Brewed From Within

Early Moves

The term early moves is abstract on purpose. It can mean so many different things in entrepreneurship. Early moves are actions that brew progress. Initiative is rewarded with positive energy infused into moments that help us climb the mountain toward momentum.

The term early moves is used throughout this book. To get thinking, sharpen the sword with these tactical examples of early moves that keep leaders building:

listen
be honest
read a book
explore current markets
attend local community events
participate at hackathons
connect others
practice the pitch
discover resources
form the company
organize accounting
compete in pitch events
seek accountability
travel to learn
mentorship
create
do

Early moves are exhilarating, but there’s value in being efficient as you decide if something is going to work. When we say yes to something, we say no to something else. It’s tempting to say, “Let’s gooo,” but this is opportunity cost. Be strategic with early moves. As you build, collect feedback like a scientist. Use feedback as data, because an early and proper no is much better than a long, wrong yes.

To avoid swinging at a bad pitch, take time alone. Along with your experience and honest thoughts, the internet is too powerful not to research online. Don’t hope something doesn’t exist; try to find it. Run some numbers. Talk with people to begin customer discovery. Think about ways to prototype something worth testing. Practice storytelling and see if you can snag a pre-order. Will strangers buy in?

If enthusiasm remains genuine, talk with others who may be interested in collaborating. Think about your own real skills to identify where you’ll need help. Attend related events to further qualify early concepts. Even if you’re not ready to share details, the readiness to show up often links to new allies who can connect dots. Stay organized and see how it feels to create and post content online as you continue working through the early stages of any idea maze.

Before you go much further, take a pit stop with your future self. Is this a quest and environment you want to work in for the foreseeable future? Perhaps this should remain a hobby? For instance, if you like pinball, it doesn’t mean you should start a pinball business. The hardships that come with being a business owner can compress, divert, and decrease passion. At first, the allure of new-made things is fun and exciting, but pressures add up. If the dance remains motivating, positive tension is relieved by executing early moves that help sustain a sensation of growth.

Extra Shot

“Inspiration is perishable—act on it immediately.” –Naval Ravikant

Determining which actions to take when is a juggling act, but as early moves are blended and strategically sequenced, they collide to jolt a business idea forward. 

You Don’t Need This Book: Entrepreneurship in the Connected Era prompts diverse types of early moves that guide an idea toward commercialization. Here’s a reminder of that book’s table of contents for readers to revisit.

You Don't Need This Book: Entrepreneurship In The Connected EraChapter 1 – Ideation
Chapter 2 – Community
Chapter 3 – Team
Chapter 4 – Side Hustles
Chapter 5 – Research
Chapter 6 – Testing
Chapter 7 – Marketing
Chapter 8 – Sales
Chapter 9 – Results
Chapter 10 – Persistence

If this evolving business idea continues to touch your heart after internal and external analysis, you may have something ready to pursue. Yes!

Inspiration is perishable, so when this happens, be ready to take action. It’s not how fast you move; it’s that you find ways to get started and keep moving.

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Things you dedicate time to will grow.

As you make early moves, stay nimble. Agility is one of the best advantages to being small. It often takes many versions to land on something ready for the wild. Remain sustained by timing early moves based on personal bandwidth, the environment, things you do well, and things that make you uncomfortable. Leverage educational support, accelerator programs, and resources. Stay intellectually humble, work with others, and continue executing more early moves.

By Ben McDougal, ago

13.8 Billion

Based on the latest scientific estimate, our universe is 13.8 billion years old.

I don’t know about you, but over the past decade, I’ve been especially fascinated by the cosmos. If you’re over 30 years old, it’s almost like cosmic curiosity didn’t exists when we grew up. Perhaps I was a bit sheltered by a religious upbringing, but in high school, the narrative around space only focused on our own solar system. I don’t even remember talking about our place within the Milky Way galaxy.

This now feels like such a myopic perspective based on what we’ve learned. As scientific understandings expand, I can’t help but to wonder…

✨ How is our evolving understanding of the universe objectively taught to kids?

🏫 What are educational paths to astrophysics?

☯ Can cosmology and religion co-exist?

⚖️ At what point does arguing become a waste of time?

🧬 Can biotech pause, protect, or extend humans for space travel?

⚫️ How long would it take to arrive at the closest black hole? Who’s going in first?

🧠 How might the field of psychology better prepare us for the neon future?

🤖 Does digitized consciousness unlock time travel by leaving the limitations of a human body behind?

🧮 Where does quantum computing fit into the landscape of cosmic exploration?

👽 It seems statistically impossible that extraterrestrial life does not exist.

⏳ If life on earth has only existed ~25% of the total time our universe has existed, that sure leaves a lot of time for distant civilizations to evolve.

🪐 Considering the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, do we know how fast our solar system is moving and in what direction?

⚡️ Unless it’s to find a more sustainable source, it feels careless to fuel energy using resources that won’t last.

🔬 Can nanotechnology alter the input of an energy source at a subatomic level to dramatically transform the output?

🧪 Will material science support deeper exploration?

🌌 Visiting, even colonizing Mars feels like an important exercise, but somehow starts to feel trivial.

🔭 Does seeing deeper fuel urgency?

🚀 Action may require sacrifice, so how can we encourage and celebrate those who lead the way?

These are extraordinary things to think about, but such concentration can quickly feel overly theoretical. In practice, perpetual learning, comfort within complexity, and a willingness to think again feels essential. Through such a curious lens, perhaps the most significant opportunity we have, is to aspire toward an existence which exceeds our imagination.

I talk often about collaboration in business and within entrepreneurial ecosystems, but when we put our delicate existence into perspective, it’s hard to think that anything besides collaboration allows us to survive.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Slow & Fast

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. This sounds like a contranym, but when we slow down, it’s easier to find a rhythm that activates kinematics to add elegant speed.

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Accuracy sparkles within rhythm.

This concept serves founders who are building with a turbulent sense of urgency. For example, startup life in an accelerator is a compressed environment for ideas to flourish. When mentors and investors are dedicated to helping founders succeed, milestones will be achieved, but growing too fast can leave the team feeling hollow.

With decisions at every turn, relationships still take time. Early hires are delicate. Financial modeling is complicated. Sometimes the product isn’t even fully baked. This is when slowness adds a healthy thickness. Patience leads to deeper understanding, which bonds to the urgency. Momentum is not only then accelerated; it’s also geared to scale.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Pain Relievers vs. Vitamins

In agony, we reach for pain relievers made to kill the torment. When everything feels normal, we may pop vitamins to support a healthy lifestyle, but missing a day is not a problem. For every vitamin, the medicine cabinet has just as many intentions collecting dust.

As we study a team/product/service, is true pain for real customers being relieved, or it a nice-to-have idea that may (or may not) provide unquestioned value?

When people like the idea but hesitate to buy, you have a vitamin. If you always have to explain why someone needs it, you have a vitamin. If it’s unclear what you have, you have a vitamin. Pain killers are easy to spot. They sell as fast as supply can keep up with demand.

Ongoing customer discovery keeps a pulse on demand and helps us build with product-market fit. As we ease true pain, stories that sell (marketing) should highlight the results that target customers desire without question. Forget the jargon, impressive features, and pretending to be passionate. Lean into the pain.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Super Sentence

Football is a battle between modern gladiators. Did you know there are only 11 minutes of live action in an average game? Even with such a small window of actual gameplay, think about the endless pregame analysis, commentary, predictions, production, and post-game highlights.

Each week, this machine churns attention, but the Super Bowl takes it to another level. With two weeks leading up to game day and another week for post-game highlights, the Super Bowl lasts three weeks. That’s up to 30,240 minutes of potential attention the National Football League can earn from each consumer. With those 11 minutes of live action representing only 0.04% of this three-week long spectacle, clearly the Super Bowl is about more than the game. It’s also about the host city coming to life, a stadium full of fans, the TV commercials, the halftime show, the food, and everyone sharing the spectacle together.

This is not by accident. The NFL understands their audience. They’ve achieved product-market fit, and since 1920, they’ve built around what they do best. This entertainment behemoth does American football really well, but $15 billion in annual revenue doesn’t come from 150 snaps per game. It comes from being outstanding at one thing, while not getting complacent. This strengthens an existing fan base while allowing experimentation to guide strategic initiatives to further increase the audience.

Extra Shot

If your company was given a free Super Bowl commercial, who would be your target audience? What story would you tell? What action would you want viewers to take, and would you be ready to convert attention into trust when they took that action?

The NFL makes product-market fit look easy, but building something that satisfies true demand is harder than it sounds. Avoid getting sacked by admitting that your idea isn’t special and the future of your business relies on your ability to consistently execute. Trust that early success relies on clarifying your value proposition and evolving your business based on continued customer discovery and your ability to collaborate with those around you. This takes finesse, thick skin and a peculiar combination of urgency mixed with patience. As you secure more paying customers, you may be given a chance to broaden the impact.

Can you describe what you do in one super sentence? Now, what’s another concise sentence to highlight your current quest? Let’s have a sequenced follow up. Finally, articulate how this work feels like play, celebrate members of the team, or highlight other fundamental elements of the business.

When these super sentences come together, you’ll have a playbook to better understand the realities of your work and how to earn first downs in the market. Over time, with an advancing playbook, small wins lead to larger victories on and off the field.

By Ben McDougal, ago