From the Start-up Trenches » Tech

I’m Moving to China

kevindewalt — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:34:02 +0000

Yes, you read that correctly.

My family has a fantastic business opportunity overseas and we’ll be moving to Beijing in early 2012.

I plan on splitting my time between Beijing and Silicon Valley for the next couple of years.

I’m thrilled for this new adventure and cannot imagine a more exciting life situation for an entrepreneur. China and Silicon Valley are reshaping the global economy and I can’t wait to jump in the mix.

While I get Lean Startup Meetup Beijing¹ running and learn Mandarin, I will be asking advice from anyone and everyone who has done business in China about my next startup.

So … please … if you’ve done business in China … don’t be shy. I’ve got a ton to learn and need all of the help I can get.

You can reach me on Twitter or kevindewalt ~ [AT] ~ kevindewalt ~ [DOT] ~ com.

I’m looking for help from entrepreneurs in Beijing who want to help organize. ↩

Why Lean Startups are Hard Part 2 – Pivoting How We Think

kevindewalt — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:09:24 +0000

This is the second of a two-part essay on why Lean Startups are so hard.

In my last essay I explained Why Lean Startups are Hard: because we’re biologically wired to believe crazy stuff without evidence.

First we believe, then we rationalize.

This is pretty bad news for a lean startup. It means our inspirations—the startup ideas that hit us at 4 AM, the new ventures we’re ready to pour our heart and soul into—are most likely wrong.

Fighting Back Against Our Genes

Fortunately, we homo sapiens have spent a few hundred years creating a tool to help us combat our inclinations: The Scientific Method. And while far from perfect, it is the best tool we have for helping us overcome our biases.¹

Being a lean startup entrepreneur requires us to embrace the principles of the Scientific Method. ²

And while we DON’T need our college science textbooks to be an entrepreneur, we DO need to apply reason and critical thinking to determine validity of our business model assumptions. We need to find support for our conclusions instead of constantly justifying preconceived ones. ³

Michael Shermer, Founder Skeptic Magazine

Fortunately, we can learn from another community that attempts to apply this type of critical thinking to various aspects of their lives: Skeptics. ⁴

Why Skepticism

Learning to THINK differently is the hardest pivot. ⁵

If we don’t learn to think skeptically then every tactic and strategy in our Lean Startup toolchest is worthless.

If we’re not ready to question fundamental business model assumptions then creating a Lean Canvas is a waste of time. Ditto customer development if we ask leading questions designed to elicit the answer we want to hear.

We can’t pivot while dogmatically attached to our ideas—it’s that simple.

How, then, can we possibly summon the energy to wake up every day and find passion for entrepreneurship, knowing that we’re probably wrong?

I’ve actually found an approach that works for me.

Passion for the Process

Skepticism is not a position; it’s a process.

— Dr. Michael Shermer

I can live with doubt and uncertainty. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

— Richard P. Feynman

I am no longer passionate about any single idea of mine. I am passionate about solving problems for markets and the discovery process in entrepreneurship. ⁶.

I’m excited about searching for that 10% portion of my ideas that are right—that occasional signal from the market that I’m onto something. What a thrill to know I may be the first person to discover a new model!

Ideas are weak, fragile concepts that are easily ridiculed. Holding on to them against odds and evidence can be a scary, lonely endeavor.

Process is power.

When people challenge my hypotheses, I try to approach the conversation as one between two rational people searching for the truth. This approach disarms critics and helps me see my own blind spots.

I wake up every day (like you, often at 4 AM) asking myself, “what is my biggest risk and am I addressing it?” It makes entrepreneurship a lot less scary.

Even when we follow a rigorous discovery process with a market and problem we care about, some degree of failure is inevitable; remember, that just means more chances to learn, and pushes us toward success on our next startup.

Becoming a Skeptic

Learning to think skeptically is itself a process that can take years. It even requires using the language of logic.

In coming essays I’ll talk more about how I use concepts like Survivorship Bias, Argument from Authority, and Confirmation Bias – the worst of them all – in my startups.

Here are some resources that can help (suggest more in the comments below and I’ll add them):

Michael Shermer’s books, essays, and articles in Scientific American
Skeptics Guide to the Universe Podcast
Point of Inquiry Podcast
Skeptic Magazine
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
Skepchick

Some studies suggest that more than 50% of all published medical research is wrong. Think about that for a second. The scientific community has a couple hundred years’ head-start on us entrepreneurs, and yet the most talented among them—who follow this rigorous discovery process—usually get it wrong. What, then, are the odds that our first startup idea is right? ↩
Check out the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program. No institution in the world is better suited to advance these principles than NSF and use them to help build our products and our companies. ↩
This why the funding community needs to co-evolve with us. Expecting us to “pitch” an idea puts us in the intellectually dishonest position of attempting to justify our ideas on little evidence. ↩
A common misconception is to associate skepticism with “cynicism,” “debunking,” or “negativism.” It is simply the application of critical reasoning to reach conclusions. ↩
The few entrepreneurs I meet who actually apply Lean Startup principles tend to be over 35. I suspect it takes most of us decades to understand the importance of questioning our conclusions. (It did for me.) ↩
Actually, I’m not that interested in startup ideas generally. But I’m really interested in how people are figuring out whether they work. ↩

New: Hacking Startups Podcast

kevindewalt — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:58:46 +0000

Summary: We’re creating a Hacking Startups Podcast at http://hackingstartups.org.

Want to Get Coffee Sometime?

I get a lot requests from entrepreneurs asking for time to talk about their Lean Startups. Although I learn a ton and enjoy these meetings, they have some shortcomings:

I find myself having similar discussions over and over.
If I lack experience in an industry I’m of limited help
Nobody besides those in the meeting learn from the dialog
It takes a lot of time

Lean Startups meetups definitely help, particularly case studies. Unfortunately it gets really hard to scale them.

Wanted: Regular, Rich Discussions

Patrick Smith, Steph Hay, and I decided to launch a podcast that digs deeper into issues facing Lean Startups. We’re interviewing entrepreneurs and digging into the details: key assumptions and risks, what the team is doing to vet these risks, and specific tactics they are using to discover a scalable model.

And we’ll try to make it fun.

There are ton of great startup podcasts out there – Mixergy being among my favorites – but none that have the detailed dialog like that which we have in our own Pivot-or-Persist meetings¹.

Our MVP

We’ve got a ton of other ideas, but – eating our own dogfood – we wanted to first get the interviews going to see if anyone listens.

If you listen to our pilot episode – and we’ve heard that it gets better towards the end – please also take a moment to give us some feedback.

Eric Ries covers Pivot-or-Persist in his upcoming book, The Lean Startup. It has been so effective for me I predict every serious Lean Startup will be doing it in 6 months. And if you want to hear HOW I’m doing it, you’ll have to subscribe to the Hacking Startups podcast. I’m going to cover it in our second pilot episode ↩