1. Vision, Values, and Ideas: The Case for Going After Big
Challenges Alex Lightman Founder Institute January 12, 2015
2. What do you want? What is important to you? Most people want
you to ask this question. Everyones favorite radio station is
WIIFM. Whats In It For Me? Part of the fun and challenge of being a
great entrepreneurship is playing a game: articulating what you
want, and then attracting and enrolling other people to want that
also, and getting them to pay you to get it.
3. What Do I Want? A world in which anyone can buy, sell,
borrow, loan, and swap with anyone else, and can meet, collaborate
with, and accomplish projects, from anywhere on earth, online. A
world in which people can live their lives, eat, their food,
travel, and work entirely fueled with clean renewable energy. A
world in which people can eat fresh, healthy food within hours of
the food being picked.
4. How Do I Make This Happen? Chairman of Witkit collaboration
software Chairman of Everblaze solar PV innovation Advisory board
and first outside investor in Natural Machines 3D food printing
Chairman of Global Innovation Network for Entrepreneurship and
Technology (GINET) commercialization of university technology
5. Vision Vision is highly focused and selective glimpse of a
future world that is different because of you and what your company
accomplished. Vision is a guilty pleasure. A great vision is a
paradox. Its egotistical and solipsistic the world remade the way
you want it to be remade. Its also very benevolent and selfless you
are going to dedicate your life to changing the world.
6. Where Vision Fits In Vision how the future will change after
you Mission Accomplishment your company is focused on relentlessly
Strategy Your choice between low cost or high
service/customization. Tactics Projects, partnerships, funding
choices. Includes Must-Win Battles. Operations Plan your work and
work your plan
7. Ways To Convey Your Vision Videos (watch all the Sandwich
videos) TV (watch all the Natural Machines news) Books (Brave New
Unwired World, Reconciliation) Models (get a 3D printer, check out
evrTree) Facebook group Kickstarter (includes video plus prizes)
Fashion show Conferences and summits Placement in TV shows, movies,
games
8. Facebook Groups: Unfair Advantage Bitcoin and the Internet
of Money (read and copy the policies, if you wish) 5,428 members
Solar and the Internet of Energy STEAMPuffs ET3 Everblaze 3D
Printing and the Internet of Things and Food
9. Where Good Ideas Come From This is the title of a very good
book, by Steven Johnson, subtitle, A Natural History of Innovation.
Good ideas come from having lots and lots of ideas and keeping
track of them. A great way to get lots of ideas is to make a daily
habit of filling notebooks with mini- analyses every day:
Observation. Diagnosis. Prognosis. Prescription.
10. Sifting Through Ideas If you do the four step mini-analyses
1 to 6x a day of Observation, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and
Prescription habitually, you will come up with thousands of new
ideas. There are three primary ways to try these out and see if
there is merit are: Get together with trusted friends and
discussthen do the same with adversaries. Put the ideas out on
social media in specialty groups. Delete after you test, if you
wish. Publish the ideas and/or speak, and be open.
11. But Its NOT Just About Ideas! The title of this section
used to be Vision, Values, and Leadership. And it still should.
Values make a big difference, and are a great way to both generate
ideas, and to filter them. You can prove this to yourself by
learning about or recalling great business rivalries and
articulating the differences in values, and results.
12. Values Make A Difference - 1 3D food printing has three
leading entrants. XYZ printers, ChefJet from 3D Systems and Foodini
from Natural Machines Spent hours with all three companies and
their marketing managers. XYZ and ChefJet examples were 100% candy,
chocolate, cookies, and wedding cakes. 100%! Natural Machines
examples are 100% about eating free healthy food with fewer
preservatives. A world with XYZ and ChefJet is even more obese. A
world filled with Foodini is more healthy. So I as of today I am
one of the first three investors in NM.
15. Values Make A Difference - 2 Solar photovoltaics is a big
industry and growing 100% a year, with many companies installing PV
and manufacturers copying the same designs. Existing solar is
roof-mounted and ground-mounted. Out of sight, out of mind.
Everblaze is a company that has already created six new innovative
designs that will take solar into new places, including evrTrees,
which will put solar in the middle of cities, where people can see,
touch, recharge, get shade, and converse adjacent to solar, and use
photons. My value of wanting people to SEE solar and interact with
it, led to the creation of the evrTree, through the team. My value
of helping farmers led to the creation of the evrPivot.
16. evrTree dream in progress
17. Values Make A Difference - 3 I have invested thousands of
hours into Facebook. If the hours invested by users into Facebook
were paid at minimum wage, this would come to over
$500,000,000,000. FB is valued at over $200 billion because FB
packages your information and sells you. My values are PRIVACY,
security, and collaboration, and the five freedoms from The Science
of Liberty, which informs the approach of Witkit as the first
encrypted collaboration SaaS platform.
18. Think Resume, Wiki and Bio. Make sure that you have a great
resume, a great Wikipedia entry, and a great bio. Its better to
live your life in such a way that other people write these about
you; if only you know, then you are pushing vs. attracting. Be part
of organizations that are worth talks that TED, TEDx, BIL, and
other groups want. Seek to win awards.
19. Think Crowdsourcing A successful funding, whether from
friends and family, VCs, or crowd-funding, is a right of passage.
Be a credible expert and leader of a community. Create a focused
community on Facebook or other social media. Have good admin
policies. Do a simple Kickstarter for $25,000 to $500,000 to build
your mailing list, name recognition, and reputation for delivering
by succeeding.
20. Go After Meaningful Hard Problems Transition away from
polluting fuels Transition toward clean fuels Reducing violence
Reducing obesity and overweight Increasing peace, love,
relationships Increasing collaboration Increasing safety, security,
privacy
21. My contact information Alex Lightman [email protected]
310-717-7745 Feel free to friend or follow me on Witkit. If youd
like to know more about Witkit, Natural Machines, or Everblaze,
lets talk.