Solutions to Three of the World’s Hardest Problems
December 17, 2018 § Leave a comment
The Problems
(Drawn from the list identified by Social Capital on December 15, 2018)
- Disrupting Programming
- Can we enable people who don’t know programming to build applications?
- Is there a way to structure, pipe, and manage data better?
- Disrupting Education
- Can we educate humans in interesting ways so that they learn to think in multi-disciplinary ways?
- Can we educate people in small, continuous ways so they keep learning throughout their lives?
- Disrupting Urban Transport
- Can we build new transportation methods that enable us to take someone form point A->B faster?
- Is there a way to build better, cleaner cities?
The Solutions
Three Steps to Startup Success (in 15 syllables)
August 17, 2018 § Leave a comment
Sunday School 2.0: Shark Tank for Spiritual Growth
July 29, 2018 § Leave a comment
The purpose of Sunday School 2.0 is to create an adaptive architecture of participation where everyone can experience what it feels like to be children of God, including:
Whole-I-Ness: A New Job to Be Done for Christianity
June 17, 2018 § Leave a comment
In many ways, Western Christianity is now a solution in search of a problem. We are a victim of our own success, having effectively worked ourselves out of a job by eliminating the “pain points” of Judaism, paganism and animism while diffusing most of our benefits into the culture. Like a technology-centric startup, we now find ourselves in the awkward situation of trying to define (or worse, create) problems that need our solution.
The alternative is to go back to the customer discovery phase. Who is our customer? What are their most important jobs to be done? What is the “impossible” thing that, if it could be done, would change everything for them?
What is it that the world most needs? Especially from us?
What is a Technical Co-Founder?
April 8, 2017 § Leave a comment
Most successful startups require both a technical “hacker” and a relational “hustler” to bring them to life. One common pattern is that a “hustler” has access to ideas and potential funding and looks for a “technical co-founder” to join him or her, through a process often compared to finding a spouse.
Best Live Chat Widget for Startups: Jan 2016
January 20, 2016 § Leave a comment
Live chat support software is a great way to ensure visitors to your SaaS site are successful – or at least tell you what went wrong. An in-page widget with a friendly human being on the other side is much more approachable than a link to anonymous forum!
Unfortunately, few startups are able to guarantee 24×7 coverage, which means you need a easy-to-use tool with a good fallback user experience for when nobody is available to chat. Here is what appear to be the best options as of January 2016.
How to Fund Growth
July 2, 2015 § Leave a comment
Most organizations’ financial structures are designed for predictability rather than explosive growth.
To change that, we must:
Invest Constructively in Passion
Specifically:
1. Align Incentives
- Learn what people deeply want.
- Articulate how they can pursue that by contributing to the organization’s mission
2. Unleash Talent
- Learn where people are the happiest and most productive.
- Build support systems that allow them to maximize flow.
3. Virtualize Infrastructure
- Learn which essential tasks nobody is able to do efficiently and awesomely.
- Sell those to a business that sees the opportunity.
Leaving Apple after 17 years to launch a startup
September 22, 2014 § Leave a comment
After arguably the most amazing 17 years in computing history — seeing UNIX spread from iMac to the Apple Watch — I’ve decided it is time to leave Apple and strike out on my own.
I’ll be taking a few months off to play with some ideas I’ve been working on for making programming more accessible, to see if there’s a viable business in there somewhere.
I’d love for you to stay in touch on this next phase of my journey. Recommendations always welcome. I may need them…
Entrepreneur Club, Week 4 “The Hidden”
July 25, 2014 § Leave a comment
- In the management context, particularly, it behooves us to ask ourselves constantly: How much are we able to see?
- we would inevitably be subject to those same delusions at Pixar unless we came to terms with our own limited ability to see.
- I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment.
- the leaders of these companies were not attuned to the fact that there were problems they could not see. And because they weren’t aware of these blind spots, they assumed that the problems didn’t exist.
- If we accept that what we see and know is inevitably flawed, we must strive to find ways to heighten that awareness—to fill in the gaps
- making room in my head for the certainty that, like it or not, some problems will always be hidden from me has made me a better manager
- This universe of unknown stuff will intrude in our lives and activities, so we have no choice but to deal with it.
- Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
- Proverbs 28:26 Those who trust in themselves are fools, but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.
- Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
- Matthew 13:14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
- John 9:41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
