Andrew Epstein on Creating Entreprenuerial Charter School Jobs

In Chapter 8 of 23 in his 2013 Capture Your Flag interview, charter school CFO Andrew Epstein answers "What Has Your Work Experience Taught You About How Education Careers are Changing?"  Epstein shares how the charter school movement has enabled entrepreneurship to enter the education system.  He shares how charter schools are bringing young, motivated leaders into education in ways not seen previously.  He also shares how he reconciles encouraging an entrepreneurial structure that is also accountable to students, parents and teachers. 

Andrew Epstein is CFO of the Ascend Learning Charter School Network.  Previously, Epstein was a finance executive at Democracy Prep Public Schools and an operations executive at Universal Music Group's Island Def Jam Records.  He is a former Teach for America corps member and middle-school science teacher.  He holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Hattie Elliot on Behavioral Traits For Entrepreneur Success

In Chapter 15 of 19 in her 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, female entrepreneur Hattie Grace Elliot answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects That You Pursue?"  Elliot notes that to be a successful entrepreneur one must be stubborn - almost delusional - yet open-minded enough to be flexible and try out new options or let old ones go at the right time. 

Hattie Grace Elliot is the founder and CEO of The Grace List, a social networking company that creates destination events and experiences to forge lasting personal and professional connections across its young professional members. Elliot graduated from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she studied economics, philosophy, and politics.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How do you balance experimentation and commitment in the projects that you pursue?

Hattie Elliot: Balancing experimentation and commitment is a balance within itself, it’s—I, by no means, am perfect at it at this point, I think though that whether it is, for instance, we’re re-tweaking the Grace List offering at the moment, and I’ve kind of had to roll with the punches, if you’re gonna be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be partly really stubborn and steadfast, like when you think something’s gonna fail, you kind of, again, have to be partly delusional and partly brilliant, and just partly stupidly, like blindly stubborn to just stick things out, but then there’s also moments when you have to realize you have to wave a white flag and call a spade a spade, and realize that something’s not working, and that’s really part of I think experimentation, really being open to what’s working and not working in the business, and experimenting, maybe with new things that could be beneficial, whether it’s new employees, or something that a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, struggle with, trusting someone and allocating them, like letting go of some of the responsibilities, and having a business is an experiment, like it’s a work in progress, I wish, you know, it’s not for people who thrive off of stability, it’s not—I mean, ultimately, you strive for that, but the journey along the way is never that. It’s full of—there’s plenty of glorious potholes, bumps, meteorites, like everything you can imagine, like a cow thrown in there through a tornado, whatever crazy images that your head conjures up, like that is the story of the journey to being an entrepreneur but it’s always laughable and like, you know, what can you do but laugh? It’s kind of hilarious, like there’s never a dull moment. 

However, you know, it’s really important not to have ego, it’s important to, you know, know when to stay strong, and when to, you know, to stand your ground, and you know, when to own something, even when you kind of have to fake it before you make it, like those moments, and also when there’s moments that you have to let something go, you know, where you just have to let it go, and—it sounds simple but it just—let it go. Because we hold onto so much, you know, with our businesses. We thought that, you know, the business is gonna go this way and this was our goal, or, we were really, you know, gung ho on the name of this new product, but guess what? Consumers aren’t being perceptive to it, so maybe we have to, you know, reevaluate it. 

So it’s—it’s, you know, making things less personal, and a lot of that just hap—you know, experimenting as part of that process, but it’s really what ultimately I believe really leads to success. Something just sticks, you know what I mean? When you trying out a bunch of different options within your company, if you didn’t experiment, you would never know that. 

Anatole Faykin: How to Improve Entrepreneurship MBA Programs

In Chapter 8 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "How Can MBA Programs Better Educate Entrepreneurs?"  Faykin notes that for business school programs to more effectively teach entrepreneurship, it is paramount students are forced to actually create and launch a startup while in school.  He points out that a graduate business school environment does provide MBA students studying entrepreneurship benefits, in particular the ability to start something in a low-risk environment. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Anatole Faykin: How to Better Manage Project Time Commitments

In Chapter 9 of 12 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur Anatole Faykin answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects You Pursue?"  Faykin notes he does not make it a point to find balance between testing new ideas and working on larger projects.  He notes time is elastic and allows you to get things done as the come up.  Faykin notes the need to identify what you want to do and then how to get it done.  He does highlight the importance of having open, frank conversations and making sure to set expectations with your clients or teams. 

Anatole Faykin is an entrepreneur currently working on a new startup as part of the Startup Chile incubator program in Santiago, Chile.  Previously, Faykin founded Tuanpin, a Shanghai, China-based daily deals site he grew to 25 employees and sold in the fall of 2011. He has worked for British Telecom in London, Intel in Shanghai, American Express in New York, and Oracle in San Francisco as well as several startups. He holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in computer science and biology from the California Institute of Technology.

Matt Ruby on Why to Work With Teams on Comedy Projects

In Chapter 16 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "What Do You Enjoy Most About Working With Teams?"  Group comedy writing, performance and production not only provides Ruby a collaborative feeling but also creates an optimistic creative energy that can be positively reinforcing as material gets created and shared or performed. 

Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and manages a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What do you enjoy most about working with teams?

Matt Ruby: I mean I enjoy hanging out with other people so I think that’s just a constructive aspect on it just from a personal or emotional level I think it’s good to hang out with other people and to work on stuff together, I think, you know, comedy can a lot of times be sort of a lone wolf sort of thing so it’s nice to feel like there’s a group working on something. And then also, you know, it’s just nice to have like a group point-of-view to have like, “oh did you think about it this way?” Or like to have one person come up with an idea and you bounce it off them and then they’re like, well, what if we tried it this way or — like, they’ll take things in a direction that you never would’ve thought of and it could be really like cool and surprising and sort of like an interesting twist to an idea that you had but you never would’ve taken it there. 

And I think it’s, you know, you got more juice behind you. I don’t know, it’s more like being a gang than just a vigilante, you know, there’s more of a group effort and you feel like you can accomplish more and do more, you know. At the very least, there’s this group of people who believes in what you’re doing and is excited about it, so that’s to me like more indicative that other people will be excited about it as opposed to like sometimes when you’re just on your own trying to come up with ideas, like you just don’t — you might think it’s good, but you don’t really know until you release it to the world, and you have to wait, you know, until that happens. Whereas like when you’re producing stuff as a group, at least you’re, hopefully, like pleasing each other or entertaining each other along the way and so you’ve got some clue that you’re on to something.

Simon Sinek on How to Strengthen Your Creative Skills

In Chapter 13 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "How is Your Creative Toolbox Changing?"  The more Sinek practices his creative skills, the stronger his toolbox gets.  He focuses on amplifying on his strengths and hiring out his weaknesses to both broaden and sharpen skills.  As a lover of creative people, Sinek looks to try new things such as modern dance choreography and painting to get perspective on creative process.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  His goal is to "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" and help others find fulfillment in their work.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  How is your creative toolbox changing?

Simon Sinek:  I’m adding to it. Right? I mean, you know, I don’t think I’ve thrown anything away. I may use some things less than I used to. But the more I learn and the more I get to practice more importantly, the more tools I’m adding to that toolbox. What’s also great is some of the tools change size, in other words, there are some tools that I really like and I’m really good with, and so I use those tools because they’re very helpful to me, and there are other tools that I’ve learned that I’m really no good with and so they’re there if I need them, you know, I’ve never understood the idea of working on your weaknesses, you know, we’re always told in our performance reviews, here are your weaknesses and these are the things you need to work on to get to the next level, I’ve never understood that, the whole idea is to work in our strengths, amplify our strengths, and we, you know, hire our weaknesses or—this is the value of a team, right? What’s the point of having a team if you have to be—if you have to improve on your weaknesses?

The whole idea is we have you on our team because you’re really good at this. You know? And we found somebody else who’s really good at this, which you’re really bad at. You guys are a team. This is the value of a team. And so I think in our workplace, our companies do us a great disservice by telling us that we have to fix our weaknesses or improve upon our weaknesses to get to the next level, they should be encouraging us and giving the tool to amplify our strengths to get to the next level, that’s what they want us for, right? Otherwise, here are your strengths and here are your weaknesses, now you’re even. Wouldn’t you wanna be this? You need to be aware of your weaknesses but we need to amplify those strengths.

Erik Michielsen:  What are a couple of examples of like the creative tools that have brought that out?

Simon Sinek:  I’m a lover of creative people. And so any sort of expression of how you see the world in a—with different terminology is fascinating to me. And so even though I myself am a photographer so I have that visual aspect, I’m a huge fan of modern dance and spend a lot of time sort of with dancers and in the dance world and have, you know, tried my hand at choreography just to see, you know? I’m not good. But it—I like the idea of trying it, you know? And so for me it’s about perspective, which is when I—when you hang out with dancers and you sort of learn to dance a little bit or you learn to choreograph a little bit, or you learn to paint a little bit, you know? I’m not a painter but I painted a painting recently, you know? If you—it’s like chaos theory. Everything’s connected, right? It’s like we conveniently divide up our lives, like here’s my personal life, here’s my professional life, I’m—here’s my social life, I’m looking to find balance. It’s just you. And all the same things apply. And so if you’re good here, you can apply what you learn here to there. And so when you learn how things interconnect and people interconnect, and how human relationships work, and presence, I mean you wanna learn about presence? Take a dance class. You learn all about how to present yourself and be forwards. Take an acting class, learn how to, you know, present your speech. People say, Simon, how did you learn this? It’s like—I’m exposed to all of this. So the tools I’ve learned have just mainly been different perspectives on how other people use their creative talents to see the world in it. If I can get little pieces of those, they help me in many, many different ways.

Simon Sinek on Learning New Ways to Use Your Passions

In Chapter 15 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Sinek first gets clear on what he wants to do - "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" - and then plays the game of finding new ways to do it.  From branching out skills into short-form and long-form writing to working in new industries such as military, politics and government, Sinek sees himself as a student of inspiration and leadership always looking to learn more and grow.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  How are you learning to apply your passions in new ways?

Simon Sinek:  The goal of life is to know why you do what you do, right? To wake up every single day with a clear sense of purpose or cause or belief. And the fun of life is just find all the different ways to do that, right? So like I said, I know why I get out of bed in the morning. It’s to inspire people to do what inspires them, right? If we can do that together, we can change the world. Then I imagine this world, I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single day to inspire to go to work and come home every single day fulfilled by the work that they do. So to find new ways to do that is almost the game, you know, I can speak, I can write, I can teach, you know? I can write short form, I can long—I can write long form. It also makes me open to other people’s ideas. It makes me open to new industries. I never imagined I’d be working in even half the industries I’ve been exposed to. From government to politics to military, big business, you know, entrepreneurs and every industry you can imagine. And it’s always because it’s—I’m not saying, oh, I’m this kind of consultant, or I’m this kind of expert, I mean—anybody who calls themselves an expert, be very cautious, you know? Because if you think you’re an expert, it means you have—you don’t think you have anything else to learn, right? If anything, I’m a student of inspiration, I’m a student of leadership, I’m a student of these things. You know, I show up every day to want to learn more.

How to Keep Your Career Fresh and Stabilize Your Life - Randall Metting

In Chapter 6 of 7 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, brand marketer and on-air radio personality Randall Metting answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects You Pursue?"  Metting focuses experimentation on the creative work he has done in marketing, always thinking about what the next big idea will be to take the company to the next level.  Metting looks at commitment more from a personal perspective, especially with personal health and time with family.  Randall Metting is an on-air radio personality at 93.3 KGSR Radio in Austin, Texas.  When not on the radio, Metting consults organizations on integrated marketing strategy and brand development.  He also writes the Austin community music and entertainment blog at www.randallmetting.com.  Metting earned a B.A. in Advertising from the University of Florida.

Management Lessons on Adaptation and Commitment - Richard Moross

In Chapter 16 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "How Have You Learned to Adapt When Things Have Not Worked Out as Planned?"  Moross walks through specific instances where his company has adapted in the face of a mistake and turn lemons into lemonade.  He talks about the need to experiment and work through cycles of broadening and focusing strategy and why commitment and focus are critical to building the business.  Moross is founder and CEO of Moo.com and a leader in the London startup scene.  Before starting Moo.com, an award-winning online print business, Moross was a strategist at Imagination, the world's largest independent design company.  He graduated from the University of Sussex, where he majored in philosophy and politics.

Joe Stump on How to Break Out of a Comfort Zone

In Chapter 5 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "What Is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?"  To break free of his comfort zone - beer, women, and large scale web infrastructure - Stump finds ways that give him a window into new parts of the world he has yet to experience.  This starts at a young age when Joe reads encyclopedias for fun.  It continues into his adult years as Stump adventures into different cultures, foods, and places and incrementally takes steps to get him out of his comfort zone.  Joe Stump is a serial entrepreneur based in Portland, OR. He is CEO and co-founder of Sprint.ly, a product management software company.  Previously he founded SimpleGeo, which was sold to Urban Airship in October 2011.  He advises several startups - including attachments.me and ngmoco:) - as well as VC firm Freestyle Capital.  He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems (CIS) from Eastern Michigan University. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What is your comfort zone and what do you do to break free of living in it?

Joe Stump: I'm a very simple man. I like three things: beer, women, and large-scale web infrastructure. So that’s my comfort zone. And to get out of that, I do a lot of things. I like to -- I do a lot of random reading. I’ve always -- even as a kid, I read encyclopedias for fun just because I liked learning about new weird things. So, I do a lot of that. I take in a lot of information that has nothing to do with what I do.

But I do that because it gives me a window into areas of the world that I may not ever be able to experience. And may not even really have any interest in experiencing. I also like to travel a lot. I think that that definitely gets people out of their comfort zone because you're usually experiencing new cultures, new language, new environments, new weather, new locales. So I'm a big fan of traveling. So, those are the main things.

I have a general rule that I’ll try anything once as long as it doesn’t represent severe possible danger to my body. But yeah, I think the world would be a lot better place if people had – if they were open-minded enough to just try it. Just try it. Trying that new cuisine that you’ve never tried, like, you know, Indian cuisine is a common example.

We're from the Midwest, right? You tell people that you went out and had – or sushi. Sushi in the Midwest, you might as well tell people that you're like eating babies for breakfast. Right? They're like, “Ugh! Oh God!” Like just try it. Millions of people eat sushi every day and they all live to tell about it. You're not going to die if you have one piece of sashimi. So, I think that’s a really good rule, too. Take incremental steps outside of your comfort zone and next thing you know, you’ve taken big strides outside of your comfort zone.

Joe stump on How Experimentation Enables New Product Development

In Chapter 7 of 14 in his 2012 interview, Internet entrepreneur Joe Stump answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects You Pursue?"  When looking at new products and new companies, Stump uses experimentation to scratch the itch about interesting ideas and then decide if and when to commit to a larger project.  He shares his experience hacking on email attachment management, putting it on Github, and eventually helping young entrepreneurs found startup attachments.me.  Joe Stump is a serial entrepreneur based in Portland, OR. He is CEO and co-founder of Sprint.ly, a product management software company.  Previously he founded SimpleGeo, which was sold to Urban Airship in October 2011.  He advises several startups - including attachments.me and ngmoco:) - as well as VC firm Freestyle Capital.  He earned a BBA in Computer Information Systems (CIS) from Eastern Michigan University. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you balance experimentation and commitment in the projects that you pursue?

Joe Stump: I'm always experimenting. I think that’s a really important part of what I do in building products. I think it's really important to focus your experimentation and scratch those itches. I actually think that that increases focus because I look at new ideas. When I'm focused on a new product, a new company, I look at new ideas as, particularly ones that don’t apply to my new product.

Obviously, I'm always having new ideas about the product. I look at them as almost like cancerous because if I allow them to germinate -- I'm the type of person that like, “That's a pretty good idea,” and then I’ll ruminate on it for a little while and I'm like, “That’s a really good idea.” And then a little bit longer, then I’m like, and then I start checking out of the other one. So, experimentation allows me to kind of like satisfy my little need to explore that, and usually I’ll explore it just kind of enough to scratch the itch and then I can move on.

Erik Michielsen: Could you give me a couple of examples of projects or itches?

Joe Stump: A couple of things that I've done, I created -- for a long time, back in like 2001, 2002, I was doing a lot of consulting work and had a ton inbound email and IM from clients and stuff and email at the time, I mean, the very best email client out there was terrible, right? And I was like, “it would be really awesome if I could take all of my email and kind of index it by not just subject and body, but the attachments.”

There's a lot of really great data in emails. It's still the primary mechanism for sharing on the internet. There's a lot of URLs in there, a lot of photos, a lot of videos. Obviously your real social network is in your email at the large part. So I kind of like thought that was a cool idea and I had always wanted to do that and ended up actually scratching an itch over a weekend and built this thing where you could log in to Gmail and then it would index.

It was like a little internet crawler that would crawl through your email inbox and then would basically, you could do things like show me all the photos my mom sent me last week, show me all the PDFs that my lawyer sent me last month, show me all the Excel spreadsheets that I've gotten from my accountant. It took me three days to kind of hack that together and the proof of concept was awesome. I was showing it to people. I'm like, “Check this out,” and they're like, “That’s really cool,” because you could click on someone’s name and see all the attachments that they’ve sent them. You could click on a month and see all the attachments you got in a month. You could slice and dice in all sorts of different ways.

And basically I just scratched that itch and left it stagnating on GitHub for months and then met a guy who had just graduated with his masters in Natural Language Processing. And of course, email is like that guy’s wet dream, right? There's just gigabytes of text and he got really excited about it and he was like, “Can I hack on it with you?” and I was like, “Of course, it's just gathering dust on GitHub, fire away.” And that company went on. Those guys, he recruited in a friend, they went on to leave their jobs, helped them raise 500 K and by the time this video hits the internet, they’ll have closed theirs hearsay.

Erik Michielsen: What's the name of that company?

Joe Stump: Attachments.me, and it's pretty amazing now because they have taken it and completly ran with it and they’ve built it now and they're like this really crazy content router. So, you can literally say -- a lot of services send PDFs as receipts. GitHub is a good example. So they send an invoice once a month with the receipt as a PDF attachment. So now in Gmail, I can say, “Please route all PDF attachments from GitHub to my Dropbox GitHub receipts folder,” and it just happens automatically. You don’t have to do anything. It's really nice.

How to Apply Academic Theory in Business Work - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 12 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "How Do You Translate Academic Theory into the Language of Business?"  Stallings finds support in the communication skills of his frog design colleagues.  Specifically he uses visual and communication design tools to prototype ideas and theories to business and create a reaction and subsequent feedback loop.  He This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Startup Advice on Using Venture Capital

In Chapter 14 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Boxee co-founder and head of product Idan Cohen answers "What is the Role of Venture Capital in Building a Company?"  Cohen shares its relevance as a tool to build things that might not have financial viability from day one.  He notes when it is useful in building products that later can be sold and when it is not a good idea.  Cohen shares concern around success being measured by raising venture capital, rather than creating a successful, profitable company.  He goes on to discuss different markets and technologies outside the Internet domain that would benefit from disruptive innovation and what variation of fundraising or venture tools could be applied there. 

This is Idan Cohen's Year 1 Capture Your Flag interview.  Cohen is co-founder and head of product at Boxee Inc, an online video software company.  Previous to Boxee, Cohen held telecom software innovation and developer roles at Comverse.  He was a Captain in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Geophysics and Art.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What’s the role of venture capital in building a company?

Idan Cohen: It’s a tool that was put in place to allow us to actually build things that might not have, you know, financial and business viability from day one. And, so that’s great. It’s an awesome thing, the fact that there’s a mechanism out there where you can, you know, someone can put faith in you because he thinks you have a good vision and an idea and a theme. And he can let you—he can give you that lay to go and build it, for a while, before you need to commit to any real business, because, you know, he understands that it will take time to build the product that you later can sell or you later can monetize but at this point, you can just start out of the blue and make it happen, or maybe there’s a learning process in that product that you need to achieve and you’re not gonna be able to pinpoint the right answer exactly from day one, and it will take a process and he’s willing to be patient with that. So that’s great.

I think that if you look at it, for instance, definitely today, then on one hand, a lot of people measure success by being able to raise venture capital and that’s extremely wrong, in my opinion, it’s just it’s becoming this competition or—people are getting so much credit for being able to raise money, being able to raise money shouldn’t be a lot of—shouldn’t get you a lot of credit. It means that someone out there believed in your vision, it’s great. There’s so many other ideas out there and maybe someone believed in your team and that’s even more important sometimes, or most of the time, but at the end of the day, your ability to deliver on the product and the business is much more important than actually being able to raise money.

I really wish that there were these tools also for other types of businesses, if someone wants to put together a restaurant, there’s no need for him to struggle and definitely in today’s economy, not being able to bring together a quarter of a million dollars to open that restaurant, yes, the numbers are not the same as the internet industry, it’s not gonna explode, it’s not gonna grow as a hockey stick and you’re not gonna be able to monetize it in the millions. But there should be better tools for other types of businesses to get built and established. So I wish that more people would take these tools that maybe—or some variation of them that were invented for venture capital, as we know it today for technology world. And apply it for other types of businesses.

Today we look at venture capital as tightly coupled with technology. Venture capital should be much more tightly coupled with entrepreneurship. So just someone having a good idea and having a good vision and being able to build a good team and go out and build a business, so I love the fact that there’s now, you know, for instance, Elon Musk doing space acts, this is awesome, yes, you know, yeah, it might be a business—a huge business in the billions of dollars just because of the cost of sending rockets into space, but still just someone being able to go out and do that, and I don’t know if he would’ve able if he wasn’t Elon Musk and didn’t have billions himself. But still, just the fact that I think these businesses are starting to see, you know, it’s not pure technology, it’s not internet, it’s not gonna acquire million of users, no, it needs probably like 10 actually that are gonna pay for these missiles. But it’s still gonna work. Same for cars, you know, if it’s from like Tesla or something like that. Just—I would love to see many more people supporting these kind of businesses. Just—or cameras, you know, why is the camera market not ready for disruption? Like why can’t someone build a better camera than what Canon and Nikon has been doing for—Nikon has been doing for 50 years I’m sure someone can. So for instance, now with those Lytro that came from a little bit of a different angle – I would like to see many more businesses like that. 

How to Turn an Art Concept into an Art Project

In Chapter 14 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, leadership philosopher Bijoy Goswami answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects You Pursue?"  Goswami frames each project in what evolutionary process.  He applies a bootstrap model for startup projects as a framework for the process of taking creative ideas from concept to project.  Bijoy Goswami is a writer, teacher, and community leader based in Austin, Texas.  He develops learning models, including MRE, youPlusU, and Bootstrap, to help others live more meaningfully.  Previously, he co-founded Aviri Software after working at Trilogy Software.  Goswami graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Computer Science, Economics, and History. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  How do you balance experimentation and commitment in the projects that you pursue?

Bijoy Goswami: Experimentation, so I think of that as the evolutionary piece. Where is something in the evolutionary stage and so based on its evolution it needs different things. That’s really the biggest thing I learned from the Bootstrap map, the Bootstrap journey and all that, is yes there’s this particular of this Bootstrap process but if you abstract it out everything goes through an evolutionary cycle, everything is in some state of development.

So, if something is in an earlier stage then I'm going to do much more of, you know, getting feedback and trying lots of things and things like that. When something is in a stage where’s it’s moved out of this experimentation stage and it becomes something more solid and I'm trying to get it out, I'm gonna experiment less, I gonna to now, try to converge down on a way that works across the broad set. So, to me the big difference is where is something in its evolution and then based on its evolution like I was telling about the Orange Sunglass project at the Fusebox festival, which is really – At the end it’s very simple. I have a pair of orange sunglasses I hand them to you, you pick a photographer, you take my iPhone, you go out into the Fusebox space, you take as many picture as you want, be creative, come back, pick a picture, we upload it, we tag and we title the picture that’s the very streamlined process but the way but they way it started was I, I was taking the pictures and I put the sunglasses on someone else and then someone else said let me grab, you know, so in the experimentation stage, in the early stage of deciding what the project was it was like, what do you think about this and everyone had this three cents to put in.

Meanwhile I'm still curating trying to figure out okay lots of different options and ideas, some paths didn’t work then as we did maybe the 20th or 30th picture it found its groove. Now, I can just say, hey, you want to be part of the orange sunglass project, here’s out it works. Whereas before I'm like I'm trying to figure this out, what do you think, how does it, you know, so the modality changed as the thing evolved.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Break Out of a Comfort Zone

In Chapter 10 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller answers "What is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?"  He shares how he gets into a comfort zone when doing overly repetitive tasks.  He shares how creating a risk-taking program at work has helped him to experience new things and seek out others who think big and challenge his thinking.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of the young leader accelerator, Sandbox Network, and HOLSTEE, an apparel and design firm that sells meaningful products to mindful shoppers.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its school of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What is your comfort zone and what do you do to break free of living in it?

Fabian Pfortmüller: When I have too often the same task or the same objective on my plate and on my task list, I'm too much in my comfort zone and I feel that if I don’t take enough risk and if I'm not a little bit scared, I must be too much in my comfort zone. We have this tradition at HOLSTEE where we pick one risk a week, where just every week we say let’s just, you know, randomly pick one risk of something we wanna achieve. It’s kind of something we’re scared off, something that we might not do otherwise and it’s so energizing.

It’s so often we get things done like this and we did a little experiment last year where we actually created a whole role about risk taking and we called it Agent99 and Agent99 was an internship that was about 99 risks in 99 days. So, we would pick some risks of things that we thought would be good for our community, would be good for, I don’t know, the world, would have a good impact and would also help us as a brand at HOLSTEE and we then found amazing perfect person who was so willing to take risk and he just went out and achieved it. And I think that’s a great, that’s a great way of doing it.

I think for us really thinking big helps me to get kind of just out of comfort zone and one thing that I believe helps me also is being surrounded by people that really think big. I realize that when I'm surrounded by other entrepreneurs and I kind of get this chilly feeling of like, “Oh, my god, that’s kind of crazy.” That’s what I want for myself as well and that’s what I want for my own idea as well and when I'm missing it, I know something is not good.

It’s good to have a little bit of fear in it because it means you’re really going for a big idea and you’re not just executing something and in the end of the day we’re trying out something new that has not been done before. We’re building something that has not there before and that little bit of like “uh-oh”, in the back of my head is something very healthy.

Fabian Pfortmüller on How to Run Projects Using Culture and Process

In Chapter 11 of 15 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, community builder and entrepreneur Fabian Pfortmüller answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects You Pursue?"  Pfortmüller answers the question in the context of process and culture and how both are relevant to project planning, team building and problem solving.  Pfortmüller is co-founder of the young leader accelerator, Sandbox Network, and HOLSTEE, an apparel and design firm that sells meaningful products to mindful shoppers.  Pfortmüller graduated from Columbia University and its school of General Studies. 

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How do you balance experimentation and commitment in the projects that you pursue?

Fabian Pfortmüller: I would answer that question with two buckets. On the one hand, I think it’s about process and on the other hand it’s about culture. I believe it’s all about having very clear processes when you run any project. We’re learning every day about project management, we’re learning about setting goals, we’re learning about, you know, making sure those deadlines are met and finding structures how we feel comfortable that we can really plan out projects in quite a lot detail but at the same time building the culture to be super free and how we wanna solve that problem.

Once we clearly define the problem, there should not be a required way to get there and I think culture is one of the key elements that allows people to think freely and that’s just something that we’re trying to tell ourselves but also the people we work with. No matter how you get there, it doesn’t matter. It’s just about the goal, and the crazier ideas, the better.

We at HOLSTEE for example have a 10% rule, a little bit like Google’s 20% rule but 10% where we just encourage people to work on whatever they want and something that they are passionate about, something where they believe they can have impact and I think that openness and that freedom in, you know, going no matter where as long as they’re creating something valuable is super important for any organization.

Why to Try Cooking at a Pop-Up Restaurant

In Chapter 4 of 16 in her 2012 interview, author and food writer Cathy Erway answers "What Made You Create a Pop-Up Restaurant and What Did You Learn from the Experience?"  Erway creates a pop-up restaurant at Milk Bar restaurant in Brooklyn to try cooking for larger audiences at night.  The pop-up setting allows her to personalize a dining experience using a restaurant rather than supper club model. 

Cathy Erway is an author and food writer living in Brooklyn.  Her first book, "The Art of Eating In" developed from her blog "Not Eating Out in New York".  She earned a BA in creative writing from Emerson College.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  What made you create a pop-up restaurant and what did you learn from the experience?

Cathy Erway:  Oh that was a fun project. So I ran a pop-up restaurant in a restaurant that a new acquaintance, new friend, was the chef at for a while. And it was really fun, it was a collaboration with somebody I'd never worked with before. I'm always up for that kind of challenge and it's funny because I think he'd heard of my pop-up dinners with the Hapa Kitchen or something else, some functions that I was doing, and he just approached me and asked, "Hey, I really want to do some -- I'm really inspired. I wanna do pop-ups at this restaurant," because they were actually a cafe and they were open during the day, they close at 6. So it's like free real estate for a dinner, so it's a perfect--I think it's a perfect situation. You take over this tiny cafe, and turn it into an occasional restaurant. So I highly encourage anyone to try that.

Erik Michielsen:  How'd you handle the experience, kinda cooking for a larger crowd and a faster changing crowd?

Cathy Erway:  Yeah that was a new experience because we didn't have everyone sit down at once and then serve them at once. So the chef I was working with, Josh, he just wanted to do it like a regular restaurant. So people walk in, you can take reservations too, you try to turn over as many covers as you can within the course of the night, you make as many ingredients. It was like a regular restaurant. So I've never--I was like, "Oh, this is totally novel to me. " And I was describing how I did it, and he was like, "Oh, that's totally novel to me." Like the whole supper club way, everyone sits and eats at once. So I tried it--we tried it his way and that was a new learning experience for me. And then I realized, oh, it’s about volume and making people leave sooner. I mean, not that we did, of course, but you know, in theory, that's how a restaurant works, is you gotta turn it over.

Erik Michielsen:  And how did that compare and contrast with say the Hapa Kitchen supper club?

Cathy Erway:  Hapa kitchen supper club is more of like a wandering salon of totally different, unique experiences, and one of the things we did was always--it was always in a different atmosphere. Like, atmosphere was pretty important so our first dinner was out in a farm in Queens County Farm Museum. We had two big huge events. That were at the Gowanus Yard, or the Brooklyn Yard it used to be called. And that was pretty cool. Then we did other intimate dinners that were in people's houses, and we kind of really decked it all out in a certain way, like, for this one Shanghai and French dinner, Paris of the East. And we got all dressed up in chipaos. Yeah, so I mean, it was--that was the theme for that club, but having it always in the same place with different menus, that was the pop-up concept for Milk Bar, which is a restaurant we used. 

Cathy Erway on Testing New Ideas and Committing to Projects

In Chapter 6 of 16 in her 2012 interview, author and food writer Cathy Erway answers "How Do You Balance Experimentation and Commitment in the Projects You Pursue?"  Erway notes how she will try anything once, using a pop-up supper club as an example.  Over time, she learns to whittle down her pursuits around her core competencies or strengths. 

Cathy Erway is an author and food writer living in Brooklyn.  Her first book, "The Art of Eating In" developed from her blog "Not Eating Out in New York".  She earned a BA in creative writing from Emerson College.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen:  How do you balance experimentation and commitment in the projects you pursue?

Cathy Erway:  I should probably be better at that. But experimentation, I--that's something I can't live without. So I definitely experiment and I try at least once--anything, anything you throw at me, I will try it. So like this new supper club or pop-up at Milk Bar, sure I will give it a try. Or this recipe idea in my head that doesn't yet exist, I'll give that a try. You know, commitment means you found that it's a great recipe and you wanna keep making it, maybe you wanna hone it, and, you know, so it comes to whittling down all these things that you try, so I think it can't hurt to keep trying as many things as possible.

Erik Michielsen: And when is it time to narrow that focus because you can only afford so many things on the table at the same time?

Cathy Erway:  Probably now. It's wise to whittle things down to what you're the best at, so--what you're core competencies are. So, "Should I give up this blog? Or should I give up this documentary film series that I co-host? " Well, you know, this is more in line with my career, so, the writing, that is, the blog. So maybe that's something I should keep.

Erik Michielsen:  Those choices can be hard, huh?

Cathy Erway:  Yeah, they can be hard, and you always think, like, "Maybe I can do everything." Well, you can try that, too and see how it goes, but probably not as often as you’d like.