¡Buenas noches!
¿Me hablas español un poquito?
No es suficiente para dar todo.
Así que voy a intentarlo.
Estoy muy contento de estar aquí en Barcelona.
Estaba hablando beforehand.
He estado en la ronda por cuatro semanas.
Ha sido increíble por cuatro semanas.
He estado en Turquía, en Alemania,
en UK, en Madrid,
y ahora en Barcelona.
Barcelona es muy grande.
Es muy grande.
Es muy grande.
Barcelona es,
me parece,
de San Diego, California.
Y por cualquier razón,
esto me parece a la California de Europa
en muchas formas, y me gusta aquí.
También me gustó
cuando estaba aquí.
Con la descubriría de la caganea,
o la cagatío,
hay debate
sobre el que es.
Creo que la caganea es el árbol.
Me gustó con el chico.
Me gusta going to the court
or to checking things out.
En which,
if I invited my friend Bjorn
and I said what is this statue.
But this little kid is taking a sh**,
what's going on?
What's going on.
And he explains to me
his version of it was.
Oh, it's a little boy like Santa Claus
who shits out the gifts.
So then I got a wikipede
and I started reading,
y me empezó a leer y era algo diferente.
Y luego me pregunté a Catalonia y dijo que no,
en realidad es que el pequeño chico va a la natividad
y eso significa un poco de irreverencia.
Y también, si eres muy famoso,
es que trae esa famosa y esa autoridad hacia la tierra.
Y me gustó ese concepto y me dijeron,
¡Oh, Dios mío, que es una metáfora para mi vida!
He estado en Calga, mi vida entera, jodiendo en la autoridad.
Y así, espero que un poco de esto
va a joder en la autoridad de lo que piensamos
sobre los negocios y lo que piensamos sobre los estados.
Y espero que te dieras valor.
Déjame empezar con un par de cosas diferentes
que creo que son importantes para decir primero.
Sí, primero soy de los Estados Unidos.
Me siento por Donald Trump.
No sé qué se está pasando ahí.
Es un poco malo.
Por favor, no me diga.
No es mi culpa.
Así que, sí, eso no es bueno.
Y, número 2, es que no me believe,
no me callo y no me creo que hay,
que hay expertos en startups.
Y la razón por la que digo eso,
y cuando viene a la innovación,
esos tipos de cosas que no son expertos,
es que, inherently, por la naturaleza de un startup,
no puedes ser un experto en eso.
Estás explorando el conocimiento inherently.
Estás inherently no sabiendo lo que la respuesta es.
Por eso, no hay expertos.
He estado aprendiendo sobre esto,
he hecho un tráiler, he hecho un montón de trabajo en este área,
he aprendido por tonos de startups,
he sido un investidor en todos los tipos de cosas.
Pero no soy un experto.
Estos son mis aprendizos.
Espero que hoy haya algo de valor a ti.
Y si hay, lo que es, lo que es,
lo que es, lo que es, lo que es.
Tienes mi permiso.
En realidad, puedes desbloquear todo el hablamento,
aquí, ahora, y obtener mi e-mail,
todo lo que quieres hacer.
Por favor, lo que es, lo que es.
Si no hace sentido a ti, eso es bien.
Si no se siente con ti,
eso no va a ayudar a tu viaje,
y tu viaje de valor de creación, eso es bien.
Como dije, no estoy marido a estos conceptos,
quiero saberlo.
Y así, aprecio tu generosidad,
con tu tiempo de hoy,
a ver conmigo,
aprecio tu atención,
aprecio tu estar aquí,
y estoy muy emocionado en este hablamento.
Entonces, con esos dos caveatos de la otra manera,
oh, sí, y por cierto,
el tercer caveato,
no te atendrás si te agregas tu celular
y estás en Twitter,
estoy en Jeremiah Gardner,
por favor conecta,
te amo conectar con ustedes ahí,
te sacas fotos de cosas,
te sacas una tuita,
hazlo divertido,
hazlo a ti mismo,
te amo,
hazlo en casa,
yo siento en casa en Barcelona,
así que hazlo en casa,
si, como nos vamos.
Entonces,
el permiso de todo esto es que
estamos volviendo de la edad industrial,
¿verdad?
Y hay un montón de hangovers
de la edad industrial
que han llevado sobre en los negocios.
En realidad, un montón de grandes corporaciones,
todas las filosofías,
las formas de manejar,
las formas de lanzar nuevos negocios
son realmente hangovers
de la edad industrial.
El control y el control, ¿verdad?
Están ordenadas y estructuradas,
y son cosas que deberían ser predictables y conocidas.
Pero no estamos más en la edad industrial.
Y eso significa que la manera que nos aproximamos
tiene que cambiar.
Y la manera en que nos aproximamos de nuevos negocios
es comenzar a cambiar.
Y eso tiene un gran impacto.
Y lo que he empezado a observar
es que tengo el placer
y la gran habilidad en este punto
de viajar en el mundo,
es que hay una nueva manera de pensar
que viene de las personas como vosotros.
Por cierto, ¿cuántos de vosotros
son founders de la edad?
Justo de curiosidad,
empezaste a ser increíble.
¿Cuántos de vosotros están pensando en esto?
Y eso es por eso que tal vez viste aquí.
Ok, bien, first time founders.
¡Amazing!
Estoy muy contento de que viste aquí hoy.
Y ¿cuántos de vosotros
dicen que eso es la edad de la edad?
Creo que voy a hacer corporaciones.
¿Alguien?
Ok, bien, ahora estoy bien.
He trabajado con un montón de
entreprenuers de la edad.
Después de la edad.
Sí, sí.
Justo quedarse quieto, ¿verdad?
Exactamente, sí.
Esa fue una buena idea.
Y lo que he visto es que vosotros,
first time entrepreneurs,
personas que empezaron el negocio,
entreprenuers dentro de grandes organizaciones,
es un grupo de personas
que han rejegido
lo que yo llamaría
la economía de creación de la edad.
Y eso es,
estoy solo en ello para hacer dinero.
Y en la economía de creación de la edad,
los que ganaron
eran los que podían producir el más.
Es por eso que tenemos grandes factores
que podían producir,
que podían basically
comer como un gran agregador,
todo el resto de la competición,
porque puedo ganar
porque puedo producir el más
y tener la mejor distribución.
Es un mindset de creación de la edad.
Y grupos de personas
como vosotros
todo alrededor del mundo
han rejegido este mindset.
Y he dicho, no,
yo actualmente creo que es
sobre la creación de valor
para otras personas.
Y que la edad
actualmente sigue, o el dinero sigue el valor,
no es el otro camino.
Y creo que esto es
la economía de creación de valor,
que estamos en el forefondo
de este wave de ingenieros
y ingenieros,
de artistas
y pequeños propietarios,
de artistas
y de todas las personas
que están escribiendo
este primer tipo de wave
de lo que estamos viendo
ser la economía de creación de valor.
Y creo que es un movimiento
muy importante,
y creo que es un movimiento
muy poderoso
cuando hicimos
debajo de la superficie.
Y creo que el mindset,
entonces,
de la control y de la comanda,
y los que pueden producir
lo más,
y así y así,
ha mudado.
No es más sobre
la comanda, control,
predictabilidad
y escala,
pero en vez de esto,
se ha movido
como esta arte
y la ciencia, ¿verdad?
La creación de valor
es la inspiración
que ganamos de uno a otro,
y la empatía que ganamos,
y la rigura que aplicamos
a las ideas que tenemos
y las aprendizas que ganamos.
En el medio de eso,
es donde la magia de valor
ocurra,
en mi vista,
en lo que he estado haciendo.
Y así, en esta noche,
quiero hablar
de tres traes
de ese mindset,
de ese art y de la ciencia,
que he observado
que creo que los creadores de valor
alrededor del mundo
están empezando a embriar,
y creo que si estás en ese viaje,
lo más que puedes ver
estas ideas prácticas
es el más fuerte
que tu potencial
para la creación de valor
se vuelve.
¿Claro?
¿Está bien?
¿Quién lo opone a ese viaje?
Bien.
Entonces, mi opinión
de los creadores de valor
es muy grande.
Y la primera que he visto
es que los creadores de valor
ve el mundo diferente.
Ahora, cuando digo eso,
podrías inmediatamente pensar,
por supuesto,
los creadores de valor
y los artistas
son visionarios,
y puedes decir,
por supuesto,
yo soy un visionario.
Soy aquí hoy para decirte,
no eres.
No hay nada como visionario,
o al menos el método
que construimos
en los visionarios
es que hay una persona
entretenida
en su garage,
en algún lugar,
tirando away
hasta un momento
él se entiende y dice,
¡Yurika, he hecho esto!
Y él viajó al exterior
de ese garage
y dice,
¡Mira lo que tengo!
Y todo el gas
se arruinó a él
y él es un billionaire.
Es el método de creación de valor
que Brent Cooper escribió.
Es también el método de visionario.
En vez de lo que significa
cuando digo que los entretenidos
ve el mundo diferente,
es que ellos vean la oportunidad
en el mundo
y la manera en la que
ellos vean esa oportunidad
es en realidad
a través de los ojos
de alguien más.
Ahora, este es un punto
muy importante,
que cuando los entretenidos
y los creadores de valor
y los entretenidos
vean el mundo,
no vean en su vida
de su perspectiva,
ellos empiezan a verlo
a través de los ojos
de alguien más.
Ellos empiezan a ver
las oportunidades
en los problemas
que otras personas tienen
y empiezan a explorar el mundo,
no de su perspectiva,
sino de alguien
más de su perspectiva.
Otro modo de poner esto es
que los creadores de valor
actualmente son de la empatía.
Ellos empiezan a empezar
con esa empatía.
Una empatía significa
que experienciamos
otra perspectiva.
Me gusta esta foto.
Tengo una hija y una niña.
Ha sido una jornada increíble.
Esté siendo un padre.
He perdido inmensamente
después de todos estos viajes.
Y he estado muy, muy cuidado
con mi lengua
alrededor de tener un bebé
porque no tenía el bebé.
Muy, muy, muy, muy
confundido.
Mi hija tenía el bebé
y yo estaba ahí.
En realidad, no puedo tener
la empatía y la experiencia
y no el hombre puede.
Pero, excepto por Arnold Schwarzenegger
en ese one movie
que fue terrible.
Mr. Dad o algo
en el que él estaba pregno
con Danny DeVito,
creo.
Gross.
We could never actually have
that experience.
We don't know what it's like
to be pregnant.
And women, you don't know
what it's like to be
in the, you know, where.
It hurts, OK?
But the empathetic choice
is to try and put on that weight.
And these three guys are out of
London.
And the first,
they're in Barcelona?
No way, you kidding?
I've heard the story
that it's from London.
No?
They're from Barcelona.
Catalonians or no?
No, not English, but they work
in Barcelona.
That's where my wires get crossed.
English guys living in Barcelona,
right?
Actually had a whole project
to put on the weight
that their wives were gaining
as they were pregnant, right?
It's the empathetic choice.
It's the viewing the world
through another's eyes.
But it's a difficult choice.
And I don't want to say
that it's just simply have empathy.
Because empathy inherently means
I have to become vulnerable.
And that's why so many entrepreneurs
don't do it.
So so many entrepreneurs fall
in love with their idea
without ever learning
that there's a problem in the world,
without ever talking to
another human being
that might experience that problem.
It's because when I say
I want to lead with empathy,
it means that I have to then open
myself up and listen.
Empathy means we connect deeply
with something inside of ourselves
that our customers are experiencing.
It's actually a personal memory
or a personal feeling or emotion
that we have to then dig up
deep within ourselves
in order to experience the world
through somebody else's eyes.
And great value creators
lead with that empathy
because they're choosing to be vulnerable
and experience the world
through someone else's eyes.
Start up death equals
a solution searching for a problem.
And there are too many
pieces of technology in apps.
There are too many solutions in the world
that are not solving someone's problem.
They're just nice pieces of technology.
And if you want to create value
in this world and you want to
actually create value
for another human being,
you have to start
with the foundation of empathy
and you have to start with a choice
which is vulnerable
to experience somebody else's perspective
deeply.
Walt Disney,
one could argue,
is one of the greatest value creators
that we've ever known in the world.
Yes, I grew up in California.
Yes, Disneyland's a huge deal.
And yes, it's way too damn expensive.
But I will continue to pay the money
because I love it.
But there's this great story
about Walt Disney
before he actually launched Disneyland
and built it.
But he noticed that the World Fair,
which was kind of the inspiration
for Disneyland,
there was trash everywhere.
Garbage, litter,
people were throwing on the ground.
This is Walt Disney.
He said,
I don't understand why people just throw
their trash on the ground
in this great location.
And so as he looked around,
it kind of reminds me
if you've ever seen the movie
Charlotte's Web.
There's a character in Charlotte's Web
who read the book
named Templeton, The Rat.
And he has a great song
that he runs around singing
about all the garbage
that's left at the fair.
Well, this is what Walt Disney observes
while he's at the fair.
He's there.
He sees it all.
He looks around.
And now he's Walt Disney.
He can hire a market research firm.
He can tell his underlings to go
and figure out why there's trash everywhere.
He can do a number of things
to figure out how he won't have trash
at Disneyland when it launches.
But Disney makes a decision,
an empathetic one,
a vulnerable one,
to then understand and observe.
And so he goes
to a number of fairs around the world.
And he starts to look at people.
And he realizes people just kind of throw
their trash on the ground.
So then he starts to count the steps.
So he wonders how many steps
someone carries their garbage
before they throw it on the ground.
He starts to look at the steps.
He's watching people walk around.
He's watching what they're doing.
And on average, he notices
that people will take about 15 steps
before they throw their litter
on the ground and walk away.
Now, it's a pretty cool insight.
It sounds like good data that you can take action from.
But well, then could go and say,
okay, we're gonna make sure no one throws trash.
We're gonna have our police at Disneyland
that are obviously under the ground,
watching people.
And when they get to that 15th step,
they watch them really closely.
They feel that trash on the ground,
we get them, right?
But no, he says, I don't get it, why?
So what does he do?
He walks up, he puts on the weight of his customers.
And he orders a hot dog and some popcorn,
eats it and has the trash in his hands,
starts walking around and says,
gets to his 15 steps.
And he goes, ah, there's no trash can.
No wonder they throw it on the ground.
I don't even see a trash can.
I've been walking around for 30 steps.
And so that level of empathy
of something as small as throwing a piece of garbage away
has led to the fact that today,
in any Disney owned property,
you can't walk 15 steps without finding a trash can, right?
And that's why there's no trash on the ground.
Yes, there's people cleaning it up,
but because the empathetic choice that Disney made
to experience his customer's perspective
led to that idea.
There's a million concepts around empathy
and I don't wanna drive the point too far home.
But the point is that great value creators
see the world through their customers' eyes.
They start there, they understand
that that's the foundation.
And if they're ever going to be successful
at the value that they hope to create,
the first point, the starting point,
is to see the world through someone else's eyes.
And it doesn't start with everybody.
Well, it actually starts with one person.
And so I wanna challenge you tonight.
It's not about how do I have empathy for everybody.
It's not how do I gain empathy for the world
or how do I gain empathy for my entire market segment.
My question to you to think deeply about tonight
and then take action on,
is what one person do you need more empathy for?
For those of you that raised your hand
that said I'm thinking about starting a startup,
who do you hypothesize as the customer?
What problem do you think they have
and who do you need to gain more empathy for?
For those of you that are already in business,
how do you look at your email list
that you have and gain empathy?
Who do you need to gain more empathy for?
And that's why I say the most powerful tool
in your toolbox,
when it comes to value creation, is a cup of coffee.
And what I mean by that
is a cup of coffee with a customer.
And if you haven't committed to doing that,
it's really difficult
to understand the problem the customer's having.
And makes it really difficult
to build a solution that will work.
And it makes it really difficult
to understand the market that that solution
will actually grow in.
And so the beginning, the foundation, is that empathy.
And so I want you to think about it right now.
I don't want you to just listen to me
and go oh, that was nice, cool.
I want you to think of who's the one person?
What's their name?
Can you visualize their face?
And then if you have a notebook or a phone
or whatever it would be, write that name down.
Seriously, write it down as the phone rings.
Or no, that's not the phone.
Yes, that's the ghost saying have empathy for me.
Who's that one person?
Maybe you need to think about it a little bit.
Who is it?
And then what are you gonna do about it?
When I meet with entrepreneurs around the world,
the first thing I ask them is to see their calendar.
You want me to be your mentor?
Let me see your calendar.
Is it really?
Yeah.
Because I know if you prioritize empathy.
I know if you prioritize your customers
because it will show up in your calendar.
So if I ask you right now, let me see your calendar.
Do you have two hours a week blocked off
just to be with customers?
Just to listen and to understand.
Just to gain the empathy that you need
in order to be successful at creating value for them.
Adventure to say no.
And that means that there's a tweak in the way
that we have to approach the value that we wanna create.
Now, when we go out and gain empathy,
there's a million ways to do it.
We can observe like Disney did.
Call it a customer safari.
And observe them, our customers in the wild.
We can go to an airport,
this is one of my favorite techniques.
Go to an airport, they're not going anywhere.
Go a little early for your next flight.
Just start talking to people,
strike up conversations, right?
We can do interviews, we can do ride-alongs,
we can host meetups.
This may be one big empathy experiment, right?
For Mike, you better look out.
If he's asking you a bunch of questions afterwards,
that's really what this is about, right?
But what do we do when we get in front of a customer?
Often entrepreneurs go, do you like this?
Isn't it awesome, would you use it?
Yeah, you would?
How much would you pay for it?
30, awesome, I'm gonna go build it, right?
What do I just ask her to do?
To imagine my product,
to imagine a scenario in which she would use it.
Imagine what she would actually pay for it.
She's actually tapping into a piece of her mind
that's the imagination.
But imagine, instead, that we're working on,
let's say, a new travel app.
And I said, when was the last time you traveled?
Have an answer?
Ah, I can not remember right now.
You can't remember, what about you?
When's the last time you traveled?
I went to Alicante on the train.
Okay, on the train, great.
And what about you, Mike?
When's the last time you traveled?
In August, went to France and Tenerife.
Great, did you fly and take the train?
I drove to France and I flew to Tenerife.
Great, and did you run a car or what did you do?
I went to the car in Tenerife and here to drive to France.
You see the difference?
He's not imagining.
He's actually giving me the facts of what happened.
And I'm able to understand his behavior
through those facts.
Granted, they're colored, right?
Who knows what kind of car it was,
we can keep on going deeper into it.
But I'm understanding what really happened
rather than putting hypotheticals
and if questions in front of them.
And it's a fantastic change to the way
that you approach, the way you listen,
rather than speak to your customers.
All of this is wrapped up in empathy.
And the challenge is to start with one.
Who's that one person you need coffee with?
Who's that one person you're gonna buy dinner
to listen to?
And who do you need more empathy for in your life?
That's the foundation of value creation.
The second thing that I've noticed
is that great value creators choose to take action.
Now what I mean by this is that
there's a lot of people in the world
that have a long list of things
that other people need to fix, right?
You know, someone should do something
about those potholes.
Someone should do something about the airport.
Gosh, traffic is so terrible.
Someone should do that.
Man, I wish someone would invent something
that, you know, made my back feel better, right?
We have a long list of things
that other people should fix, not me.
Great value creators look around and go,
man, this problem sucks.
And I see that a bunch of other people have it.
Who's fixing it?
You're gonna fix, no, I got it.
I have no idea what I'm gonna do.
I have no idea how I'm gonna code it, but I got it.
I raise my hand and I choose to take action.
And in that decision, we make a strong decision to act.
And here's the crazy thing.
For most of us, it happens like that.
For those of you that have jumped off
that cliff of entrepreneurship, right?
You can probably trace back
to when you made the decision to become an entrepreneur.
When you made the decision to found your company.
It was a decision like this.
One night you were sitting at home, you said,
you know what, I'm gonna do it.
I'm leaving my job and I'm gonna do it.
And your life has never been the same before.
That sense, right?
It's never been the same sense.
So the decision happens like that.
What takes a long time is all of the excuses
we have about why not to do it.
And all the reasons that we find
that someone else should solve it.
So great value creators make the decision to act
in an instant.
And that decision means that they're embracing
inherently the unknown.
And it's unknown to us
because we're trying to create new value.
We're trying to create something
that hasn't been in the world before.
We're trying to impact someone else's life.
Let me drive the point home a little bit further.
How many of you have ever written a business plan
in this room, anybody?
Wow, lots of business plans.
Congratulations, you're a fiction writer.
Just like myself.
Actually I'll pause there before.
Did any of your business plans become 100% true?
What you wrote, materialized in the world.
Anybody?
Really?
You need to get up and leave,
you have a better future as a fortune teller
or a soothsayer than you do as an entrepreneur.
Every word I've written in the business plan was bullshit.
Why?
Because I can't predict the future.
And as a human being I can't look into my crystal ball
and tell you what's gonna happen.
A few weeks ago I was in London.
Entrepreneurs that have built their business in London
are now reeling from a vote called Brexit.
It's crazy.
They can't predict that.
You can't put that on a business model canvas.
You can't know what's going to happen.
It's unknown.
So therefore the decision to act
is a decision to embrace the unknown.
The way that I like to describe entrepreneurship is this.
Imagine this room completely dark.
I mean like you close the hotel shades dark.
Dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, right?
That's what it's like when you step out
to make that decision as an entrepreneur.
And the whole game, the whole thing,
the whole embracing and decision to act is this,
is lighting the next candle.
You start by lighting one candle
and illuminates your next step
and you take that next step.
Okay, where should I go next?
I'm gonna illuminate this candle and I'll go over here.
Oh shit, there's alligators over here.
Don't wanna go there.
No, no, no, they wanna go this way, okay, boom.
Go this way.
And the whole thing is about learning our way iteratively
through the unknown.
Now some people say, well, I have a vision
to change the world.
The world's gonna be different.
I have to live into my vision.
And part of the problem with that is that a vision
can only kind of point you like a compass.
It can only tell you where north is.
It doesn't tell you about the swamps and the hills
and the mountains and the monsters
that are in front of you.
So the truth is, is that the decision to act,
the decision to embrace the unknown
is a decision to an adventure.
It's a call to adventure.
It's a call to learning.
And great value creators understand that.
These are my friends at the happy start-up school
in Brighton.
I got a chance while I was out on this trip.
Guy in the red's name's Carlos.
And that guy in blue is named Lawrence.
And these guys were very, very successful developers.
They had a development app studio,
building all kinds of cool apps for startups
called Spook Studio.
And as they're building these things
and as they're meeting with all these entrepreneurs
and as they're doing all of this stuff,
they come through empathy,
connection with the customer, understanding them deeply
to understand that all of the questions we ask
about entrepreneurship, like, what's the plan, right?
What's your MMR?
If anyone's in the startup right now,
you know the answer to that question.
What's the market size?
We all say, oh, it's huge.
People that live and breathe, right?
Ask any first-time entrepreneur, who's your market?
They say, what?
Everyone, right?
Anyone that breathes, of course.
Oh, rookie, right?
Well, they start to understand that these questions
that we ask about entrepreneurship
are good questions, but did anyone stop
to ask the entrepreneur, are you happy?
Does what you're doing make you happy?
And so they started asking that question one by one
of these entrepreneurs, and they found out
that it was a metric that the entrepreneur
wasn't even measuring.
That they had left their corporate job
and gone off on this journey,
tried to practice empathy, got down the road,
and were terribly unhappy
because they had been pushed around
in what they were supposed to do.
And so they made the decision to act.
They raised their hand and embraced the unknown.
They left a successful development studio behind.
In fact, Spook Studios just closed a couple weeks ago
and founded the Happy Startup School.
That inherently asked the question, are you happy?
And have been building a community around the world
of entrepreneurs that are asking that question
and supporting one another in the ventures
that they're choosing to create.
And I think it's an amazing kind of case study
and the ability to make the decision to embrace the unknown.
They have no idea how they're going to sustain
and pay the bills.
They have no idea if that community's gonna be large enough
to actually make a dent in the world.
They have no idea whether or not there's a business here,
but they're following the evidence
and they're following the empathy
and they've risen their hands to act
and are learning their way through it.
And I'm happy to report as with them a couple of weeks ago
in Brighton, I love that city.
I was told that people that leave London
go to cities that start with B,
Brighton, Berlin, Bristol, Barcelona.
I was in Brighton, absolutely love it.
And I'm happy to report, they're doing really well.
Community's growing immensely.
They are actually making enough money to sustain.
They've expanded into India
and they're expanding into the US next year.
Amazing, right?
Because they're following that decision to act
and embracing the unknown.
This is what it looks like in the real world.
When you embrace the unknown,
you actually have to operate in the unknown,
which means you gotta go out and try stuff.
It means you've gotta go out and learn.
The key point here is that we prioritize our adventure,
our journey over where we end up.
I love this quote, it says,
what you become is more important than where you end up.
So the journey is the most important piece.
If you're a first-time entrepreneur,
I don't wanna blow smoke up your ass and tell you lies.
The truth is you're likely to fail.
If you're a second-time entrepreneur,
the truth is statistically you're likely to fail.
It's not about following your passion
and build a great team and have a great idea
all of that's bunk.
It's bad self-help entrepreneurship, in my view.
The truth is it's hard work.
It's difficult.
And the chances of real success are slim.
But the entrepreneurs that prioritize the journey
over the destination end up learning their way
into something that creates real value.
It may not be a unicorn, a billion-dollar startup.
It may not be a million-dollar startup.
But if you wanna create value,
when you prioritize that value over money,
then you're willing to go on the journey
and make decisions as you go.
So I think the second thing that great value creators do
is they raise their hand and decide to act.
They make that decision, they step out into the unknown,
and they embrace that journey.
And then the final thing that I've observed
is that great value creators assume they're wrong.
Now, this is a tough one.
For most of us, we fall in love with our idea,
and we start by assuming we're right.
This is where we start to describe our ventures as like,
it's the Uber for toilets, right?
Or it's the Uber for showers,
or it's the Airbnb for cellphones, right?
Because we assume we're right.
Everyone else is right there.
I could build that, I'm right.
I'm good enough.
It's an ego-led thing that we are correct.
And great value creators have learned
that everything they think they know
is likely an assumption.
And if they can't prove that assumption true or false,
then there is no point in pursuing the idea.
So when you start from the perspective that you're wrong,
you begin to prioritize learning over execution.
It's huge.
There's a phrase that's been floating around the startup world
called fail fast.
And I hate this phrase with everything I have,
because entrepreneurs are starting to wear it on their sleeve
as some sort of badge of honor.
And to me, failure isn't the goal,
nor is massive, massive, massive success.
The goal early in any new venture is learning.
And we learn in our failures,
and we learn in our small successes.
Instead, it's about learning fast, prioritizing that learning
above all else, above our egos,
above what we think is going to happen,
above executing a plan,
above what we put on the sticky note
that goes on our business model canvas.
When we prioritize the learning,
we begin to understand the world
from the eyes of the perspective,
and we begin to deal with the evidence
that's on the ground rather than our opinions.
You often, entrepreneurs,
and entrepreneurs and value creators around the world
waste so much time sitting in meetings
arguing over assumptions.
And often, those meetings,
the one thing that makes the decision in that meeting
is what I would call the hippo.
Anyone familiar with this phrase?
The highest paid person's opinion.
Right? Hippo.
Well, he's the co-founder, of course he's right,
and the co-founder goes,
of course I'm right, right?
And what evidence is none,
other than I have a gut feeling.
I always find it hilarious when someone walks up
and says, well, I have an intuition.
And I said, and an ego.
Right?
Because your intuition is an evidence.
Your intuition isn't known.
Your ego is an evidence.
It isn't known.
And if your business decisions
about how you create value in the world
are driven solely by your ego and intuition,
you're going to have a tough road
because the evidence may be flying
in the face of your intuition
and you will ignore it time and time again
because you believe you're right.
So value creators and startup founders
that have been there
start with the assumption that they're wrong.
And they want to prove themselves wrong
as quickly as possible
rather than to go into the world
and prove themselves right.
Food on the table is a startup,
but actually they just got acquired by the Food Network,
which is amazing.
Congratulations, out of Austin, Texas.
The founder Emmanuel is a friend of mine
and he had left the corporation
and wanted to start business
and felt like there was a problem with shopping.
In the US we shop for things,
you know, weeks at times.
Other than I think in Europe
it's kind of a daily practice.
For us it's a weekly, sometimes even bi-weekly
and for those big Costco shoppers
like a monthly thing, right?
And so he felt like, man,
what ends up happening is
we waste a ton of food in the US.
And that's because we buy,
let's say, an onion
and the recipe calls for half an onion.
And we don't know what to do
with the other half of that onion,
so we leave it in the refrigerator,
it wilts, it dies, it stinks,
we scrub it out, we throw it away.
And so the food waste comes
and we can't even start
buying anything
and we can't even decide
how to utilize and shop
for meal planning for the week.
So, you can imagine
the app that they thought
would be successful.
You can imagine all the assumptions
about that being right,
it sounds like a pretty
logical problem to solve to me.
But instead, he assumed
he was wrong.
y él se embedió con un poco de gente responsable de su shopping en su casa.
Y él dijo,
hey, yo solo quiero aprender sobre tus hábitos, sobre lo que haces,
¿puedo ir shoppando conmigo?
Y él seguiría a los supermercados,
y él vería lo que hicieron,
y él estaba tomando notas,
y él iría,
él miraría todo lo que hicieron,
él encontraría recopilaciones,
es un experimento con concierras,
él les llevaría a los folks que se conectaban,
y él diría,
hey, tú podrías probar estas diferentes recopilaciones,
eso es lo que funciona para tus ingredientes,
y, hey,
si pudieras optimizar el modo en el que viste a shoppando,
y lo hicieras de esta manera,
tendrías que conseguir un poco más de ese olivo que viste,
y de ese chico que pusiste en el frío.
Ok,
y entonces ellos irían a shoppando de nuevo,
en la próxima semana,
y ellos podrían optimizar las listas,
y ellos podrían saber qué hacer,
y él ha hecho esto por tres meses,
y luego él preguntó a los folks,
hey, ¿puedo ir a shoppando para ti?
Voy a optimizar todo para ti,
y ver si no puedes usar todos estos ingredientes.
Y lo que él encontró,
la evidencia en el grano,
es que cuando optimizas estos tipos de cosas,
de una profunda perspectiva de la empatía,
reducidas el peso de comida
por más de 80%.
Él dijo, oh my gosh,
bueno,
esto es genial de una perspectiva de concierras,
¿puedo justamente construir esto,
como una startup,
o ¿puedo construir una app?
Por la naturaleza, él es un desarrollador de software.
Dice, no,
yo realmente tengo que ir a shoppando,
que van a ir a shoppando,
para las primeras dos o tres semanas,
con personas para enseñar a ellos sobre este tipo de cosas,
que pueden luego,
tal vez, traducir en una app,
o tal vez, una plataforma o tal.
Pero el siguiente,
la asumción más risquita,
es que puedo construir
personas que van a ir a shoppando,
y empezar a construir eso.
Y como su idea progresa,
y en cada turno,
él ha tried to prove himself wrong.
Yo quiero saber por qué esto no funciona.
Y como progresa,
él lo pide esos candelos
y iluminó el suelo
alrededor de la mesa de comida.
Y hoy,
ellos han sido adquiridos
por una antena de comida,
increíble,
congratulations a él,
basado en la evidencia que él ha producido.
Entonces,
con lo que es la realidad,
y creemos que está malo,
es lo que da fuerte su suelo.
Y parece algo como esto.
Cuando te asume a tu derecho,
intenta ejecutar tu camino
a través de tu plan de trabajo.
Te vas a hacer plan y dex.
Te vas a hacer todos estos
tipos de reuniones,
y reuniones,
y argumentos sobre asuntos.
Y te vas a hacer este plan
que te va a dar de A a B.
Pero cuando te asume que estás mal,
te vas a comenzar
con lo que es la asumción más risquita
que estamos haciendo.
Si no es cierto,
me asume mi negocio completamente.
¿Cuál es eso?
Cuando podemos identificar eso,
podemos triangular nuestro camino
a través de nuestro aprendizaje.
Porque estamos buscando,
más que ejecutar.
Estamos descubriendo,
más que intentando sellar.
Es un shift fundamental
en la forma en que aproximamos
cómo construimos la startup.
Entonces mi desafío a ti es,
¿qué es la asumción más grande que estás haciendo?
¿Qué es la asumción que,
si no es cierto,
te asume?
¿Y qué vas a hacer
para comenzar aprendiendo?
¿Qué es el siguiente
que puedes hacer mañana
para comenzar aprendiendo
en vez de la siguiente semana
o el siguiente año
o cuando tu fundimiento viene en?
Assumir que tu error es poderoso
y que los creadores de gran valor
lo hacen.
Entonces,
los creadores de gran valor
ve el mundo diferente.
Los creadores de gran valor
han decidido tomar acción
y los creadores de gran valor
asumieron que están mal.
Suples a través del board
y las personas maravillosas
que han tenido una oportunidad
de conocer a través del mundo
que están escribiendo
esta nueva forma de creación de valor.
Entonces, quiero cerrar
con una historia muy personal
y introducirles a Petro.
Petro es un 8-bit de gelo.
Y es lo que llamamos
un mvp de una startup
que hemos encontrado.
Y te diré la historia
de arriba a abajo,
te diré donde estamos.
Si puedes solverlo mejor,
haz la idea que es tu.
Primero, tienes que escribir
algo en NDA.
No, estoy justificando.
No hay NDA.
Entonces, yo y un par de amigos
tienen este problema
con powerpoints
y presentaciones.
Y ese problema que tenemos
es que el control de la versión
y la colaboración son un mes.
Powerpoint sucede,
es bueno para el diseño,
pero sucede a todo el otro.
Google Slides es una versión
muy buena para el control de la versión,
muy buena para el control de la versión,
muy terrible para el diseño.
Si solo se mezclas los tres
cosas juntos y,
bueno, en realidad,
leave Powerpoint completamente afuera,
pero se mezclas los otros dos
juntos.
Puedes tener un tool útil,
pero no se integra
a cualquier de los tools existentes
que utilizo,
como Google Drive, Slack, Dropbox,
y así y así.
Entonces, este problema nos ayudó.
Y esto nos costó mucho,
porque las las últimas lecciones
en la última década
que enseñamos
se abrieron a alguien
de la máquina,
o se abrieron a Dropbox,
y nunca lo vi.
Entonces, cuando yo fui a hacer
el próximo empeño,
usé la última década.
Y todo el nuevo se cambió
a esto.
Bueno, ¿dónde está el nuevo?
Bueno, es versión 17.743
con mi última nación.
¿Dónde es eso?
Y empezamos a realmente
perder las lecciones
que ganamos
simplemente based on the storage
and version control of our decks,
driving us nuts.
So,
we went searching
and we said
someone has to have solved this.
Some startup has to have seen
this problem and solved it.
And we tried everything
you could possibly imagine
that was out there.
Prezi,
all the new ones slide.es.
We tried all sorts of plugins
for Drive and for PowerPoint
and for Google Slides.
We tried everything
to try and solve this problem.
We created these processes
internally to try and get it fixed.
And still,
just today I got pinged.
Where's the latest blah, blah, blah?
Ah!
And so we decided,
like entrepreneurs do,
that we would do something about it.
Made the decision to act.
No one else is going to do it.
We want to do it.
Let's go.
But instead of founding a company
and writing a business plan,
what I would consider a bunch of waste,
we said we're not doing anything
until we confirm
that this is actually a problem
with other people
other than ourselves.
So we set a bar.
100 customer interviews
in the next 45 days
before we make a move on anything.
That's what we did.
Each one of us took 33.3.
Actually, that's not necessarily true.
Our CTO took like 20.
You know, getting CTOs out
and talking to human beings
is a difficulty.
The other two of us took a few more.
We went out and started talking to people.
We listened.
One was the last time
you tried to collaborate on decks.
How do you store your presentations?
What's the latest version of your pitch deck?
What's the latest version of your education deck?
What do you do when you try to collaborate
with your colleagues on this?
What happens?
And all we did, very, very simple.
You can replicate this very easily
as we used a Google form
that as we're talking to people,
we filled it out
that aggregated all our results.
We got together at the end of that.
We hit it 100 interviews.
Together at the end of those 45 days,
we just threw it up on the screen,
scrolled through.
What do we see as common threads?
What we saw was, wow,
this problem exists in education.
Educators use PowerPoints and decks
and try to share them with each other.
It's a problem.
This problem exists in government
when they try and go out
and do presentations to each other
and to the communities and so on and so forth.
It exists.
Oh, this problem exists
between marketing and sales teams
and large organizations.
This problem exists in medium-sized startups.
This problem exists with first-time founders.
This problem exists with startups
or with consultants.
Holy crap, there's problems everywhere here.
Little overwhelming.
I've never scratched on a problem
that was that big.
So then I can say, oh, first-time entrepreneur,
who's your market?
Everybody, yeah,
because they all do really,
at some level, have the problem.
But then we had to make a decision.
Well, we knew that large organizations
are hard to sell into
and they spend millions of dollars
on PowerPoint trainings still today.
It's a hard market to tackle
and we knew that their proof of MVP
was going to be pretty darn high.
Has to be a pretty well-baked product
in order to get into a large organization.
And if we went with consultants,
we knew that consultants,
yes, they use decks every day,
but they're not going to fall in love with it.
And we don't have a big network there.
Well, I said, oh, I have a huge network with startups.
So do you, so do you.
Startup founders are pretty okay
with shitty products at first.
So, hey, let's start learning there.
But before we do, we need 50 more interviews.
Off we went interviewing founders.
What we found was most founders
store their decks on Google Drive.
Most founders, as they grow,
the problem starts to get really, really intense.
Early on, it's just on my machine.
Whatever my taxonomy and my naming taxonomy is,
I can live with it.
But as it grows beyond them and their co-founder,
or they hire their first marketing person,
or they have their first intern,
boom, they all of a sudden have the problem.
And so, we took those learnings.
We locked ourselves in a house for three days in Austin,
with rules, by the way.
We can go out once,
and it can't be for dinner.
That was the rule, right?
So we can go for breakfast,
we can go for lunch,
but we don't want to go for dinner
because we knew we'd just go off to the bar
and have drinks and have fun.
And then, all of a sudden,
it would be late and we didn't do the work.
So we locked ourselves in the room for three days.
We had no idea what we were going to come out.
And out came Petro.
Because we asked ourselves the question,
what could we do now to start learning?
What could we build in the next three days
to start learning about the way that decks are stored?
And if there's really a problem here.
So Petro's simple.
It's not a full solution.
It's not a painkiller.
It's simply an experiment to start to learn.
All Petro can do is Petro's a slack bot.
I don't know if you use Slack.
Anyone in the room use Slack?
Yep.
That's what we heard as well in our interviews.
Lots of Slack.
Petro's simply a slack bot.
All you can do with Petro
is tell Petro to track a deck
that you've put on Google Drive.
Can't use it on Dropbox yet.
You can't use it on Box.
Just Drive.
You tell Petro, hey, follow that deck.
And whenever an update's made to that deck,
he tells that channel.
And users can go in and say, hey,
what's the latest version of blah?
Ask Petro, and Petro will go find it for him on Drive.
That's it.
And all we really want to learn
is do people really update their decks on Drive?
Or do they just rename them?
And do they really track them over time
to understand the versions that they have
so that it keeps them organized?
That's all we want to learn.
Took us three days to build.
Right now the bottleneck is Slack has to approve it.
So we've actually outsourced our bug testing
because they're testing it all right now
and letting us know whether or not it's going to be approved.
If we come back and fix a few things, send it back to them.
We don't even have to do any of that.
And it took us three days.
And so the reason that we went this direction
and that we built Petro is that I actually want to prove
to myself why I shouldn't do this.
I have a hell of a lot to lose.
It may mean that I don't get to write my next book.
It may mean that I have to leave the company
that I'm helping build and grow that I love.
It may mean for my co-founder
he built the most successful Nike football app ever.
He may have to leave that behind.
It may mean for my other co-founder
that he has to sell all of his stock
and his other startup because he has a technical non-compete.
It means a lot.
We lose a lot.
If we go, we're going to go for it without any empathy,
without any evidence, without any decision
about what we need to learn and prove ourselves wrong.
So we assume we're wrong.
We assume we're going to fail.
We want to prove to ourselves as quickly as possible
why we shouldn't build this.
And the same is true for you.
You have a lot to lose in building the wrong thing,
not just your time, not just your reputation,
but also your spirit.
That entrepreneurial spirit gets tamped down
and we get beat time and time again.
You have a lot to lose when it comes to your family.
You have a lot to lose when it comes to the value
that you might have created
had you just stopped for a minute to practice these things.
And so who knows?
That's where we are.
Probably going to fail.
We've accepted it completely,
but that's where we're at in the journey.
And we'll figure out what works.
So my challenge to you is this.
I want you to think as big as possible
and think about the biggest value
that you can possibly create in this world.
But I want you to start small.
I want you to start with the next step.
To start with that empathetic choice,
that vulnerable choice to have coffee.
I want you to start with that next thing you need to learn.
I want you to start by assuming that you're wrong
and experimenting to prove yourself right.
That's what drives value creation.
That's what's driving change in the world.
And that's what I think will propel your journey forward.
So if you found value in this,
this is the URL for you to download the talk
to get it yourself.
And I thank you so much for your time.
I'd love to open it up for a few questions,
but thank you for your generosity with your time
and being here tonight.
Thank you.