Week 1 – MBA6101 – Ascend Your Start-up

The metaphor Helen Yu uses in Ascend Your Start-Up is so easy to follow. It's as though she is taking the reader on a literal journey to scale Mount Everest: Base Camp, Slope, and Summit. The three legs of the journey correlate to it to the inner entrepreneur in you.

• Base Camp: the fun and ultra-exciting stage where you turn an idea into a product.
• Slope: where you must move forward, digging in your heels for the treacherous, slippery slope of taking your product to market when ideas fly and you work a gazillion hours and begin to feel the physical effects of what it means to be a founder. This is the difficult territory where 90 percent of start-ups fail.
• Summit: the insanely challenging shift from market to scale. You finally see the Summit—the one you set out to reach or perhaps a new one that has appeared since you started. 

The tone to her writing flows so conversationally, one where she invites you in to demystify the unknown, which is how do you start a business, fuel growth, and stay relevant? It starts with realizing you don't know what you don't know. A great starting point is asking questions to seek your truth, with your company, your product/service, your vision. She states it's the "why?" that Simon Sinek touts as THE most important question to ask oneself. "When we know our 'why,' we know our purpose on a broad scale." (Yu, 2021). The question could be existential, of course, but it is also quite strategic. "To be strategic, you have to make mind space for yourself, to carve out one or two hours a day to think. You can see the trees, but not the forest otherwise. Spending time away from the day-to-day business unleashes my brainpower. Here is where you begin to choreograph your start-up’s graceful climb." (Yu, 2021). This concept I leaned later in life. Shift from a doer to a thinker--this was a big leap for me. I always considered that producing work (and work is a reflection of me, my sense of self) was how I showed worth to my team, to my employer. Perhaps that is a natural evolution of one's career. We start out as worker bees and as we work up the corporate ladder, we take that experience, that seniority, and get paid to think and problem solve.

Which is a perfect segue to the next-most important question to ask: "What real problem(s) are you trying to solve?" She quotes UX designer Sarah Doody who wrote in The UX Notebook newsletter, “If you can’t define the problem, then don’t design a solution.” 

So now one has the problem and the solution. How does one take that company vision and grow the business? By leveraging a management process created by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff known as V2MOM, one is able to "combine brand, strategy, and measurement in a short, concise format."

• VISION (make the future resonate)
• VALUES (identify core beliefs)
• METHODS (build your path) 
• OBSTACLES (anticipate risk)
• MEASURES (track results)

Here's Salesforce.com's first V2MOM, which Benioff had scribbled on a large American Express envelope.

It was literally their business plan. Clear. Simple. Focused. Parker Harris (Co-Founder and Chief Tech Officer at Salesforce) had it framed and gave it to Benioff on the day of their IPO. 

Lastly, Yu asks a not-so-easy-to-answer question: "how do you identify your brand in three words that summarize what you do, for whom, and why?" Answer that, and one just might have the genesis of a business plan!

Reference:

Yu, H. (2021). Ascend Your Start-Up: Conquer the 5 Disconnects to Accelerate Growth. Made for Success Publishing.