No interest in building a startup accelerator like PIE? Good.
Our motivation to share the PIE Cookbook isn’t to convince you to recreate PIE. It’s to inspire you to create something new — and better.
I was having a conversation with a friend, recently. Given that we’re both startup types, the topic of conversation eventually gravitated to the PIE Cookbook project.
His response? An unadulterated “Meh.”
I paused.
I mean, he’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s been mentored. He’s been a mentor. He’s seen a bunch of startups. He’s currently working for a startup — that went through an accelerator.
Why wasn’t this concept super interesting to him?
The reason — it didn’t take me long to realize — is because the thought of starting some also-ran tech startup accelerator isn’t terribly interesting to most people these days.
And then it dawned on me. The idea of convincing others to build some preconceived, generic tech accelerator hosting a hodgepodge of startups, in this day and age, wasn’t even a concept that motivated or interested me.
Furthermore, it occurred to me as we continued the conversation that we, as PIE, had just assumed — or taken for granted — that our true motivations for creating the PIE Cookbook were obvious. And that our hopes for this next phase of the ongoing experiment were clear.
They’re not.
So let’s be clear. Inspiring the creation of a bunch of generic startup accelerators is not — at all — how we hope people will use the PIE Cookbook. Trust us.
But at first blush, I realize that’s exactly what it looks like we were trying to do. And with this new vantage, I recognize how our prevailing assumptions, today’s startup rat race, and our lack of clarity may lead to a very flawed first impression of the PIE Cookbook.
That’s our fault. So I’d like to ask you to please take a moment to look deeper.
PIE is actually an experiment in accelerating creativity
When Renny reached out to me to start the conversation that would eventually become PIE, he had one very clear hypothesis he was interested in testing:
Entrepreneurs and technologists are a new creative class, and their problem-solving toolkit will be increasingly important to solve the emerging brand challenges we tackle at Wieden+Kennedy. But words and images don’t always seem to play well with code. And folks great at one craft may not recognize another as “creative.” But in a world of distributed software and hardware, it’s important to find ways to work together. Entrepreneurs and technologists are inspired creatives who’ve chosen technology as their medium for creative expression. We should be able to find ways to do cool stuff, together.
And that hypothesis has remained a guiding principle for PIE for nearly a decade. First as a coworking space then as a startup accelerator then as a means of effecting more compelling collaborations between corporations and startups. But through and through, we’ve always been about creating innovation communities and accelerating creative output.
The PIE Cookbook is no different.
It’s your job to improve upon the recipe
With that in mind, please don’t try to recreate PIE. In fact, we would hate for you to bake our flavor of PIE. This isn’t a sleeve of prepared cookie dough that you halfheartedly slice onto a cookie sheet. This is a “Bake your own” proposition. This is a recipe. And everyone has their own unique ingredients.
This is about rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands in the mix. Making the recipe yours. Experimenting, manipulating, iterating, exploring, and improving.
The world needs more variety — not less. And together, we all get better.
Therefore, we’d like to ask: How might the PIE recipe be adapted to meet your community’s needs?
Maybe you could…
- Use the PIE recipe to create an environment that focuses on companies engaged in services-based businesses — read “not candidates for equity investment.” Maybe you could create ways to better meet their unique business needs? And maybe you could create entirely new ways of investing in and evaluating these companies? You could. Because that’s exactly what Oregon Story Board is doing with the PIE recipe, as it accelerates companies in the world of digital storytelling. All of which enabled them to be among Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley, and Virginia Tech as an early stage grantee for Microsoft HoloLens.
- Leverage the PIE model to focus on issues that are adversely impacting your community. Like lack of inclusion. And ineffective support for women founders. Maybe you could use it to raise the visibility of a whole ton of awesome founders from communities of color? Maybe this effort could be part of a broader economic plan to make your entire community a better place to live? You could. Because that’s how the Portland Development Commission is adapting the PIE recipe to guide and accelerate companies in the Startup PDX Challenge.
- Identify the compelling knowledge and resources your community has accumulated. And look for ways to activate that knowledge by using an a PIE-flavored accelerator to focus that energy. That expertise could be geographical. It could be cultural. It could be the business environment, itself. You could. Because that’s exactly what the town of Newberg, Oregon — the gateway to the Willamette Valley wine country — is doing with the Newberg Innovation Accelerator, a project that will focus efforts on agricultural technology projects and businesses that directly impact the wine industry.
- Use the PIE recipe as means of changing the way employees approach, attack, and resolve problems within a corporation. You could bring a cross-functional team of folks from throughout the company to a shared communal workspace that resembles an accelerator. To work for three months on an entrenched problem, free from the typical approval cycles and sacred cows of corporate life. To get them out of the building and get them engaged with real customers. To hear, firsthand, how they can fix things. You could. Because that’s exactly what Daimler did with their SPIN program, by using the PIE recipe to create an internal accelerator. For employees.
- Or maybe you could come up with something completely unique. Maybe you could use the PIE recipe to build new curricula at a college. Or to create a nonprofit accelerator. Or to change the dynamic of an R&D shop. Or to rethink craft brewing. Or to create agencies. Or to help Kickstarter projects survive, post funding. Or to change the world of VR. Or to help bloggers build better business models. Or to give artists an environment to create. Or to help a diverse slice of indie game developers change the face of gaming. Or to build a maker space. Or to help lifestyle companies succeed more efficiently. Or or or or…
The point is that the PIE Cookbook is designed to inspire you to do something. To help you frame up your organization, your community, and yourself. To give you a pattern for what success might look like. And how to budget for chaos, random constructive collisions, and innovation. To get creative. Not repetitive.
The PIE Cookbook is designed to help provide a framework and some confidence. To give you courage. To provide suggestions and inspiration. It’s designed to help you understand — or to educate your superiors — that it’s actually okay to try this stuff. To show them it’s not just acceptable to participate, but it’s exciting and critical to survival as well. The PIE Cookbook is our way of telling you to step off that cliff and go for it.
Not interested in building a generic tech startup accelerator? Good. Please don’t. Go do something more interesting than that.
And, by all means, please keep us in the loop. We’re looking forward to learning from — and with — you.
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Rick Turoczy (@turoczy) has been working in high-tech startups in the Portland area for more than 20 years. As founder and editor of Silicon Florist, he has blogged about the Portland startup scene for nearly a decade — even though numerous people have begged him to stop. That side project led Rick to cofound PIE (the Portland Incubator Experiment), a startup accelerator formed in partnership with global advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy. Those efforts led to the founding of Oregon Story Board, a project that is using learnings from the PIE experiment to accelerate companies in the services industry. Now, PIE is working to open source its learnings from more than a decade of working with startups. It’s called the PIE Cookbook.
All because of a blog. Weird.
Co-author Renny Gleeson (@rgleeson) cofounded PIE to drive innovation at the intersection of startups and brands at Wieden+Kennedy, the world’s largest independent creative agency.
Image courtesy Kris Krug. Used under Creative Commons.
