Early RAILS Workshops Introduce Grantees to Innovation Ecosystem
“What is a startup and why are startups relevant to your work as a RAILS grantee?”
On a crisp, Monday morning, our faithful band of grantees gathered at Sol Collective for the third installment of our 2018/19 RAILS Workshop Series. The smell of Buffalo Breakfast Pizza, incense, and hot coffee filled the air…
Wait… what is RAILS?
I’m glad you asked! RAILS is the flagship grant program administered from the City of Sacramento’s Innovation and Growth Fund and our Office of Innovation and Economic Development. RAILS stands for Rapid Acceleration, Innovation, and Leadership in Sacramento and offers up to $1 million in grants annually to support the development of Sacramento’s entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem through “startup enablers” — community-based initiatives and programs that help entrepreneurs take their startup from initial idea to viable company.
Ok… So these workshops…
The grantee workshop series has been designed to offer this cohort of grantees a setting to gain skills and insight they may need to navigate Sacramento’s innovation ecosystem. The idea for these workshops comes from program recommendations developed following the first RAILS cohort, which operated from November 2016 to November 2017. We found that organizations that collaborated tended to be the most successful so this cohort’s workshops serve also as a place to bring together grantees, Mayor’s Tech Council members, and local leaders to encourage meaningful collaboration and a larger pool of resources.
The first workshop served as an orientation where grantees heard from panelists Gabriel Gutierrez of Nascent Games, Stacey Jackson of ADON Communications, and Brain Bulaya local Transportation Planner and Entrepreneur (we know… needs more women) and got the background info on the business model canvases they were expected to complete.
The second workshop, hosted by The Workshop Sacramento, was a crash course in Sacramento’s Startup Ecosystem where StartupSac’s Jeff Bennett presented their fairly comprehensive Startup and Innovation Ecosystem Subway Map. Following his overview, Jeff joined Mariah Lichtenstern of Diverse City Ventures and Founder Institute, Gina Lujan of Hacker Lab, and Graham Ryland of Wonder Workshop to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship and Sacramento’s innovation community.
Now back to September’s workshop…
This workshop was different than the previous two as we did not include a panel to keep our promised 2-hour workshop schedule and give time to address the subject matter. Ash Roughani of our office lead the presentation beginning with Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, Start With Why. Through the workshop, Ash asked grantees to fill in their own Lean Impact Canvas (see below) to visualize how their projects and organizations could function like a startup and use the scientific method to refine their products and services.
Final Takeaways
At the end of the workshop, Ash’s advice to the group was:
- Fall in love with the problem, not your particular solution
- The key to using the scientific method to maximize your impact is keeping your why in mind at the heart of your efforts. Through your testing, you may come to find that your first (or favorite) solution is not the one that works best. If that is the case, pivoting is your best option for success
2. Prioritize your riskiest assumptions
- What is the assumption you’ve made that would invalidate your entire solution? That should be the first thing you test. Once you’ve validated this assumption, move on to the next one. If your riskiest assumption has been invalidated, you will need to re-think your solution.
3. Get outside the building
- You can’t validate (or invalidate) your solution without talking to customers, partners, and vendors. Get out of the building, design experiments, and run tests before you have spent too much time developing a solution that will not fit your why.
You can see the full presentation below as well as background readings and videos for the grantees to supplement information presented in the meeting.
Background Reading
- Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything by Steve Blank https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything
- Five Ways Non-Profits Can Think Like Startups by Y Combinator https://blog.ycombinator.com/advice-for-startup-nonprofits/
- Good and Bad Reasons to Become an Entrepreneur by Dustin Moskovitz https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/good-and-bad-reasons-to-become-an-entrepreneur-decf0766de8d
- One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup by Michael Siebel https://blog.ycombinator.com/one-order-of-operations-for-starting-a-startup/
Videos
- “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries — BOOK SUMMARY (3:08) https://youtu.be/sobxOzRjAGg
- Lean Impact: Amplifying Social Good Using Lean Startup — Ann Mei Chang — Lean Startup Week 2017 (14:06) https://youtu.be/YqKMStWb3dw
- Steve Blank, Evidence-based Entrepreneurship, The Lean Startup Conference 2013–12/10/13 (25:12) https://youtu.be/zjvEanpktEo
