Skip to main content

Agile Entrepreneurs do it by Osmosis

Entrepreneurs learn best by Osmosis


We need role models we can emulate.
Entrepreneurs we can relate to - in Scale, Time, and Context.

Scale

  • We need people who have succeeded at what we're attempting, but not to such an extent that there's a daunting chasm between us.
  • It's easier to see how we can emulate the success of a peer than that of Steve Jobs.

Time

  • The success has to be recent for it to be relevant. - because everything changes: technology, market, consumers, investors, the economy.
  • Many of my advisors who were successful entrepreneurs over a decade ago are now relearning these lessons themselves, - the hard way, while pursuing their next startups.

Context

  • If the success is derived from a context foreign to us, it's hard to see how we can emulate that.
  • Factors contributing to success are often either downplayed or exaggerated, for effect. You need to know the story behind the story.
Don't get me wrong- I'm sure some of you will figure out the right lessons to learn at the right time, and eventually succeed.

But for many of us, it's really about the hard grind - day to day, week to week, month after month, for years together. Before you know, it's been 2 years since you started - with not much to show for it.

Persistence is good, but it means nothing if you're not making reasonable progress. I speak from the experience of spending a decade amongst bootstrapping entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley:

And that's why Agile Entrepreneurs was created - to help entrepreneurs learn from each other. Osmosis formalizes & facilitates this learning process in a structured way.

Each week
  1. We pick a Topic that's narrowly scoped
  2. Invite a Role Model (AE member or outside entrepreneur) to speak
  3. Entrepreneur shares their experience
  4. We discuss the relevance of their experience to our situation
This last part is what makes Osmosis - and Agile Entrepreneurs - really stand out as an effective tool to minimize the risk of failure and increase the probability of your success.

Sample Topics:
  • Selling your company
  • Getting a Co-Founder
  • Product Management - Going from Requirements to Launch
  • User Acquisition
  • User Growth
  • Monetizing your users
  • Getting your first reference customer
  • Getting money out of closing your first major customer deal
  • Managing cash flow - staying positive
  • Marketing - SEO
  • .. the list is endless

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Splitting User Stories vs. Rally's "split" feature (that has nothing to do with it!)

Agile tool Rally has a "split" feature it recommends to handle "unfinished work" in a Scrum Sprint: Manage Unfinished Work - Split user stories ( new link ) Below are my observations on the "Split" feature in Rally (followed by a few excellent articles on Splitting User Stories):   This "split" feature in Rally has numerous problems: 1. Nothing to do with Splitting User Stories It has nothing to do with "Splitting a User Story" which is an advanced but fairly well-understood field in Agile, and a tool for Product Managers to use in one of the two scenarios: The Product Manager does it before an Iteration commences (i.e. during backlog creation or release planning) to create User Stories by business value that are right-sized, i.e. they can be comfortably implemented inside an iteration; The Product Manager does it in Iteration Planning or in the middle of an Iteration to reduce scope by removing/simplifying accept

Agile Entrepreneurs Manifesto

The  Agile Manifesto  defines the 4 core Values that define "Agile":  " Individuals and interactions",  " Working software",  " Customer collaboration", and  " Responding to change" As I applied Agile requirements (user stories), engineering (XP), and process & project management (Scrum & Kanban) to my startups  (RideStation, and Agile Entrepreneurs)  starting from 2005 to now in 2018, I learned numerous lessons and shared them with my fellow entrepreneurs for the next dozen years. These lessons I have incorporated by "extending" the Agile Manifesto with two additional values pertaining to  Product (5th) and Startup/Business (6th)  -  that the services consultants who wrote it in 2001 probably didn't have to contend with as most (all?) of them were not founders of product startups:  "User Validation, Customer Traction, and Business Milestones" Agile Entrepreneurs Manifesto Us

Entrepreneur Committee - Advisory Board of SVASE

For whatever it is worth, I would like to announce to my millions of would-be readers that I have been invited to join the Entrepreneur Committee on the Board of Advisors to the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs . And I have accepted. If you're a hi-tech entrepreneur, I would love to hear your suggestions on what I can do in my "official" capacity to make SVASE a better organization for startups.