Making History: First Day Ever

Today, Watson inaugurated its first class of social and tech entrepreneurs with a bang.

“Not just return on investment — return on relationships.” This is how Eric Glustrom, the illustrious but patently humble President and Founder of Watson, characterizes the world’s first university-accredited startup accelerator for social and tech entrepreneurs. As he inducts Watson’s inaugural class of two dozen twenty-somethings, the smile he’s famous for never waivers. His chief preceptor, one Michael Williams, cracks waggish startup jokes in the background as the entrepreneurs gather, and Watson’s first day ever gets underway.

This notion of “return on relationships” is central to Watson’s mission. Watson convenes young innovators, business leaders, and change-agents from all over the globe at its headquarters in beautiful Boulder, Colorado — home of TechStars, Foundry Group, Unreasonable Institute, etc.— to accelerate their social, environmental, educational, and economic startups while offering personalized academic credit for the experience. Prominent Nobel Prize winners, Time 100 Most Influential People, Forbes 30 under 30, MacArthur Fellows, and other leading practitioners make up the faculty that tie it all together.

As a devout educational technologies entrepreneur (read edupreneur), I have had the remarkable good fortune of joining Watson’s inaugural class this fall, alongside seventeen other Fellows who blow me away. Having discovered Watson just a few months ago through the 2013 Design Institute, it’s sheer luck I was accepted into the program — but boy am I grateful I was. And while there’s time enough to discuss my Watson ventures later, I want to provide a sampling of the other innovators attending Watson’s inaugural session:

• Risalat Khan is a social activist, environmentalist, geologist, and photographer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Amherst College in 2013. Motivated by the vulnerability of his home country to rising sea levels, Risalat is exploring solutions to climate change and new economic models.
• Tessa Zimmerman has a simple goal: to help as many students as she can realize and enable their potential with a self-empowerment model she created called ASSET: Awareness, Self-Efficacy, Science of Happiness, Exploration, and Touch & Connection.
• Mark Etem is a creative entrepreneur who has designed a hydroelectric rainwater collection system as well as a zero-infrastructure emergency-networking device, complete with business and deployment models, launched a time-share company for boats, and released four documentaries. He is entering Watson with his esteemed cofounder, Lucas Peel.
• Madelle Mbong Kangha received prestigious scholarships to the London School of Economics and African Leadership Academy after placing first on the Cameroon National Exams. She is the cofounder of Youths4Change (Y4C), a successful organization that empowers and mentors youth of all abilities in Africa.

For the next several months, I’ll live, learn, work, and play alongside these and fourteen other amazing entrepreneurs, as we train in Transformative Action, award-winning Master Course curricula, and, of course, Startup Aikido. Needless to say, I can’t wait.

Chief preceptor Michael Williams took advantage of our morning to kick off Watson Lab, the business leadership and professional development segment of Watson’s lineup. Williams layed the groundwork for a proprietary planning technique known as the Entrepreneurial Time System™. “Separating professional and personal lives, never-ending task lists, insufficient mental bandwidth, crisis-mode procrastination… passionate founders really struggle with these hurdles,” he began. “So as an entrepreneur, structuring your own life in a framework is vital, just as your venture relies on a deliberate framework to be successful.”

In practice, the problem is this: entrepreneurs have a limited amount of free time, and most startup founders are manic about their idea. That’s all well and good, but founders don’t use their free time for rejuvenation; as they traverse periods of creativity, which devolve into a “mechanical” stage, their ingenuity decreases and their fatigue increases. This spirals into what Williams calls a “reactive period”: in the face of burnout and imbalance, entrepreneurs end up reacting to crises rather than solving problems.

This ugly cycle, however, can be broken by preempting the mechanical stage with “free” days, cushioning in the form of “buffer” days, and dedicated “focus” days. When it comes to time off, entrepreneurs need a “period of achievement” more than a “period of justification.”

The Entrepreneurial Time System implements these solutions in a streamlined, personalized way. As explained by Kauffman, a Free Day™ is a 24-hour period in which the entrepreneur does not engage in any business-related thinking, communication, or actions. It is an admittedly difficult concept for many company founders, who might feel they are abandoning their child when they take time away from the business. However, the opposite is true: founders become a detriment to their business when they don’t. So the best free days are planned in advance — and are protected, inviolate, and non-negotiable. When founders learn to disconnect from the stream of demands and information and invest attention and care in other aspects of life, they start making choices against a broader backdrop.

A Focus Day™ is a 24-hour period in which the entrepreneur spends 80 percent of his time only on activities that create results for their startup. To use a sports analogy, these are “game days.” If the aforementioned free days are planned strategically, founders will be rejuvenated, and thus able to be fully “on” and “present” for maximum performance on focus days. Focus days are for making the greatest possible contribution to a startup’s bottom-line.

And if focus days are for performance, Buffer Days™ are for rehearsals. On buffer days, founders handle all the details that would otherwise distract from focus days. Use these days to catch up, clean up messes, delegate, and learn new skills. Most importantly, of course, use them to do the necessary planning that will ensure that nothing intrudes on free days and focus days.

Later, Dr. Francy Milner, the renowned business ethicist and corporate responsibility lawyer at Milner & Associates, introduced her four-month workshop entitled Sustainability in Social Entrepreneurship. Drawing on strategic partnerships with Ashoka U and Leeds Business, Milner’s highly individualized seminars will cover an array of topics, such as measuring social impact in startups, business models in social enterprise, change-models and impact-scaling, and monetary vs. social vs. intellectual capital.

Encouraged by the premise of Milner’s expertise and involvement, one particularly sagacious Watson Fellow, Brin, soon stood up to relate an inspiring personal story:

When I was sixteen, I decided I wanted to build a school in rural Cambodia. My parents basically laughed at me; after all, I hadn’t even made the varsity basketball team — how was I supposed to open a top-notch school on the other side of the world? But I kept at it, and later that week, my teacher and mentor, Coach Patrick, said “Alright,” and wrote me a check for $75. It’s for that reason there’s now the Steven and Mary Enterkin School in rural Cambodia, and it’s thriving. All I have to say is this: be the Coach Patrick in someone else’s life.

The group broke into applause, affirming once again the tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and raw synergy that fills Watson to its brim.

Half of Watson’s first day remains to be seen, and clearly, things are just heating up. But if the morning is any indication, the next few months are going to be incredible. It’ll probably change the world.

Watson is an experiment in pushing boundaries: the boundaries of education, entrepreneurship, and even funding. I, for one, am looking forward to boatloads of learning, plentiful productive collisions, and lifelong friendships withal… So fellows, staff, investors, and laymen alike: welcome to Watson.