How one mentor was reminded to look at the big picture
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DIVVII Mentor Lonny Grafman shares a recent experience he had with a mentor of his own:
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My team and I at Nexi recently completed the Highway 1 Accelerator program, which provided direct, hands-on mentorship on diverse aspects of growing a hardware startup. As a university design instructor myself, I greatly enjoyed the chance to learn from the other side of the classroom again. From my time in Highway 1’s Fall 2015 cohort, I learned one lesson from a brilliant mentor that particularly stands out.
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Marcus Gosling is the Design Lead at Highway 1. He has a slow, calm and brilliant way about him, which strongly encourages people to listen. His words are often sagacious, and the gems he shares are sometimes missed if people aren’t paying close attention.
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I came to Marcus asking for help refining a survey of our product users that was designed to produce graphs and quantitative results on how much someone liked the device, or how likely they were to suggest it to a friend, or how much they would pay for it. I expected that Marcus’s expertise would help tease out the details like a fine toothed comb. He listened closely and carefully, with a furrowed brow that either said, "I hear you," or, “This is total crap." He responded with the simplest, yet most effective question:
"What are you trying to learn?"
Right then, I knew that we needed to take a step back to look at the bigger picture. Like our device itself, we wanted the survey to transcend the numbers. We wanted to understand what it was like for people to live with the device in their space, to live with it as a personality. Taking a step back, we realized that instead of numbers, we wanted to collect the bad, the good, and even more so, the unexpected. I should have known this, yet I would have missed it without Marcus's mentorship.
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In order to gain the knowledge that we actually wanted, we needed to build rapport with our customers, and most importantly, leave space for them to talk. We needed to ask more open ended, qualitative questions that left room for the user to share their real experiences.
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We took Marcus’s advice, and it worked. We gained insights, inspiration, and information that has directly impacted our new design. Plus, we got incredible salsa, chocolate, and relationships along the way!
Lonny Grafman is the Chief Product Officer at Nexi. He is also an instructor at Humboldt State University and has been featured in publications like Huffington Post.
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More tips from DIVVII mentors
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Michael Ly
Co-Founder & CEO, Reconciled It
Focus all of your early time on income generating activities. Get the word out to as many people as possible about what you are doing, and then deliver on it. Don't waste your time on administrative tasks that can easily be outsourced at fractions of the cost (like admin or accounting work). Focus on your strengths and find others who are strong in areas you are not.
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Morgan Hartley
Co-Founder, Moneythink
At the beginning, there's a tendency to worry about so many different things: branding, team building, making an office, etc. None of that stuff matters. Start with a sales mentality, and two golden metrics: how many people are you actually talking to? How many of them are giving you money/something else you need? Then work on getting those numbers up.
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Julie Markham
Founder,
pingWHEN
My biggest piece of advice is to go out and talk to your customers to learn if your business is actually a good idea, or if everyone is just lying to you when they tell you how great it is. You need to be diligent in building in tests throughout the process to really understand if you are building something that people actually care about and want to be a part of.
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Get to know the DIVVII team!
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Tidus Coleman, CEO
What's something interesting about yourself?
Before I entered the world of entrepreneurship, I was confident that I'd dedicate my life to a career in government (specifically, intelligence and international politics). I was given a once in a lifetime opportunity, during my senior year at Norwich University, to receive specialized intelligence training to become a human intelligence operative for the U.S. Armed Forces. The opportunity would have easily set me up for a career in civilian intelligence (CIA, ODNI, FBI, etc.). However, I gave it all up to chase my entrepreneurial dreams. Instead of living the "Body of Lies" lifestyle, I decided to focus on work that brings happiness to my life. My best decision yet!
What have you learned from DIVVII so far?
I've learned that most people are willing to help you build something that brings value to the world, so don't be afraid to give your dream a shot! I've also learned that everything starts by taking action. There's no such thing as a good idea unless it is developed and utilized. Always follow through!
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Eduard Bulai, CTO
What's something interesting about yourself?
Portrayed as a techie, over the years I actually engaged in lots of other types of endeavors. Writing was one of my very first passions - way before I discovered "the code." Nine years ago I applied for an essay contest for young potential leaders. I must have done something right because I was picked to participate in a training session after which I received a certificate from the British Council to teach people about "Civil Action Courage." In college, instead of going to my CS classes, I wound up becoming a student rights militant, president of a student league, and, just before I dropped out, international relations student liaison for Romania's Ministry of Education. After dropping out of college, I worked for a couple of months at a local newspaper as a reporter. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I was ever meant to be a techie, even though I was always good at it.
What have you learned from DIVVII so far?
The value of helping others. Lots of startups claim to help people and make the world a better place, but when you actually interact with people and tangibly help them out - that's when you actually understand what impact really is.
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Nicholas Clark, CMO
What's something interesting about yourself?
Growing up in a multi-racial family has greatly influenced my worldview. I have black or biracial siblings, cousins, and grandparents, and we support and love each other as one family. Despite this, I learned that the people closest to me might be treated differently simply because of their skin color, and my parents actually lost friends because of who they adopted. Yet my family also modeled for me an incredible resilience, and my parents even introduced me to powerful role models like Harriet Tubman. These experiences shaped my desire to appreciate and celebrate the things that make us all different, while at the same time emphasizing and promoting the things that make us all the same.
What have you learned from DIVVII so far?
Through the experience of managing the MVP process for DIVVII, I've learned that communicating with a business shouldn't feel like communicating with a business; a small, personal touch goes a long way. In addition, I've learned to question every assumption - maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, but either way it should be tested and measured before it can be relied on. Perhaps most importantly, I've learned how truly good it feels to help people connect and grow together!
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