Love it!! So many interesting nuggets from the pre-idea fund to the concepts of looking at trauma, neurodivergence, and bad pedigree as pros, topped off with a look at the traps founders and funders fall into and more often than not traditional $$$ falls for. Would be interesting to see something like the pre-idea concept play out say with students or on a larger scale... Thanks for this. ;)
I loved the piece in The Generalist too. Amazing. It takes real guts to ACTUALLY BE contrarian and then PROVE it works. So easy to fall into the mediocre, messy middle.
And we did alright with that Year One Labs thing, didn't we? :)
Life goal: have enough time and talent to write a 16,000 word substack post as good as that one! I think a lot of Year One Labs was instinct before we had the words. Probably a good approach even now!
Love this. 3 years in my current startup, I eventually figured 75% of my hires, out of instinct, were people who had changed career path from something else to technology. This brought us tremendous diversity of thought, although sometimes it slowed execution. Now we have a hybrid approach; you need hackers/tinkerers and then more conventional brains to execute the crazy ideas.
There are organizations on a mission to change what it means to be an A-Player. It has more to do with physiology than anything else. Being an A-Player means being in a state of optimal functioning, a coherent state, where the heart and the mind align. This produces smooth heart rhythms, which improves leadership effectiveness and decision-making. In the new paradigm, A-Players are heart-coherent human beings, emotionally intelligent, empathetic, and resilient to the core.
Love it!! So many interesting nuggets from the pre-idea fund to the concepts of looking at trauma, neurodivergence, and bad pedigree as pros, topped off with a look at the traps founders and funders fall into and more often than not traditional $$$ falls for. Would be interesting to see something like the pre-idea concept play out say with students or on a larger scale... Thanks for this. ;)
Thanks Justin! Lots more room for people to fund founders at the pre-idea stage.
I loved the piece in The Generalist too. Amazing. It takes real guts to ACTUALLY BE contrarian and then PROVE it works. So easy to fall into the mediocre, messy middle.
And we did alright with that Year One Labs thing, didn't we? :)
Life goal: have enough time and talent to write a 16,000 word substack post as good as that one! I think a lot of Year One Labs was instinct before we had the words. Probably a good approach even now!
It makes me want to do some hackathons again.
Be careful what you wish for.
Love this. 3 years in my current startup, I eventually figured 75% of my hires, out of instinct, were people who had changed career path from something else to technology. This brought us tremendous diversity of thought, although sometimes it slowed execution. Now we have a hybrid approach; you need hackers/tinkerers and then more conventional brains to execute the crazy ideas.
There are organizations on a mission to change what it means to be an A-Player. It has more to do with physiology than anything else. Being an A-Player means being in a state of optimal functioning, a coherent state, where the heart and the mind align. This produces smooth heart rhythms, which improves leadership effectiveness and decision-making. In the new paradigm, A-Players are heart-coherent human beings, emotionally intelligent, empathetic, and resilient to the core.