Startup education: Pareto and the heat seeking missile (part 1/2)

The world of startups and innovation is incredibly exciting, fast moving, and sometimes confusing.

For those trying to find their way, there is a lot of information and plenty of people out there who are willing to point you in the right direction.

This is awesome! Talented and experienced people are willing to share their insights to help you succeed. Even better, in many cases, they won’t expect anything in return.

The challenge, however, is that there is more information and advice out there than we could possibly absorb in a lifetime.

With that in mind, I wanted to apply the Pareto Principle to startup education- what 20% subset of ideas will produce 80% of the results?

After taking some time to pen my thoughts, I have come up with a set of ideas which I believe pack the biggest punch. I’ve split them up into two sections to ensure a palatable read.

My hope is that this will be useful to early-stage founders (0–2 years in) and the people/programmes that support them.

Where I’m coming from

Before going into those ideas, it might be helpful to share with you where I’m coming from.

I’ve been immersed in the world of startups and innovation for a while now — about 3.5 years, in fact — across tech, SME and the social impact arena. In that time I’ve built a startup accelerator, a branch of the worlds largest NFP management consultancy, worked on a few side hustles (scalable founder education and self-driving cars), and coached > 100 founders via Catalysr & UTS Hatchery.

Throughout this journey, I’ve learned from people much smarter than me (successful founders, investors and domain experts).

Along with that I’ve taken time to educate myself, through reading books and articles, listening to podcasts and watching lectures (1–2 hours a day).

I’ve debated and then tested everything I’m about to share with you, first with myself, then with my team and other founders.

Of course, I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I’ve also learned from them. By sharing this with you, hopefully I can help you avoid making a few of the ones I did while also getting a clear idea of what 20% to focus on.

Thesis

My basic idea is this. The top 20% — bang-for-your-buck ideas — can be arranged around an analogy: a great startup is a heat seeking missile.

The heat seeking missile operates with 6 key elements:

1. the flight system — initially that is you.
2. the atmosphere — the other people you are surrounded by.
3. the target — the problem you are solving.
4. the warhead — the solution to the problem.
5. the engine — execution.
6. missile lock — feedback loops.

This piece will cover the first two elements of the system — the flight system and the atmosphere. Or, in less abstract terms: self-education and the people you choose to surround yourself with.

1. The Flight System

You, the flight system, are the control room for the entire system. You’re responsible for taking in data from the outside world, interpreting the data and manoeuvring the missile when it’s off-target.

In order to eventually hit the target, you have to become great at interpreting data and steering towards the target.

So how do you optimise the flight system?

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.” ~ Robert Pirsig, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Have/develop a growth mindset

You probably already know what this is, but in case you don’t: a growth mindset, in contrast to a fixed mindset, is a fundamental belief about learning and intelligence.

Its basic premise is that if you suck at something (e.g. public speaking) — you can get better at it through putting in effort. (Does this sound obvious? That puts you in the 40% of people with a growth mindset!)

The silver lining is that for people in the fixed mindset camp, it’s not a lost cause! You can change your orientation and ultimately push through barriers you didn’t otherwise think possible.

A growth mindset gives you the conviction to continue practicing and expanding your skills in all areas necessary to hit your target.

Learn to think clearly

As you move through the world, you are constantly processing information. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch; verbal and non verbal cues; quantitative data, emotions and gut feels.

In the startup context, you will have to take in this information and then decide what to do with it. Is it relevant? How should we treat it? What should we do next?

Typically, we suck at processing this information accurately, and a few of the major ways we suck are due to the fact that we are riddled with biases, and our emotions prejudice our thoughts.

If we don’t learn to think clearly, our perception of the world will become warped. If our perception becomes warped, our thinking will become faulty and thus, we will make the wrong decisions and take the wrong actions.

So what can you do about it?

I’d recommend subscribing to this blog for thinking clearly and learning Vipassana meditation as a way of understanding the relationship between your emotions and thoughts.

Learn how to learn

This is something school and university are supposed to teach us in theory. But we know instead that the system (and it’s participants) tend to optimise for exam scores over meaningful learning, and so we tend to learn pretty faulty ways of taking in and retaining information.

Bad learning habits, and therefore suboptimal learning, is a missed opportunity considering knowledge is power. Realising this about a year ago, I set off on a journey to learn how to learn.

What does my approach to learning now look like? If I’m reading a book, I’ll take a pen and make comments in the margins as I go (I read paperback — soz environment). At the end of each chapter, I’ll make a summary based off my understanding of it. I’ll then flick through the chapter and make sure I didn’t miss anything important.

As I engage more deeply on certain topics, I tend to cover a number of books, articles, and lectures. In order to integrate all of the information I cover, when I get time, I try to write an essay so as to synthesise the information and compare/contrast any competing ideas.

Finally, I always find time to discuss and debate ideas with great people (more on this later)!

Learn the startup toolkit

There are a core set of tools/frameworks that many founders utilise to mitigate the risk of making bad decisions. These are:

1. Design thinking: a set of tools, adapted from designers, that enable you to solve problems creatively with your customer in mind. Here’s a good place to start.
2. Lean startup: Approaching your startup like a scientist would an experiment, while de-risking your idea progressively over time.
3. Agile: For building products in a flexible and cost-effective way.

In my opinion the above toolkit is optional. There are competing views about whether they are necessary to build a great startup. In fact, some people just get by with a great intuition and wild intelligence. I, however, am not one of those people, and have found them very valuable in my practice.

Try them and see what you think.

2. The atmosphere

Now that you have a flight system to collect the data and a solid system to interpret it, you might consider the airspace through which you will travel.

You probably want to choose airspace that will enable you to hit your target in the quickest and cheapest possible way, right?

To that end, it would be good if your missile flies through airspace with minimal drag. It would be even better if you had a tailwind behind you.

Surround yourself with great people

You can get that tailwind by surrounding yourself with the best people you can find.

Try and find people who do more than they talk, who are dedicated to continuous self-improvement, are intensely focused, and passionate about what they do.

You’ll need to balance quality and quantity. Your close circle of friends/colleagues will dramatically influence the rate and quality of your learning. You can speak at a level of depth with them over a period of days and months that you simply can’t with acquaintances during intermittent catch ups.

You’ll also need to maintain a broader group of relationships for obvious reasons. Startups take a village to build and you’ll need to be a giver and receiver in that village to survive.

If you manage that well, you’ll have a great tailwind behind you and you’ll be well on your way to hitting your target.

Fin

If you’ve read this far, your heat-seeking missile is part way to completion. I hope you’ve enjoyed the read and learned a thing or two along the way.

If you have any thoughts, criticisms or suggestions, please feel free to comment or get in touch directly.

Stay tuned for part 2 where I’ll cover the target, the engine, the warhead and missile lock.

Thanks

Thanks to Celeste Furnell for the her pro editing, and much gratitude to my baby bro Cameron Muller, Tina May, Ben Sand, Blaise McCann and Usman Iftikhar for reading drafts of this.