Ideas. Technology. Passion.

Entrepreneurs must have a strong raison d’être, beyond mere profit, to endure challenges. Reflective questions help assess readiness, highlighting the importance of resilience and impact. Even exploratory interest in entrepreneurship can enhance personal development and readiness over time.

Content will be published as it becomes available.

When I wrote the first edition of this book, I sought simplicity as much as possible, so I divided starting points neatly into ideas or technology. But as the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead said, “Seek simplicity and distrust it.” Now, after seeing hundreds of companies applying the 24 Steps, I must say I trust it more but I have also found areas that deserve greater explanation, and this is one such area.

The reality is that most often teams start with market pull but there is some technology push, especially from universities and Research and Development laboratories. In some cases, however, teams start somewhere in between the two models of market pull or technology push. I have seen over the past few years increased awareness of market importance at all levels. Today even the scientist in the lab is thinking early on about the application of the breakthrough she is working on. Something that seems like a “technology push” may have been inspired by a “market pull,” and vice versa.

So, in the case that your originating concept is a hybrid, which will be true in many cases, you should use both mini-canvases but I would more strongly emphasize the market pull one. Then I would suggest you overlay these mini-canvases with the below Hybrid Mini-Canvas:

For other valuable perspectives in finding co-founders, here are a few articles that may be helpful:

• What We Look for in Founders, Paul Graham, October 2010,
• Want to Start a Business? First, Find a Partner, Margaret Heffernan, Inc. magazine, May 9, 2012,
• How to Find That Special Someone: Your Co-Founder Pejman Pour-Moezzi, GeekWire, April 8, 2012,
• 5 Rules for Cofounder Heaven, Helge Seetzen, The Tech Entrepreneurship Blog, March 27, 2012

Successful teams share three characteristics. They have a common vision (i.e., they are all aligned and obsessed with solving the same problem), shared values (i.e., they trust each other), and complementary skills (i.e., their skills set are differentiated). Here are some ways to find if you have such a team with diversified skills because that is something you have to work on.

Do You Have a Well-Balanced Team to Start?

As has been said over and over again in this book, the process is only as good as the team, and building a diversified, coherent, and cohesive team from the beginning is of the utmost importance. My colleagues and I have seen time and time again that teams of founders who have a greater span of knowledge and skills are more successful, and this is especially true if they have shared values as this becomes critical when the going gets tough and they must support each other.

You may already have a team of founders, or you might be looking for people to join you on your journey. I listed in Step 0 places that are useful to finding co-founders and your initial team, but how to select a team is a much broader topic than I have space for to do full justice in this book. You will focus on getting the process started by encouraging you to identify some key details about your existing team members. That will help you in coming up with ideas to pursue, and in determining who else you want to join your team. Use this worksheet to help:

1. Who on your team is your lead “hacker”? (Hacker is the one who will make the product) ______________
2. Who on your team is your lead “hustler”? (Hustler is the businessperson.) _________________________
3. Who on your team is your lead “hipster”? (Hipster is the one concerned with the customer experience and design.) ________________

Note if you are lacking significant capacity in any one of the 3 H’s, then you need to have a plan to fill that gap in the short, medium, and long term.
You might ask what is a “SuperPower” and that is fair. It is something that that person brings to the team that is extraordinary and valuable to you. It might be recruiting people. It might be sales. It might be finance. It might be connections. It might be networking. It might bring positive energy to any room or any situation. It should be something that excites you about your teammate and is unique. I have found it good to identify “SuperPowers” and treasure them. They can be very useful and indicate a very valuable role that person can play on the team—and it is probably a good idea to make that explicit.

Content will be published as it becomes available.