Interviews - Startup Educators

- What, why, and how and do you teach entrepreneurship?

- What's the biggest problem you're focused on solving with your teaching endeavors?
- When was the last time you encountered that problem?
- Why was it a problem?
- When was the last time you tried to fix the problem?
- What isn't optimal about the solution?

- Repeat script at least one more time.

Let's say the deadline is Jan. 7th. if you can't make it by then, no worries, we'll have more interviews to do. Thanks for letting us know.

====================================================

http://goo.gl/FAhF0y
(including Lone, Zac, Tristan Kromer and Ash Mauyra)

====================================================

Interviewee = David Walling
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6064176
Interviewer = Alline Oliveira

Strategic Advisor

Women's Startup Lab

October 2013 – Present (1 year 3 months)Menlo Park, CA

My responsibilities include strategic partnerships, sales consulting, advising and business strategy.

Women's Startup Lab looks to significantly grow the number of successful women entrepreneurs. They are already having an impact! Successful alumni and much needed attention with thoughtful discussion on ways to make improvements for all.

Justin Wilcox:

David sounds like he's got an awesome approach on integrating emotions into selling. I'm really curious to learn more. Thanks for looping him in! Really hope we can help him solve a problem so that we can bring him into the fold.

Speaking of which, after listening to the interview if you were to ask me what his biggest challenges are, what challenges he's actively trying to solve, I don't think I'll have a good answer.

I heard a lot about his teaching approach, but I don't know much about his problems.

The closest we get is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS16lm1OjOA#t=20

"The problem that I've found is that often the founder of the company wants to bring in a salesperson to do the selling job, without understanding that for many many years, the founder is really the lead salesperson."

He's opened the door to talk about his problem, which is awesome. Unfortunately, the next question asked of him gives him a blank check to "expand on this", which he uses to tell us more about his teaching approach, not his challenges.

An effective follow-on question might have been:

"How does founders not understanding that they're the salespeople for many many years, manifest itself as a challenge for you?"

We want to leave the interview with a list of problems our interviewees are actively trying to solve - the set of problems they're early adopters for. Please correct me if I missed something in the interviews, but it doesn't feel like we have that list for David.

Some of the questions I've been using to elicit that list are:

- "What are the challenges you'll be focused on solving in the new year?"

- "What are the biggest business hurdles you're up against right now?"

Let me know what you think. Perhaps we can help develop a better script based on this interview.

====================================================

Interviewee = Alline Oliveira
Interviewer = Self

Founder and Instructor of JumpSchool.co

- What, why, and how and do you teach entrepreneurship?

I teach/share knowledge about Lean Startup, because I extremely empathize with this business methodology. I teach it throw workshops, presentations and this year (2014) I founded a pre-accelerator online school to teach and practice lean startup.

- What's the biggest problem you're focused on solving with your teaching endeavors?

How to stop avoiding so much waste of time, money and energy while running a tech business.

- When was the last time you encountered that problem?

I see founders going through this waste path every single day.

- Why was it a problem?

Because waste is almost always a problem in my opinion.

- When was the last time you tried to fix the problem?

I try to fix this problem everyday. For myself and for my students.

- What isn't optimal about the solution?

There is no consensus yet about how to avoid waste while running a business, or there isn't a global standard about it yet.

- Repeat script at least one more time.

Can't think of a second problem right now.


Justin Wilcox:
I really like that Alline tried to interview herself. Actually Benson and I were chatting about how someone needed to document each of our problems.

In fact, when I ran the last round of customer acquisition teams (lean startup peer groups) everyone's first assignment was to interview each member of the group for 30 minutes about their startup challenges.

With that in mind, I'll propose:

• Before we're done with our interviews, each of us needs to have a been interviewed
• If you don't have 3 entrepreneurial educators to interview, look inside the group
• Try not to interview someone you already know well w/n the group. Use it as an opportunity to meet a stranger here.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.