The phrase ‘minimum viable product’ has become part of the start-up lexicon. It’s a useful term for that significant milestone in the start-up life cycle—when an entrepreneur has built a stripped-down most basic version of his or her product so he can begin to get customers and feedback.

Borrowing from this phrase, I’ve found myself highlighting a different inflection point in the start-up lifecycle: when it has a ‘minimum viable team.’ This is the group of initial employees that enable the CEO to focus exclusively on performing the duties that CEOs are supposed to do.

At each stage of start-up development, additional employees increasingly specialize in their roles. In the extreme, when founders first setup shop they do everything. Founder-CEOs initially act as CEO, CTO, head of HR, head of sales, administrative assistant, junior operations managers, and mail boy. As the company grows, those functions are divested to members of the team who specialize in those respective areas.

Eventually founder-CEOs find themselves entering a state of operational nirvana in which they transcend into handling only the core responsibilities of the CEO. In my view, this is a very short list limited to: strategic alignment, company culture, talent recruitment and optimization, and broadly being the firm’s face for marketing and fundraising.This nirvana is likely to be interrupted. When a team changes, the CEO may temporarily pick up slack. The inherent volatility of running a new company will also inevitably bring unexpected challenges that sit on the rocky banks of the CEO’s river of duties.

For some CEOs, there isn’t a team large enough to liberate him or her from non-core tasks. A CEO also needs to be capable of appropriately delegating, and giving over certain responsibilities, so that the minimum viable team can free up the CEO.

Whether or not the minimum viable team phrase makes it into the mainstream start-up terminology, the concept should, as CEOs should be working toward developing an environment in which they can focus 100 percent on properly doing their job…and only their job.

This post originally ran on Inc.

I came across this TED talk over the weekend.  The speaker argues that the greatest driver of social issues in developed countries is economic disparity within the country, not the actual growth rate of the economy.  In other words, he argues that once you're wealthy enough growth is less important than relative equality.

Kind of a big concept.

From the read of it - there is some controversy around his work, but should make for some interesting discussion/ food for thought.  

Worth a watch.

 

You probably don't know nearly as much as you think you do. I certainly don't. In the spectrum of knowledge even the most insightful human only sees a sliver of light.

Here's the beginning of a long list of what you—and all entrepreneurs—don't know:

• What people are feeling in other parts of the world 
• What folks are concerned about elsewhere in your city 
• What is happening outside of your front door 
• What the whole story is behind anything you are told
• What's happening right behind you 
• What your body is doing right now 
• Why you have your worldview 

The list goes on and on. We really don't know much. To say we know even 1 percent of what's happening would be a gargantuan overstatement.

So how are we able to make decisions?

In our heart-of-hearts we all believe that we make decisions about our personal lives and work based upon the facts—our understanding of the context of the choice. But if you think about it, we typically make decisions based upon only a sliver of what we actually need to know.

"It's a good idea to buy this house because it suits my needs and the value is lower than it was last year."

Well, what happens when you discover your wife is pregnant with twins, the local mayor is thinking about proposing a tax hike next week, your boss is thinking about relocating you to another country, or a flood is on its way?

"I should target kids as customers because they're in need of my product."

Well, what happens when you discover that one of your suppliers put lead in the plastic, grandmas love your product even more than kids, or a competitor you've never heard of is on the verge of launching a slightly better, faster, cheaper version of what you built (and oh yeah…she patented it)?

When you start to think about what you don't know it might seem a bit paralyzing. If you don't know nearly enough to make a decision, how can you continue to run your business?

The answer: You can continue to operate. You can continue to move quickly. But, you have to do so knowing your primary limitation: You're ignorant. You don't know much of anything.

So what does knowing that you don't know much tell you? A few things:

1. You need to listen…a lot. 
2. You're going to get it wrong. 
3. You should be ready to change directions when you do get it wrong. 
4. You need to be ready to forgive yourself for screwing up.

From a business perspective, there's only one comforting thing in all of this: Nobody else knows anything either.

This was first published on Inc.com.

For those who missed it - yesterday I did a 1-hour live Q&A on Inc.com. There were some great questions from the viewers.

You can watch the Q&A here:

Watch live video from Inc. Magazine on Justin.tv

I'm breaking from my normal flow of startup banter this week to hit a political topic (or two) that I think every smart web-o-nerd needs to be thinking about.

Today's topic surrounds our country's #1 political issue (in my opinion) - what I understand to be the root cause of many other issues.  Campaign finance & lobbying.  If special interests can influence the government aggressively, does the Congress truly represent the people?

This topic is starting to get some air time.  Two videos you should watch (if you haven't already).  The first is an hour - but you should make time for these - it's important.

 

<First>  
Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It

 

<Second> 
Oddly CBS doesn't allow their content to be embedded across the web - which is a shame because 60 Minutes produces some of the most important content in our country.  Here's a great interview with Jack Ambramoff, ex-Lobbyist, that everyone should watch.  Rather confirmatory of what's discussed in the video above.

CLICK HERE

High Peaks CEOs & Ambassadors converged on Cooley Wednesday night to attend a rockstar course on Media Training. The course was part of a series High Peaks casually calls High Peaks University where we have industry leaders in a swath of different topics give quick and actionable advice on things that every founder deals with. We’re covering everything from media training to recruiting.

The training was provided by a top-notch firm, Clarity Media Group, that has served Facebook, Quora and other big names.

As a CEO, I found it personally really valuable. While the content wasn’t rocket science – having a pro explain how to navigate the system validates your intuition and fills in knowledge gaps enabling you to feel more confident.

Brad Svrluga wrote up a great post on the key lessons – which you can check out here.

While the courses aren’t open to the public, the High Peaks Ambassadors are encouraged to each invite one other founder to the events. So, if you want to attend one of these – ping one of our Ambassadors – and get on their invite list for future events.

I’m not much for the East Coast vs. West Coast VC debate. That hype got old after Biggie and Tu Pac left the scene. Frankly, I hope every region becomes more entrepreneurial – it’s not about competition, it’s about collaboration, improvement and change.  

Mankind depends on all of us innovating everywhere.

With that in mind, I did want to point out that as with any pockets of human population cultures evolve differently. I recently spent some time out West and noticed was that the dress codes vary by region.

Despite being relegated to the shadows of Wall Street’s ivory towers which are stuffed with suits knit of the world’s finest fabrics, the entrepreneurial ecosystem in NYC has a very urban style about it. VCs commonly rock jeans and sneakers that match their t-shirts. Maybe that’s a bit of irony or maybe our culture in NYC grew up counter to that of the bankers across the hall.

As a native Californian I always viewed the East Coast to be the stuffy side of the country. As a result, after having been focused on the NY venture ecosystem, I was surprised to see that the West Coast VCs often don uniforms appropriate for country clubs. Khakis are standard complements to polo and button down shirts.

I don’t have a problem with it, but it does seem a bit backward to me – what happened to casual Cali?

While every investor operates differently, there are generally norms. When it comes to conducting technical due diligence most VCs don’t do heavy due diligence unless the company is building a truly new type of technology.

If you’re building a new ecommerce site, applying existing technology investors will gamble on the tech either working now or being in a state that can be fixed.

If the company, however, is developing new & complex technology VCs will rely on in-house or outsourced technical resources to conduct diligence. If they have an engineer on the team he/she might dive into the code and grill the CTO for a few hours. If they don’t they might hire an ex-CTO in the space to do the same. In extreme cases the technical due diligence teams will do a full code review, but in my experience that's not common.

Either way technical due diligence is ultimately a sanity check on the approach, processes, and resources being deployed to develop the code.  Usually tech diligence isn’t going to be a deal killer, but thorough VCs pay careful attention to it and you should be ready to help accommodate the process when asked.

Last night the Columbia Venture Community announced the CVC30.

The CVC30 is a list of some of the most interesting people in startrup ecosystem out of Columbia University.  This list represents the achievements of a lot of hard working folks - many of whom are contributing to the NY startup ecosystem in a meaningful way.  

The list was originally posted on the CVC Blog but I'm re-posting it here for everyone to see.

Congrats to everyone. 

*****
We’re excited to announce the first annual CVC30, a list of Columbians who have accomplished the most interesting things in the technology, entrepreneurship, and venture industries.

From not-yet-graduated wunderkids to venerated experts, the 2011 CVC30 is made up of alumni, faculty, staff, and students who represent a host of diverse backgrounds and experiences, much like CVC itself. 

It goes without saying that there are many, many more people that deserve to be applauded for their accomplishments this year. We hope this list will serve as a reminder that with every round of funding raised, site launched, and graduate who dares to take a non-traditional career path, Columbia and New York City are only growing in their relevance to the startup world .

Without further ado, the CVC30:

• Mike Brown Partner, AOL Ventures
• Bill Campbell Chairman, Intuit
• Mark Davis CEO, Kohort | Venture Partner, HPVP
• Chris Dixon Founder, Hunch
• Michael Dwork Founder, Verterra
• Roger Ehrenberg Founder, IA Ventures
• Marc Glosserman Founder, Hill Country Barbecue
• Seth Goldstein Founder, Turntable.fm
• Ron Gonen Founder, Recyclebank
• Jared Hecht Founder, Group.me
• Daniel Hoffer President/CEO, CouchSurfing International
• Ben Horowitz Founder, Andreesen Horowitz
• Doug Imbruce Founder, Qwiki
• Deborah Jackson CEO, JumpThru
• Philip James Founder, Lot18 & Snooth
• San Kim Founder, ShowMe
• Graham Lawlor Founder, UltraLight Startups
• Dave Lerner Venture Studio + Venture Lab @ Columbia
• Cyrus Massoumi Founder, CEO, ZocDoc
• Chris McGarry Major Gift Officer, SEAS
• Jen Schnidman Medbery CEO/Founder, Drop the Chalk
• Alan Patricoff Founder, Greycroft
• Alessandro & Alexandra Piol Co-founders, Vedanta Capital
• Adam Pritzker Founder, General Assembly
• David Rose Chairman, NY Angels
• Bartek Ringwelski CEO, SkillSlate
• Zach Sims & Ryan Bubinski Co-founders, Codecademy
• Jon Stein CEO, Betterment
• Jon Steinberg President, BuzzFeed
• David Whittemore Founder, ClothesHorse
• Chris Wiggins Founder, HackNY

 

If you're active in the New York community, you probably know David Whittemore.  Dave has been around these parts for awhile now as a member of a few startups (Monior110, OnDeck Capital) and now as a Founder of Clothse Horse (a DreamIT company).  

While David has been in our ecosystem for awhile, that's not why I'm writing this post about him.  I'm writing this post because of his immense contribution to the Columbia Venture Community (CVC).

For those who aren't familar with CVC, it's a community of 2,000 student, alumni and employees from Columbia centered around all things entrepreneurship.  The mission of the group is to strengthen Columbia's startup resources to help support the New York ecosystem.  If we make our universities stronger, our community can thrive.

I founded the group in 2007 and built what I would characterize as a "strong club."  David took the Presidency from me in 2009 and over the past two years has turned the "club" into an "institution" that I believe will last for generations.

Under David's leadership 20 of NY's best and brightest entrepreneurs and VCs lined up to form CVC's board, the membership doubled in size and great events with speakers like Mark Suster and Eric Reis were made available to everyone in New York City.

We all know that in the world of communities & Rock N' Roll front men get all of the credit.  It's worth noting that the team David led was exceptional.  The 20-person 2011 board of CVC deserves recognition in their own right - so here's a roll call.

• Alex Horn
• Alex Poon
• Alexander Sherman
• Alison Lindland
• Andrew Hitti
• Anna Lindow
• Bartek Ringwelski
• David Lerner
• Evan Sanchez
• Jeff Novich
• Joseph Rizk
• Mike Brown
• Mike Degnan
• Mike Katz
• San Kim
• Sasha Katsnelson
• Schuyler Brown
• Uri Weg
• Zach Sims

David is moving on to be the President of the New York Venture Community - a larger organization that services all of the New York region directly.  I'm exciting to see what he builds for us in his new role.  He has left behind some big shoes for his successor, Evan Sanchez, but I'm optimistic that Evan will crush it.

On behalf of thousands of people in NY, this is my public Thank You to Mr. Whittemore for making NY a better place to be an entrepreneur.