A Tool for Talent–Fit Assessment Plum, named one of NACO’s Top 5 Most Promising Startups of 2015, measures cognitive and behaviour fit to match applicants to their employment role. (See plum.io)
Peter Kemball points out: “We overrate our interview abilities. We’re betting on the horse, not the jockey, so investing up to $15,000 on a professional assessment of the founding team makes a lot of sense.”
3.3.2 Lean Startup and Getting to Plan B “The critical thing to understand is that companies will succeed by doing something different from whatever they originally thought. They can’t just execute on a plan. They need the ability to learn and change. That’s why an A team with a B plan will always outperform a B team with an A plan.” This is why Steven Forth (NACO Academy Module 304 instructor) always asks, “What have you learned in the last three months that you thought to be right and now realize is wrong?” Most companies go through several major pivots before discovering the plan that will really give them a scalable business (read Mullins & Komisar, Getting to Plan B ) and it normally takes at least three major product iterations before getting it right. The mighty Microsoft had to get through Windows 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 before it came out with Windows 3.1, which replaced DOS. Even Steve Jobs designed and produced many failures like the Newton before coming up with the iPad. New products rarely work out well on the first attempt. A big part of your investment is to help the team simply survive and learn while they go through several major plan changes and product cycles. But what specifically do they need to learn? Probably the biggest new idea in the entrepreneurship field over the last five years is the Lean Startup (search Lean Startup and Eric Reis and/or Steve Blank on YouTube). The idea is that companies must first go through a discovery phase where they are iterating and searching for a scalable and repeatable business model. During this time, they use lean tools like small batches, the “five whys,” and continuous process improvement against specific engine-of-growth metrics for adaptive learning. Only when they discover the magic combination can they execute against a known plan to create large numbers of customers and build a company. Some of the best books on this subject are The Startup Owner’s Manual (Blank & Dorf); The Lean Startup (Reis); and Running Lean (Maurya).
58 A Practical Guide to Angel Investing
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