A Case Study in Cognitive Dissonance

The 4.0 Schools Launch Experience

Matt asked me to reflect on my first two weeks as a 4.0 Schools Launch fellow. It was a difficult task. To simply borrow a cliché like “drinking from the firehose” would not do the intensive, immersive and incredibly insightful experience justice.

And then it hit me like southern bread pudding. Cognitive dissonance. It captured the essence of my cerebral state since the first day of the program. A steady feeling of discomfort caused by conflicting beliefs held simultaneously in my head.

And so, since 4.0 is the magic number (see here), I’m delighted to share with you the four causes of my disequilibrium as a rookie entrepreneur along with the tools I learned at Launch to navigate that tension.

1. Failure is a virtue. (tool: Prototyping)

Failure. The word makes the perfectionist in me cringe. But I learned that if I’m ever going to disrupt anything, I must first get comfortable with breaking some things. “Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.” I totally buy that now. So my goal is to fail fast, and fail often.

2. Presumption of suckiness. (tool: Customer Development)

Of course I think my ideas are awesome. They’re my ideas. And I’m awesome. But a business cannot be built on untested assumptions. I learned that I’m often wrong; that I gain better insights by getting out of the building and speaking with my customers. Today, all my ideas suck until proven awesome.

3. Show me the sustainability! (tool: Business Model Canvas)

I’ve come to love and respect my fellow Launchers. We all care deeply about the problems we set to solve within the education landscape. But while our passion is in fact our key driver, we learned to pay attention to the long-term sustainability of our impact. Our ventures are built to last.

4. Get sh*t done. (tool: N/A — just do it!)

It’s summertime in New Orleans. It is hard not to play hard. But when you’re a solo founder in a four-week accelerator, you learn that the speed at which you achieve matters. We must be in here hacking while also out there hustling. When I was in consulting, I used to think the hours were oppressive. I no longer do. Fortunately, there’s a phenomenal community at 4.0 rooting for our success.

Hassan Hassan was a member of 4.0 Schools Summer 2013 Launch and founder of CommonCloud. Originally posted on 29 July 2013.