Over the last year, I’ve started walking more than running for exercise, which means more total time on pavement, and also more time with podcasts.
One of the podcasts that has had some of the highest utility for me over the last year was Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s interview with Whoop Founder Will Ahmed.
During their conversation, Ahmed says, “the first thing we needed to prove, starting summer of 2012, was that we could measure heart rate variability accurately from the wrist, non-invasively.”
Simple statement about proving the technology could be viable, before trying to prove it could be valuable. But also really profound, and he goes on to describe a philosophy he’s formed around company building, saying,
“I think a lot of building a company from scratch is figuring out what you need to prove at what stage. That was the first thing we needed to prove, that we can build technology that can measure this thing that medical literature proves is relevant, and do it in a noninvasive way that's never been done before.”
Mentor madness & knowing what we must prove
For the last 4 years, I’ve had several rewarding experiences working with founders in the Atlanta Techstars program.
When they arrive for the program, the startups (typically pre-seed stage), meet with dozens of mentors from the Atlanta startup community in a dizzying couple of weeks called Mentor Madness.
Over the last 2 cohorts, I’ve tried to introduce Ahmed’s “proof point” idea into my initial conversations with founders by inviting them, not to tell me about their business per se, but to walk through what their business needs to prove during their time in the Techstars program.
This usually produces a conversation that takes a couple of different variations. Either the founder is very clear about what they need to prove, or the exact opposite.
In situations where the founder is clear, the conversation quickly moves to a second question: “what will make it difficult for you to prove that?”
When the founder isn’t clear, they typically answer in one of two ways. The first way could be described as “acknowledged ambiguity.” The founder isn’t exactly sure what they need to prove, but they recognize this, and they’re upfront about it.
The second way could be described as “insecure selling.” The founder isn’t exactly sure what they need to prove, but they may be afraid to admit that, whether consciously, or subconsciously. In these scenarios, their answers often introduce many things they may need to prove.
I’ve come to view Ahmed’s proof point notion as a super question for company builders, and I suspect that founders & CEOs with the highest probability of scaling their businesses do two things well:
they possess a very clear sense of what the business must prove in a specific timeframe
they make it impossible for anyone working in the company to misunderstand what the company is trying to prove
A stage agnostic super question
The question is powerful, because it forces clear thinking and drives alignment. It’s also stage agnostic. What businesses are trying to prove changes as they grow, but the question is persistently valuable.
The difference between a seed stage startup and a business at growth stage or beyond is that there are more valid answers to the question, from more centers of influence, with a broader spectrum of incentives.
For example, what is a typical Series C or Series D company trying to prove?
The answer could validly be many things:
that we can enter a new market
that we can achieve profitability
that we can IPO
that we can build new products for our customers….
The challenge is that most company builders usually have to limit what they’re trying to prove to 1, 2, or maybe 3 things, given the reality of resource scarcity.
Selecting the 1, 2, or 3 things to prove is where company building at later stages becomes charged with the different incentives that exist within large organizations.
As Venkatesh Rao has written about complex systems (and as I’ve found myself citing before in High Stakes Collaboration), everyone in the system is viewing the system based on different incentives. So for an organization to select a few things to prove in a specific period of time requires culture and leadership capable of forging alignment across different scopes of interest.
Super questions & Super foods
As blueberries are super foods, “what must we prove?” is a super question for company builders. And it’s not the only one.
In Part II, I’ll explore additional questions that can be force multiplying for businesses and teams.