A Change is A-Brewin'

There's a lot of news in Kognioworld, but I'll make you read until the end to get to it. First, let's have dinner. :)

I Need a Hero
We all need heroes--not just role models, but heroes. There's a difference, I'd say. This is especially true when you're striking out to start something on your own. It doesn't matter if it's not your first time around the bases, there will be things you'll be doing for the first time ever. You'll probably look to role models and advisors to see how they've done it in the past. But you'll look to your heroes for inspiration. They're the ones who may not have experienced something you exactly are experiencing in this moment, but their success, or perseverance, or dedication, or wisdom push you to continue. I can't say that I have one particular venture hero, and the ones I do have will likely come across as cliché. Oh well.

For brevity I'll focus on one: Steve Jobs. The man wasn't perfect--far from it. He had his detractors, but there was a way in which he galvanized his supporters that was incredibly impressive. My running theory for why he was able to do this in spite of... erm... dictatorial... tendencies was that he was wholly consistent. Everything he did seemed to emanate from a central core purpose. Everything. From starting Apple to design decisions to his management style. By having this consistency, his team always knew what to expect of him and what was expected of them. And because so few people are as wholly consistent as Jobs was, his personality was naturally attractive. Being so attached to his purpose drew others to his purpose.

Thinking about Jobs as a hero is an important reflection point. How can incorporate aspects of him into my approach to entrepreneurship. I think the first step is to dig deep, deep, deep down inside and uncover what is it that motivates me, that drives me to do more. And then work on something that directly allows me to do that. Steve Jobs wouldn't have been the great leader he was in an industry he didn't care about so much. From there, draw my actions from that purpose, understanding that I'll never be exactly like Steve Jobs. That's OK. Better even, because it means I really need to be Chris Swimmer. How I manifest my purpose in my work will be very different from Jobs, but if I can be remembered for being driven by purpose then I will be happy with my legacy.

Testing Testing
So we did our user surveys. It was a lot of fun. The results? Well they were a bit all over the place, to be honest. A lot of that I can chalk up to poor survey design. It was a bit long and people seemed to be lost in the terminology. That also showed us a bigger problem of Kognio--we have trouble clearly identifying exactly what we're doing. Part of that is simply because we don't have a product yet. Part of that is because we likely all have slightly different versions of the idea in our heads. That's problematic. Basically the results showed that people would have interest in a product that helps simplify their research needs. Their primary problem areas were finding the right keywords, identifying trustworthy information, and organizing their results. We feel that our product would address the two latter needs, though it would take some work to identify a solution to the keyword problem.

A Pivotal Moment
To be frank, though, this has all been pushed out of our current focus, because it appears that we won't be continuing on with the company. I'll give you a moment to collect yourself.

So why? Well, we were facing multiple team issues--the first being that the two other founders will be having visa issues. One really soon and one down the line. We could overcome that, but in the discussions about visa strategies, it became apparent that the programmer was less committed to the team than he would need to be for us to take big risks like moving to SF to start the company. Without him firmly in place, things started to feel shaky. But this allowed me to step back and reconsider what exactly it was that I wanted out of this. And then I thought about Jobs and my own purpose. I felt a breath of fresh air because it turned out, working on someone else's idea felt constricting--more constricting than I had even realized. Stepping outside of the venture box I had put myself in with Kognio allowed me to more objectively assess my purpose, my team, and our idea. This is not a failure and not even a setback. It's more like a stepback, allowing me to reposition myself for something that will go further to satisfy me. I woke up the other morning thinking only of what drove me and I had an interesting realization:

I've spent years traveling. 43 countries to be exact. I'm nowhere near done, but one thing that I've always tried to do is convince more people to just do it. Yes, in the Nike sense. Everyone is always so impressed with my travels, yet very few people follow my lead. "It's too hard." "I don't have the money." "I can't just leave everything I have here." All of those, I always, say are BS. Where there's a will there's a way. And thinking about the digital trails Kognio was supposed to create, I thought about real trails. What if I could build an app that facilitates the travel organization process in a way that helps people make the leap and get out of their geographic comfort zone. It's vague now and I promise isn't some typical travel app, but it's something I actually want to exist in the world and so I'm strongly attracted to it. If I can help more people experience the world as I have, then how will that impact the way they view the world? I guess you could call this a pretty major pivot: digital trails --> real trails.

I'm not sure what this means for class. I might switch to this new thing for the final presentation, but I've got a lot of reflecting to do before that.