Passing the baton
A farewell and the birth of Upperstory
Pollenizer recently sent out their final newsletter after 9 years impacting the Australian startup community and the wider global community. They also played a crucial role in the birth of Upperstory and I wanted to take the opportunity to tell a bit of that story.
Pollenizer was one of the first Silicon Valley-style accelerators in Australia, initially focused on helping startups fund and develop their products, later helping large corporations build and grow new ideas, products and startups in Innovation Programs. Over time they developed a process they called Startup Science (now open sourced, so check it out!) a powerful toolkit for helping to inoculate a company against potential weaknesses so they can effectively grow and scale. It was a bit like gene splicing, they’d find potentially harmful genes and then help to inject new ideas, habits or direction to ensure the survival. A novel way of thinking about it but in practice was underpinned by some fairly simple concepts.
Assumptions alone are not enough
Ideas, Products, Startups and businesses of all kids are driven by assumptions and in the early phase this is even more true. The amount of evidence is virtually non-existent so almost every decision is based on a feeling with little tangible proof you’re going in the right direction.
Fail Fast & Learn
The counter to blind assumptions is to devise a way to validate them as quickly as possible before jumping in boots and all. It’s dangerous to simply build a business on assumptions alone and similarly it’s dangerous to sit around and hypothesize about everything: both will waste valuable time and resource. The response therefore is to run the smallest, fastest experiment possible and use the evidence to inform your decision making.
Become Evidence Driven
Having an agile product team is a no brainer, the benefits are clear. But the same should be true when it comes to the decision making that drives product teams and how to position and grow a business; instead this is often a bottleneck point for our speed and agility. Evidence should become a core currency that drives constant validation of assumptions to avoid making bad decisions that waste valuable resources. It instead should enable faster decision making to pivot and maneuver the business to respond earlier to potential issues and opportunities.
Enter Upperstory: a platform for driving meaningful innovation that places the experiment at the heart of the experience, where learning is the core currency, empowering users to run, test and validate their business objectives. We took what we learnt from the years building Startup Science and put the best bits into Upperstory focusing on making a tool that was easy for teams to use, and could give the organisations deeper insights about the health of programs and teams. We wanted to build a tool that enabled an evidence-driven culture, helping teams to both test assumptions faster and navigate decision making more confidently.
Earlier this year Pollenizer announced they were closing the doors on their consulting business. Their mission to empower anyone, anywhere to build and grow the businesses of tomorrow continues on in Upperstory.
In July we set out carrying the mantel that was held by Pollenizer into a new digital platform. We are thankful to have been a part of their amazing journey and we’re excited about our road ahead.
We would love for you to get involved and be part of the story. If you’re interested, why not explore what we’re doing and learn how your experimentation can be made easier.
