Initiators Guild Part II: Activating the Initiators
This is Part II of a series of blogs introducing The Initiators Guild, a new project by INVANTI. We suggest reading Part I, if you have not already, before reading this post. Other posts in the Introducing the Initiators Guild series: Part III, Part IV.
As we discussed in Part I of Introducing the Initiators Guild, we know that there are a lot of people out there who have unique insights into some of the most pressing problems Americans face on a daily basis, and who have what it takes to start something to fix them, but have not been able to do so yet. The Guild is a home for these people with two main objectives:
- Get them started — We know that the ambiguity and sheer volume of information that initiators face when they start working on a problem is overwhelming. We provide digital tools and 1:1 support to help them organize their thoughts and visually track their progress as they move through the three phases of our process: Build Hunches, Evaluate Problems, and Develop Concepts.
- Help them always find a way to make progress — We also know that narrowing down what to work on is hard, and it is critical that those decisions are informed by what matters to a founder. We help initiators sort through the ambiguity, and learn how to make decisions that push their concept forward. As they’re making progress on their concept, we also help them make progress on defining who they are as a founder and the kind of company they want to build.
We often get a lot of questions about who these people are and why they haven’t just started something already. We will spend today’s post answering these questions.
More on Initiators
From our experience with INVANTI, initiators come from all kinds of backgrounds. We’ve bet on people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. We’ve had consultants, artists, investment bankers, social workers, researchers, family business operators, and more. Initiators are everywhere — we’ve worked with people from big cities and small, the coasts and the Midwest, the US and abroad. We have, and will continue to, place a special focus on activating those who are often overlooked by the current entrepreneurial system, including intentionally recruiting women, minorities, immigrants, and people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.
While much is different about Initiators, there are four characteristics that they all share that make them poised to start impactful companies:
- They take action. They have a history of starting things — whether that be a company, a non-profit, an activist group, a club, a political campaign or a myriad of other things — they see problems and cannot help but act. And not only have they started things, they’ve also attracted resources to them — convincing others that what they are working on is worth supporting.
Example: We worked with an initiator who went to college to pursue the fine arts. Senior year, after facing the hard truth that being a full-time artist was not financially viable for her, she visited the entrepreneurship center on campus to find ways she could turn her art interests into a business. She was told that they did not have programming for people from the liberal arts and that they couldn’t help her. Frustrated, after graduating later that year, she applied for an administration position in the center and was hired. She spent a few months automating as much of the work as possible and then used her free time to design, advocate for, and implement a new entrepreneurship program for future liberal art students. - They are humble, but confident. They are curious, constantly questioning assumptions, and seeking new information. At the same time, they can make decisions without perfect information and commit to making progress amid ambiguity. As the founders of Instagram put it, they are the type of people likely to say, “I may not be right, but I’m not confused.”
Example: We worked with an initiator that was obsessed with the toggle between getting feedback and turning it into action. He had started his own power washing business as a college student to bring in extra income, and would spend every minute he was power washing listening to podcasts to figure out how to become a better business owner. When we met him, he made it a weekly habit to send us a message asking how he was doing and what he could do to improve. His obsession with learning and seeking feedback, combined with his impatience to start implementing, has allowed him to build his power washing business and find new opportunities to serve other small business owners like himself. - They have experiences or skill sets that give them an edge on a problem. Even prior to having an idea, they have something unique to offer to the problems many Americans face every day. Whether that is because they have personal experience with a problem or are bringing a skill set not yet leveraged, it just makes sense to bet on them to solve it.
Example: We worked with an initiator that had years of experience in academic research and clinical social work. But she also had developed a passion for small business owners. Her experience as an immigrant and daughter to a small business owner showed her the power of owning a business, but she also knew they had few places to turn to in the lonely struggle of managing your own company. We were able to help her find a way to turn her background as a mental health professional into a vehicle for insights into how to support small business owners and help them manage their well-being. - They have a deep commitment to starting something impactful. They do not want to start just anything. They already have a drive to create impact with whatever they do, and they would commit the next phase of their life to building their own thing should the right opportunity arise.
Example: We worked with an initiator that, before joining INVANTI, had spent months reading everything she could about the impacts of automation on blue collar jobs and attending conferences across the country to learn more. She grew up working in her parent’s car dealership and auto repair shop, but now lived in the tech world and saw a disconnect between the lives and perspectives of the employees she knew as a kid and the people she knew as an adult building technology. She wanted to do something about it, but was struggling to get from reading academic journals, opinion pieces, and conferences to something actionable. We were able to help her shape that commitment and drive into a venture that is helping manufacturers enable their workforce to find an upskilling path that leads to better wages and more job stability.
“But if they were entrepreneurial, wouldn’t they have started something already?”
Helping people start companies before they have an idea can be really confusing to some. One of the most common criticisms we get is that, if these people were really entrepreneurial, they would already be working on a company. While this makes sense at first glance, we know from personal experience and from the experience of others, that after a deeper look, this is not always the case. But why? What gets in the way of these talented people starting something?
Self-Identification as an Entrepreneur
Not all initiators self-identify as entrepreneurial. There are a lot of reasons for this — Maria wrote about this issue in her blog, “Entrepreneur. Who? Me?!”, especially as it ties to her own personal experience. We think it’s a good read to understand this issue, but in case you don’t have time, here are a few excerpts as it relates to her journey self-identifying as entrepreneurial:
Lately, I’ve been telling people that I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I say that stories about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg never really resonated or motivated me. I say that I never wanted to start a company. I say that I just found a problem and then kind of tripped and fell by happy accident into the world of entrepreneurship. I think it’s my way of apologizing for daring to be in a role that I still don’t feel like I can live up to.
I can get up in front of a room of 100 people and tell them with confidence (and many enthusiastic hand gestures) that I’m using entrepreneurship as a tool to tackle a problem I care a lot about solving. But I can’t look you in the eye and tell you I’m an entrepreneur without feeling like I’m lying to you.
[…]
If I think about the things I’ve done up until now, I’m starting to recognize flashes of the things we look for in the entrepreneurs we recruit — an instinct to stray from the beaten path and challenge rules that don’t make sense, the curiosity and imagination to approach problems in new and different ways, the ability to attract people and resources behind a mission to build something new, and an immutable default to action in the face of ambiguity.
Until now, it has never occurred to me to think of those things as entrepreneurial.
We have seen the power of tapping people like Maria on the shoulder and saying, “We think you can do this and we want to help you get started”. We hope the Initiators Guild becomes a place where initiators who have never thought of themselves as entrepreneurs are activated and supported to do the things they are capable of and uniquely suited to do.
Unlocking Insights
Activating people that are already deeply motivated and knowledgeable about a subject to identify as entrepreneurial is just the first step. Once we are able to do that, then it’s a process of making sure we can help them unlock the insights that they already have, or can access because of their network and past experiences. Narrowing down everything you know about a topic to an insight that can be translated into a company is hard, but we think there is a process to do so and it’s powerful when it works.
In our first cohort, we had a founder who was highly motivated to find something that helped vulnerable people better manage their day-to-day finances. She researched and researched, followed our process, but ended up frustrated and burnt out pretty quickly. After sitting down to talk about it, we realized she had been in pure opportunity recognition mode — she was being a martyr to the process and only thinking about where there was a business model opportunity, not where her experiences and ties to a community she deeply cares about fit in. After spilling her frustrations and allowing a few minutes of silence to pass, she said, “There is something I’ve been thinking a lot about for years now…” She went on to tell us about her interest in how those recovering from addiction manage their finances while also managing their recovery. This set off a whirlwind of progress and eventually led to the founding of Bedrock Financial Health. She actually had the problem she wanted to solve all along, but needed the permission and space to dig into it in a structured way, such that it could make the transition from an interest to a company concept.
Knowing How to Make Progress Early
Even if you self-identify as entrepreneurial and can identify an insight that is both a business opportunity and fits your motivations as a founder, it still is not obvious how that translates into a concept and then into a company. Some people are able to sort this part out on their own, but it often takes a lot longer than necessary, and many others are never able to make the transition. The frustrating part is that it is not rocket science and there are known questions that need to be answered. We believe that by concentrating on things like user needs, the competitive landscape, market forces, and aligning impact and profit, you can move through this stage effectively and build an argument for a solution and business model. We are building the Initiators Guild because there is a playbook for this early stage and we think more people need access to it.
So why a guild?
Our in-person cohorts have revealed a lot to us about the earliest stages of entrepreneurship and working with initiators.
First, there is immense value in bringing together initiators in the state of actively looking to start something, but who don’t have ideas yet. The frustrating tension between a drive to impact a certain issue you care about and the ability to make that actionable is a lot easier to manage when you can connect with others facing a similar challenge. There is also power in the perspectives and skill sets of a community, which can surface in unpredictable ways across the lifespan of an initiator. The other key element of bringing initiators together is that being an initiator is an identity that persists through different stages of life, professions, companies, and projects. Unlike the title of ‘founder’ or ‘employee’, it is not tied to a particular company. Some projects and ventures work, others do not. But the identity of being an initiator remains constant, in both success and failure.
The second thing we’ve learned is that there is a craft to this stage — part intuition, part process — and it can be practiced. Whether it’s problem identification, opportunity recognition, solution and business model brainstorming, or making decisions about the types of things you want to engage with as a founder and how, you can get better at it and learn over time.
These learnings led us to believe we need a solution that facilitates both community and craft. Initiators needed a home where they could connect with others and practice and deploy the craft of spotting opportunity and navigating ambiguity. Guilds have traditionally been a home of people, namely craftspersons and artisans, who have a common interest and pursuit, pass along mastery of a craft, and who benefit from being in community with one another.
If you or someone you know is passionate about working on important problems and has a track record of initiating things, reach out — we would love to see you apply to the Initiators Guild.
