder / Ash Maurya / Dave McClure / Brant Cooper / Patrick Vlaskovits / Jeff Gothelf / Josh Seiden / Giff Constable and then went off and tried these ideas, in the real world, with my clients.

I’ve been advising startups and corporations on Lean Startup for about 5 years now, and I wanted to report back on some of my findings:

1. Minimum Viable Products are optimized for learning, not scaling. This is one of the hardest things to convey to people who’ve spent their lives building to build, not building to learn. These are people who’ve been burned in the past and told to release a half baked prototype to thousands of customers. These directives come from management who thought that if you throw enough people at the prototype, then everything would be fine. So be patient when people aren’t eager to adopt the MVP concept right way. This is the main reason I start with Learn in the Build Measure Learn loop. What do you need to learn about the customer? The market? The problem? When you start with learn, it helps soften the blow.
2. The second hardest thing about Minimum Viable Products is that while you decide what’s Minimum, the customer determines if it is Viable. You’ll need to lead your team out of the trough of sorrow after they experience this despair for the first time. Never have I experienced a team where they released an MVP and on the first try, had wild success and then made millions of dollars. It takes weeks or months of experimentation to see if there is a there, there. Remember that the goal of the MVP isn’t to scale or generate revenue, it’s to learn in the market by generating qualitative & quantitative data. You use that data combined with your vision to then, in turn, make a more informed investment decision. Not many people understand this nuance yet.
3. The most common pivots I see in practice are Customer Pivot, Problem Pivot and Solution Pivot. A Customer Pivot is when you are passionate about the problem, but during customer discovery you find it is a different segment that has the problem. You pivot from one customer segment to the other, based on what you’ve learned. A Problem Pivot is when you are passionate about the customer, but the problem you thought they had isn’t their most painful one. You pivot from one problem to the other, and stay locked in on that customer segment. A Solution Pivot is when you are dialed into the customer and problem, but your solution isn’t a good fit. The value proposition resonates and yet still no one uses it. You pivot from one solution to another, based on what you’ve learned, in hopes of solving the problem in a sustainable manner.
4. Almost no one is using Innovation Accounting correctly. Startups aren’t using it because they don’t take time or lack the skills to instrument analytics and create a baseline. Corporations don’t use it because they either aren’t allowed to use the proper analytics tools or can’t trace the metrics across fiefdoms of functional silos. One of the most powerful concepts in Lean Startup, Innovation Accounting, has yet to even be fully realized.
5. As a founder, it can be harder to raise big money if you use Lean Startup. All of that experimentation you’ve done to learn about the market, the customer and the solution essentially means you are no longer the sexy unicorn founded on a team and a dream of 1B valuation. However, don’t get too depressed that Lean Startup won’t help you land home run funding, because it will still significantly increase your chances of raising base hit funding.
6. Customer discovery never stops. Have a landing page and people are signing up? Great, go interview them and ask them why they signed up. People love your new mobile app and are referring all of their friends? Awesome, go ask them why they are so passionate about it. You cannot uncover why people are signing up, using and evangelizing your product by just looking at metrics. Quantitative metrics tell you the what, not the why. You still need to go talk to them.
7. Lean Startup is not a fad and is here to stay, in one form or another. It reminds me very much of Extreme Programming (XP). Both had “theory of relativity like” ideas and a small, but passionate following. XP became the catalyst for modern software practices like Pair Programming, Test Driven Development and Continuous Deployment. I believe Lean Startup is similar, in that it is the catalyst for the next generation of entrepreneurship and modern product development.

Yard to Table initiative framework/draft - presented Saturday (re: Bob Leonard question and Blair McGowan engagement for Healthy Pontiac OU)

This email exchange posted with permission by Ashleigh, outlines a formative stage proposal that was presented Saturday by Plain and Fancy Food Truck. We are working to build capacity for this in connection to our work on the Pontiac Moving Forward initiative and with Webber Media Arts Academy, Pontiac and Oakland Schools. The "land" is in reference to 115 plots informally offered by Councilman Don Woodward during our "Design Jam" walk with Webber - through his work with Grace Centers of Hope. We are exploring this possibility leading up to the January 10th meeting at Welcome Baptist Church with Oakland University. 

 (Blair's email engaging Healthy Pontiac leadership was forwarded to Ashleigh).    

Introducing the Yard to Table Union

Inbox

x

Plain and Fancy Food	Jan 1 (4 days ago)
to James, me

Happy New Year!

Evan and I have been spinning our wheels and I think we've got a clear picture of an initiative for Pontiac Moving Forward. The possible availability of land has brought a lot of things together for us. I think that would be the best place for us to start, with the following questions:

Where are the parcels? Is a map available?

How big are they?

Are there any structures on them?

In what capacity may the parcels and structures, if any, be available?

We would like to establish the Yard to Table Union, a collective nonprofit that promotes sustainable home agriculture as a source of education, personal advancement, and economic development.

The Yard to Table Union will organize and manage a market with hours convenient to working families and students.

The Yard to Table Union will provide a community space for use by its members with a shared use commercial kitchen, gathering space for events and classes, as well as a home base for the organization.

The Yard to Table Union will establish a community tool library with membership available separate from Yard to Table Union membership.

The Yard to Table Union will have an educational mandate, developing programs and classes as well as encouraging partnerships with educational establishments.

We're excited to share more Saturday. We have some ideas for a role for Lyrics on Vinyl and of course know where our dream market space is.

Let us know if you have any questions.

See you then!

Ashleigh

Plain and Fancy Food	12:43 PM (6 hours ago)
to me

Hey Monica,

We are somewhat aware of "Healthy Pontiac." For a few months we got some postcards in the mail about the two markets they are supposedly running. As we mentioned, we recently tried to go to the Tuesday market at OLHSA and found nothing to be going on. This was where the woman called me a "little detective" for showing her the schedule posted on healthypontiac.org. We were told the person in charge of it at OLHSA would contact us but we have yet to hear anything. Healthy Pontiac is also affiliated with the market at All Saints on Saturday which seems to be running pretty smoothly.

Kim said they they have a monthly meeting I can't remember if it was supposed to be on 1/6 or 1/13 at 1:00 at the Baldwin Center. She suggested I attend, but I don't know that I'll be able to as I have work :/ I'd be interested to hear what they have to say regarding our experience at OLHSA.

I like Blair's comments about what could be good for Pontiac. I think we can't do enough to help people face mental health issues. There is no question to the link between good mental health and good overall health. There's a lot I can say personally to attest to this. Small quality of life changes, like a healthier diet and spending time with nature, can have a significant positive impact.

I'd love for you to share Yard to Table. The email we sent was just a high level look at the dreams we have, we can add more details if you'd like. Also, have some new questions for you and more ideas about the educational aspect with ties to Webber….

Questions:
How many students attend Webber?
What is the age range and how is the student population divided between them?
What time does school start and end?
Do they have any after school programs?
How long is the school year?
What do the students do during the summer?
Which plots of land are near the school?

We're thinking we could set each of the kids up with a starter garden. If possible, each student could have a certain amount of space and we would work with them to design their garden. Obviously there are lots of opportunities for learning through a garden, so we'd like to provide options for the student to explore.

Gotta run, lunch is almost over!
Thanks,
Ashleigh

                                      Mocha Tarte for Saturday

                                      Breakfast Club by Plain and Fancy Food