Week 1 Startup Institute Boston: Stories and Narratives
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As I was beginning to draft and put this blog together I realized it would be impossible for me to cover everything that happened during my first week at Startup Institute Boston. It would also be extremely boring and of no use to someone reading this if I just listed what we did in my program throughout the week. So I’ve decided to write it based on something that really stood out to me and that I think can be of added value to you as a reader. I created a small survey that you can fill out to better help me write these entries, please take a minute to take the survey. I write these without running them through SI staff and from my own perspective in the Sales and Account Management track. Feel free to email me at zotbros@gmail.com if you have further questions regarding my experience in the program. Thank you for reading.
There are two concepts: our story and the narratives we share about our story. I didn’t immediately understand this primarily because of my previous belief that both were synonymous for each other. After having a conversation with one of my classmates, Charlie Ritchie, I began to realize the nuanced distinction between the two. Our story is essentially everything that plays out in our life. It’s inclusive of all the different experiences that one undergoes. Our narratives, are the specific events of our story that we share based on the context we find ourselves in. Whether we are aware of it or not our narratives are the main way through which people can begin to get to know us. The narrative you share with someone at the bar and the one you give at a job interview are varied but both, none the less, derived from your story.
When I was talking to Charlie about thoughts on our first week at Startup Institute, we came to two conclusions. The first is that they are hyper focused on their mission to align passion with profession. As said during our orientation “to usher you into a life you love as a major contributor at a startup or high growth company.” The second, which very strategically compliments their mission, is in helping individuals derive their own narrative from their story. Startup Institute can’t and won’t redo any of your past, what they can do is help you dig and get a better understanding for what it all means. During our first week we had three major group activities including a marshmallow challenge, a scavenger hunt, and an IdeaHack. Yet for the reflection of each activity we were not asked to talk about our team dynamics, but to reflect upon our individual contributions and experiences. From my understanding this was done to help us begin to dig and reflect on our natural tendencies. Questions we reflected on included:
· What did I suck the most on?
· What is my tendency under stress?
· Did I spend enough time listening to my teammates or was I doing all the talking?
· Did I have experience regarding the task at hand? If not what did I do about it?
It’s really through this reflection process through which one is able to derive some substance regarding the trajectory of one’s path. It’s why climbing the tree works only after you’ve trekked along for a while, it helps you compare where you came from and get an idea as to where you are heading.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect in terms of what the cohort would actually be like and I may have underestimated how awesome everyone would be. The group has a fairly balanced male to female ratio and the age range varies from 20 to about 50 years of age. One of the most humbling experiences that I had was in the first few hours of the program when they asked how many of us had quit our jobs in order to attend the program. Every single hand went up except for the few who had just graduated from college. It blew my mind. For some reason I had thought it would be about half and the other half would be on some extended leave or recent graduates. The fact that so many of us have quit our jobs to join this program turns up to be great for the team culture because we are unified by the desire of truly wanting something better for ourselves.
In case you are wondering, here are some quotes from others in my cohort on how they felt about their first week:
“I had a feeing like it was going to be a circus. It immediately got disabused when Allan gave his first talk. This is a groundswell of talent.” — Lisan Mo, Sales and Account Management Track
“It’s so important to ask for help when you need it. Sometimes, based on the place and environment we work in we can forget this and hinder our growth.” — Andrea Gomes, Technical Marketing Track
“The program trusted us to form relationships amongst one another without much structure. At the end of the 5 days we were pretty well bonded”. — Lisa Lin, Web Design Track
4 Major Takeaways from Week 1
1. Draw the Owl
Even though I’ve done a ton of research on company culture and values I had never heard of this one. I was surprised at how recognized it was around Boston startups but for me it was an entirely new concept. What it boils down to is that there are a s*** ton of steps that have to happen between the initial and final stages of the owl you are trying to draw. If you just look at the two pictures it will clearly seem impossible, so the most important thing is to simply get started. Seth Godin wrote a great piece about this and said that “Incubator programs and coaching work their best not when they teach people which circles to draw, but when they engage in interactive learning after you’ve gone ahead and drawn your circle. The iterative process of drawing and erasing and drawing some more is how we learn to see the world.” Startup Institute aims to do just that.
2. If you want to work at a startup, there are few fundamental tools to use during your search:
· CrunchBase: Great to get some ballparks on how much funding a startup has.
· Rapportive: A google chrome extension to verify you have a valid email that matches up with a person’s LinkedIn account.
· Angellist: Startups very actively use it to post jobs
· LinkedIn: Get background on individuals and also number of employees at a company and general following.
· Bonus FirmPlay: Gives more detail on what it is actually like to work at the company.
3. “Not loving what you do is a huge competitive disadvantage.” Meghan Verena Joyce, General Manger, Uber East Coast.
Meghan gave an invigorating talk for one of our fire side chats about her career path. She shared an incredible narrative of her trajectory and the one lesson I found most impactful was the one regarding loving what you do. In the past I’ve heard something similar and of course I’ve always heard about why it is so important to be doing work that we love, but she was very convincing about how much of a competitive advantage it can be if you do. It’s exactly what happened to me. I was not in love with putting utility plans together for the civil engineering firm I worked for and was at a huge disadvantage because the person next to me was and would spend all the extra hours needed to become great.
4. One of the most important metrics of long term success is understanding ones and other peoples’ emotions.
One of the reasons why Startup Institute has placed emotional IQ as an essential part of their core curriculum is precisely because they understand how important it is in determining long term success. They showed us a great video by Brené Brown that covered how misguided we usually are in our approach to dealing with other people when we see they are not feeling well. I know this is one of my weaknesses and like I mentioned in my previous blog is one of the main reasons why I joined.
Overall the first week exceed all of my expectations and I have no doubt that, worst case scenario, my investment will be returned 2x.
Thanks for reading! Follow me on twitter for @ramosjl10. Don’t forget about the brief survey ;) Startup Institute
