I started exploring a career centered around building early-stage companies six years ago. Since then, I've made it a point to track every piece of content that has helped me along the way. I find it extremely useful to have these links readily available to provide a 3rd party perspective during strategy meetings with founders. 

Feel free to access the document HERE and make it your own. 

Whether you have 10,000 people reporting to you, or just one, I promise you'll take away something useful from The Great CEO Within. The author, Matt Mochary, coaches startup CEOs from the likes of Coinbase, Plaid, Reddit, Grammarly, Postmates, and more. The book includes the five primary sections shown below, and Matt gets straight to the good stuff in each.

Individual Habits 

Group Habits 

Infrastructure 

Collaboration 

Processes

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Chapter seven is half a page and starts with the title "when you say it twice write it down." POW, you immediately get distracted while thinking about how many times you say things over and over each day. Solution? Tell someone to document it internally where all employees can easily access it, or take down the obligatory "teamwork" poster and plaster it on the wall. A scenario, the needed management framework, and how best to implement it. That structure is what you're going to get in every chapter.

Matt also folds in wisdom from his mentees and other leading professionals. You'll learn about how to implement RAPID decision-making from Bain & Company, and David Allen's Getting Things Done framework. Make sure to have something to take notes with because if you read this book right, it should look like a mess of tabs and margin notes when finished.

The Agile Manifesto was created in 2001 by 17 software developers at a ski lodge in Utah. It sounds like the customary vacation that somehow turned into a work trip. But thank goodness it did because Agile provides the framework for teams to efficiently bring software products to market. It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continual improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. Building software products is inherently unpredictable, and the Agile methodology is meant to help teams avoid costly blunders as a result. 

But what if you actually have to make a product with machines, materials, and those things called your hands? Some of you may have forgotten that was possible, just like those random kids from Back to the Future II. My guess is both those kids majored in mechanical engineering in college after their stint in Hollywood. I dare you to google it!  

In 2015, Elaine Chen, founder of ConceptSpring and Senior Lecturer at the MIT School of Management, published a book on how to bring a hardware product to market. Elaine highlights why the hardware development process is so different than software, and the common pitfalls to avoid. The representation of her staged, product and manufacturing development approach, is shown below.  

If we compare the two images above, it’s clear how different the Agile methodology and Elaine’s hardware development model are. The Agile framework allows for a constant build, test, adjust mindset, wherein Elaine’s model, there is a clear divide between when to focus on product development and when to start working towards manufacturing. So what are some of the more specific differences?  

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MVPs/Prototypes

Software

Teams can build wireframes and MVPs for curated audiences within an initial target market in days. Useful feedback about key features and customer experience is more valuable than the risk of early users uncovering issues with the product. If adjustments need to be made to the product, changes can be pushed to current users regardless of location.

Hardware

To acquire the same amount of user feedback, teams need enough materials and manufacturing capabilities to create multiple ‘duct tape’ prototypes for a customer trial. Feedback needs to be gathered in person and cannot be sourced through online testing platforms. This typically takes months instead of days or weeks.  

Skills

Software

If the core technology is accepted practice, highly skilled developers can be sourced from individuals or development firms to design and build the product. A development firm will usually have every skill set needed to support the entrepreneur from MVP to launch.

Hardware

A hardware team could potentially need a whole host of partners and talent. These could range from research organizations, supply chain, manufacturing, warehouse space, shipping, inspection, on-site customer service, and the list goes on. Each one of these comes with their own set of risks to navigate.

Costs 

Software

The significant costs associated with software development are the hours needed to code and design the product. The more complex the software is, the more time it takes for the developer to complete the project, and the price goes up. This technical labor can be utilized to build everything from an MVP to a full-scale product launch.

Hardware

Depending on the needs of the product, fixed and variable costs required to reach a mass production level similar to software are endless. At the most basic level, the materials to build each product could be cost-prohibitive for an entrepreneur looking to bootstrap early on. Specialized tooling and manufacturing partnerships are needed for an initial beta run and based on location, there may not be any options available close by.

Building something into physical existence is remarkably hard. Heck, why do you think it feels so good to fix that old lawnmower or make a coffee table? Of course, you could argue the same feeling of accomplishment is obtainable through building a software product. But I’ll contest there is just something different about willing a physical product to life. You might not be able to put your finger on it, but that’s the way it is. So the next time you crack a beer to celebrate the installation of that new door handle, make sure to ask yourself what’s next.

I appreciate you being here! There are a ton of other ways you could have chosen to peruse the web, so I'm genuinely humbled.

Why am I doing this? Great question. As my career shifted from spreadsheets and windowless rooms to startups and venture capital, I began to see how important the art of storytelling was. However, writing outside of school or work always felt foreign to me. I spent a lot of time reading the opinions of others, and it's easy to think, welp, everyone else has it covered. Why would my perspective be useful, so what's the point, right? I've spent almost five years focused on other projects to avoid this one, and here I am.

This blog is called Wise by Chance, which originates from the quote "No man was ever wise by chance" from Seneca, a well known stoic philosopher. In a letter written by Seneca, he goes on to explain that "to be wise; you've got to go after it with all your heart. It's always earned through failure, experience, connections and collections of knowledge, and more failure." I can't think of a better way to describe an entrepreneur and how I strive to live my own life on a personal and professional level.

Stoicism comprises a multitude of life lessons and teachings to help humans be better humans. It's a mindset I try to implement throughout every portion of each day I live, and I consistently fail at doing so. Understanding this is a vital part of improving and hopefully puts me on a true path to achieving some level of wisdom.

I look forward to stumbling down that path with all of you.