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From theory to process

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

daru

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Ok. So was building my Saas and all was well. And then I got an opportunity to join a E-health startup as an owner (10%). And I took that opportunity!

I realize that I seem to be all over the place but what the hell: "new shit has come to light" as my favourite anti-hero explained to Mr Lebowski.
View: https://youtu.be/XKVmpJaMffM


If this new venture fails (it won't) then I can just pickup where I left the Saas thing. I guess (?).

May or may not continue this thread. But a big thanks to all who read this thread and helped me.
This forum is awesome and I feel a lot more confident on how to help this new company I've joined thanks to you.
 
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daru

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Out of excitement I post again. This E-health venture I've joined has already started to connect some feedback loops. And man, it's awesome!
We haven't sold a shit so far but the last couple of days events has announced good times ahead.

I'm responsible for the technology and programming, feels good to put my skills to real use helping people have a better life! Also, getting more into the hardware stuff as I have been forced to do is quite fun. Sometimes very frustrating but keep reminding myself to "solve problems on a problem to problem basis". That and "the fact that it's hard is the opportunity" (it's really not that hard but anyway).

Also, one of the Co-founders have read The Millionaire Fastlane and is now the CEO! Having business partners turned out to be a good move for me.
Gave another friend UNSCRIPTED for birthday present and he read it! Besides this forum I can now have good entrepreneurship discussions IRL. :fistbump:

Thanks for the books and forum MJ and all others that provide value through this forum. :thumbsup:
 

Caramel

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Are you making sure you won't get the short end of the stick at this startup? I may have missed something but you are technically working under a boss again, yes?
 

daru

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Are you making sure you won't get the short end of the stick at this startup? I may have missed something but you are technically working under a boss again, yes?
Hey, thanks for posting.

Well. I only own 10% of the company. That's not great. It's not optimal, but is anything ever optimal? However, I believe that an exit in a few years will still make me financially independent (currently it's all about helping and adding value).

I don't consider it working under a boss. And if I'm fooling myself (very possible) it's still a "boss" that know what's important to get this thing flying. We are on the same page. I have already learned a lot, and will learn more. And who knows, maybe some day I get to own more of this company.
If things go to hell which is out of my control I just reread some books (what did I do wrong) and starts firing again.
 
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Caramel

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Hey, thanks for posting.

Well. I only own 10% of the company. That's not great. It's not optimal, but is anything ever optimal? However, I believe that an exit in a few years will still make me financially independent (currently it's all about helping and adding value).

I don't consider it working under a boss. And if I'm fooling myself (very possible) it's still a "boss" that know what's important to get this thing flying. We are on the same page. I have already learned a lot, and will learn more. And who knows, maybe some day I get to own more of this company.
If things go to hell which is out of my control I just reread some books (what did I do wrong) and starts firing again.


Sounds good. You are taking a risk on the two things I fear most, though.

1. Control. You are giving up a lot of control by letting someone else be in charge of the decisions. You're on the same page now, but you might not be in the future.
2. Time. You are risking a lot of time by thinking this will work. If it doesn't work out, that's a lot of time (possibly) wasted.

just my 2 cents though, and i'm still learning myself.
 

daru

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Sounds good. You are taking a risk on the two things I fear most, though.

1. Control. You are giving up a lot of control by letting someone else be in charge of the decisions. You're on the same page now, but you might not be in the future.
2. Time. You are risking a lot of time by thinking this will work. If it doesn't work out, that's a lot of time (possibly) wasted.

just my 2 cents though, and i'm still learning myself.

Can't deny it's risky and suboptimal regarding Control and Time. Most worried about Control. The time invested can be compared to really working for a boss with zero chance of explosive income growth (Am I fooling myself now again =).
 

Caramel

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Can't deny it's risky and suboptimal regarding Control and Time. Most worried about Control. The time invested can be compared to really working for a boss with zero chance of explosive income growth (Am I fooling myself now again =).

Sure, it can be compared. But the ultimate goal we're here for is to escape that situation as fast as possible (fastlane). So wasting another few years on it can't really be considered "okay". That time could've been spent working on opportunities that provide more control and thus (in my opinion) more odds of success.

Not to burst your bubble or trying to argue with you, this thread has been a fantastic read and I'm sure you'll make it far.
My opinion isn't very credible anyway as I'm just a beginner myself.

Good luck with whatever path you choose!
 
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daru

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Actually, Time in this case is my time I invest. Not Time as in the Time commandment. Myself mixed them up in comments above I think.

The business itself adheres good to all the CENTS commandments. Hopefully very good on the Need.
 

daru

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In the desert. Good to have partners right now for not giving up.

Seems like the problem of my small ownership of the company may be resolved. In other words, I will likely own more shares of the company soon.
 

daru

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Things are not going well. Seems like a failure right now. Have to decide if investing more time and money into this. So what is going on?
Well I knew, in theory, it was a big risk joining a company with 2 completely unknown founders (knew one and we get along fine). Now I know it in practice. :wideyed:
We have a somewhat dysfunctional team right now that is killing this venture. And it's out of my control.

I still think the idea is viable, the tech side is solvable and that it can be done. Problem is that I own small part of the company, nobody is fully committed and we have no money. No sales because the product is not mature enough yet. But even if it was somebody have to sell it. And that to a difficult market where the customer has no money and is heavy regulated by public procurement (I think that's the English term). Of course I could step up and do the (ehm, learn) sales but as I only own a small part of the company I hesitate.
Going back and forth if it's me giving up to easy or if it's the sunk cost fallacy that pulls me back to keep investing time and money.

So to see what my options were I went back to all the business ideas I wrote down earlier. Good thing I wrote down 10 ideas a day for a couple of months . Did some action faking building a online tool to log and evaluate all those ideas against CENTS commandments. Now that I review those ideas there are a couple of good ones that may work. But what I noticed is that Need is very hard to rate (I rate all ideas 1-5 on the commandments). Next action faking exercise is to make a simple algorithm to pick the best ideas with focus on Control, Entry and Need while keeping Time and Scale in the back of my head. Then go through them and find ways to verify or debunk the Need commandment as fast as possible. So my dream is to build a system for my ideas, or any business ideas, to filter them if it's worth building a prototype, pre-sell them or whatever to verify their viability.
 
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daru

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Small but important update.
As I read the forum it seems most people have no problem finding an idea but having trouble with execution. Me, and at least some others, have trouble even finding an idea (need).
But since yesterday I have an idea I feel good about and it was right in front of me the whole time!
Now, I have something to execute on. I know the need is out there, there is of course competition and it will be hard. But it feels awesome to beat this first obstacle that I had, much with the help of this forum! Thanks to all of you who post and discuss here.
Old post of mine. This was obviously BS. The idea was to research and publish an E-book on howto get ideas if I remember correctly. Oh, the irony. I had one freaking Idea? The good thing is that I learned to generate a shit ton of ideas since then. Just followed Altucher's recommendation to write down 10 ideas every day to exercise the idea muscle.
As failure seems possible for my current venture I reviewed those ideas. Now at 50 ideas and counting and that with filtering out the worst ones. I think I'll have about 100 ideas in the end to put through test by CENTS commandments and then Kinetic Execution. Now I think I understand the value of Soft Proof too! Better spend $1000 on verifying an unfinished product than to spend 3 months building it to find out that the Need commandment was fantasy and violated?
 

daru

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Up and batting again. Been a rough last half a year. Some sort of mild depression. Managed to keep reading and learning some. Also started an anonymous blog on Wordpress to just ramble and rant. That evolved to weekly plans I so far actually follow up on. Holds me accountable somehow. I think that reading and writing has helped a lot.
That and keep on lifting weights regularly. But holy shit I was not motivated AT ALL. Fell through a couple of times but managed to pick it up again.

Employed again to pay the damn bills and feed the family. Job is OK and intersect somewhat with stuff I need to learn for the business I'm working on. Had to re-align what work meant and looking at it as paid education helped a lot!

I've found an hour in the morning before family to work on the business. I'm doing it myself this time. No partners! Following CENTS. Value array looks promising. Currently researching the tech how to put up the MVP. It's within IT but a new sub-field for me: IT-security. I think I'm actually passionate about it!?
 

maverick

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Two things:

1. You need to change your approach. Doing the same thing over and over again will result in the same results.

2. Copied from https://foreverjobless.com/category/blog/

If you don’t know if an opportunity you’re considering is worth the pursuit, take it through the 4-steps I recommend:

Step 1: Is the product or service you’re offering better than what currently exists on the market?

Step 2: Can you reach the ideal audience for it?

Step 3: Due diligence phase – verification of steps 1+2 as well as in depth research into the market and competition

Step 4: Expected Value phase- what’s the profit potential and would a positive outcome here be worth the pursuit for you?
 
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daru

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Two things:

1. You need to change your approach. Doing the same thing over and over again will result in the same results.

2. Copied from https://foreverjobless.com/category/blog/

If you don’t know if an opportunity you’re considering is worth the pursuit, take it through the 4-steps I recommend:

Step 1: Is the product or service you’re offering better than what currently exists on the market?

Step 2: Can you reach the ideal audience for it?

Step 3: Due diligence phase – verification of steps 1+2 as well as in depth research into the market and competition

Step 4: Expected Value phase- what’s the profit potential and would a positive outcome here be worth the pursuit for you?
Thanks.

1. But I do have changed my approach. Or do you see something I don't?

2. Foreverjobless is great! To be clear I'm at the "Prototype" stage of the 7 P's which is a similar list I guess. The need is there since there are competition. I just need to get it out there to get feedback and see if my value array is attractive.
 

maverick

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Nothing changed between your first and last post.

You've written long, long posts but over the course of the year you've not moved 1-inch from where you were. So either your process is broken or you've been posting as a form of action-faking.

If your process was broken, your posts would be somewhat coherent. Re-read them. Do you think they're coherent? Did you follow a process to get you (closer) to where you want to be?

Stop using an "online journal" as an excuse for keeping yourself accountable. You're only deluding yourself. Read this post:
INTRO - My Life Is a Mess -- And there's no "motivation"

Similar story. Same outcome.
 

daru

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Nothing changed between your first and last post.

You've written long, long posts but over the course of the year you've not moved 1-inch from where you were. So either your process is broken or you've been posting as a form of action-faking.

If your process was broken, your posts would be somewhat coherent. Re-read them. Do you think they're coherent? Did you follow a process to get you (closer) to where you want to be?

Stop using an "online journal" as an excuse for keeping yourself accountable. You're only deluding yourself. Read this post:
INTRO - My Life Is a Mess -- And there's no "motivation"

Similar story. Same outcome.
Much have changed since my first post. Failures and learning mostly. Isn't that part of the process.

But Yes, you are right about one thing: the posts are long, incoherent and poorly written.

The "online journal" (diary) works. No, that thread is not similar to my situation.

The thing is that these status updates are so poorly written and all over the place they probably do more harm than good. I just wanted to announce I'm still around. The dream is not dead. But was nearly killed.
 
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