As a graduate of the Founder Institute – DC (@founding), I am required, as my final assignment, to write a blog post describing my experience in the intensive 15-week program. Being the rebel I am, I chose not to do a straight blog post, but rather, pose a question on the site Namesake.com, an awesome place where smart people talk about cool stuff, in real-time. I had discovered it before joining FI and even posed a question on the site about the application process. As such, I thought it would be fitting to answer questions from the Namesake community about my experience in Founder Institute.
So, at around 5 or 6 pm, I posted the following question:
“I am a graduate of the Founder Institute DC, and our final assignment is to post something about our experience. My plan is to post answers to questions from the Namesake community. Ask away. What do you want to know about Founder Institute?”
Although responses were a bit slow at first, mostly coming from Namesake co-founder Brian Norgard (who is also a part of Ad.ly), they were great questions and people were tuning in. Eventually, Brian tweeted it out on his personal account and more people joined the conversation. Around the time I wrapped up it had about 1k views. Right now the totals stand at 1400+ views and 40+ comments (half of which are my answers). I am not sure how they count views, but however they do it, there certainly seems to be a lot of interest in the Founder Institute, especially in entrepreneurial circles. There were a lot of great questions, so if you are looking for some inside info, you should check it out. Here are three of the best questions. I feel a little strange quoting myself, so I will only provide a brief synopsis of my answers. You should really check out the whole thing here.
Declan Dunn
Q: What’s the single, most important learning/insight you’ll remember most from your experience that you can apply to your next startup?
A: Do lots of research before/during/all the time and, be funny when you pitch.
Brian Norgard
Q: What do you believe will be your single biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?
A: Lots of challenges, depends on product stage. Right now, getting out a product I am proud of.
New Answer: Finding out the email for InstatSports mostly was not working while I was conducting a live conversation on Namesake… until the next day. By mostly, I mean none of the email addresses were working except mine, hence the delay in finding the error. Good thing my site logs that shite 😉
I thought this was the best question:
Andew Skotzko
Q: FI has imprinted a template of entrepreneurship onto your psyche. But doesn’t being taught/following that model fly in the face of everything the lean / customer development movement has learned about being agile, opportunistic, and questioning what you think is true?
My complete answer (copied/pasted verbatim):
A: That is a valuable point to make, and one prospective entrepreneurs should consider when they are thinking of applying to FI or any incubator. Every organization has a way of doing things, and the spirit of entrepreneurship practically flies in the face of these institutions. Entrepreneurs need to be agile and opportunistic, for sure, and I did think FI put certain pressures on members to accomplish certain goals when they were either unnecessary or not warranted based on the current state of the business. However, and I realize my own bias, I felt that FI did it’s best to provide a map AND tools, and it was up to the entrepreneur to get up everyday and do the heavy lifting. To that extent, FI served as a sort of boot camp in that it required us to do the work of running a business, while learning to run a business (very meta). Anyway, I agree with your point, but I still think there is value in incubators and institutions like FI for entrepreneurs that have most of what they need but need something more (motivation, a swift kick in the arse, advice, roadmap to success, contacts, etc.)
There were lots of great questions and it was a great experience for me. Namesake did a great job handling the real time question and answer, something we are working hard to implement over here at InStat Sports. I will continually monitor the conversation and answer questions when I can.
If you are too lazy to go to Namesake and check it out, I guess I can tell you about FI right here, but you really should check it out.
FI provides a roadmap and tools, and they do the best they can to put you in the right place and meet the right people and learn the right things, but it is up to the individual entrepreneur to make use of those things in order to build a successful business.
Boom. There you go.
–Done.