Building and Growing New Companies

I am dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs, founders and innovators of all kinds—from boot-strapped to venture-backed

I must have learned as much from countless one-on-one conversations with work friends and peers as I have learned from doing my work. It’s incredible how generous people are with their time.

I try to be as helpful as others have been.

I created and offer a customer interviews workshop and write a blog on Medium to help entrepreneurs understand the struggling moments motivating customers to find solutions to meaningful problems. I volunteer for the startup accelerator Techstars, venture studio High Alpha Innovation and the non-profit MassChallenge accelerator. I’ve met with over 100 founding teams and coached more than 10 founders, including Ryan, the CEO of Captain.ai, featured in the image above.

As a mentor, I meet with founders 2 to 4 times per month for about 10 weeks to discuss product market fit, go-to-market planning, fundraising and leadership and organizational development issues. I’m also happy to have conversations when someone outside of these programs reaches out with a thoughtful request for a meeting.

It was never part of a master plan but an unexpected benefit of these efforts (in the role of learner and helper) has been to create an incredible network of “givers” with expertise in practically any startup or business domain.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when Bob Moesta, co-architect of the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework, agreed to chat with me after I contacted him with a cold email. He also replied to follow-up emails and hosted me at the ReWired Group offices in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

The follow-up conversations helped me to design and execute an end-to-end JTBD customer insights project that I described in Harvard’s Forum for Growth & Innovation blog.

I would have never been able to design and execute that project without the generosity of Bob and many other Jobs to be Done practitioners.

The Entrepreneurial Operating System

Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) has had a significant and valuable impact on many businesses. The framework, including vision, data, process, traction, issues, and people considerations, is an excellent summary of proven management principles—pulled together in one place that makes it easy to use.

EOS is the right fit for companies in the later Scale phase when a business has become more predictable. It is a comprehensive system that can improve business performance and operations after a company’s business model and value proposition have become apparent and proven.

Without substantial modification, it’s probably the wrong tool for most early-stage ventures or small businesses exploring whether they can jump onto a new, unknown growth path. Startups require a more flexible and iterative approach--a lean framework emphasizing learning amid uncertainty.

Scaling up a business using EOS or building a new business using lean methods are both complex and resource-intensive tasks. The EOS applies that energy into the wrong places for a company that still needs to be focused on understanding the problem it solves, developing a product, validating the market and confirming if it can create a viable business.

I believe there is a spot missing in the startup and innovation toolbox between the Lean Canvas and frameworks such as EOS, which led me to start writing down my approach in the Venture Plan on a Page.