- The number one thing is that
for something to work everywhere,
it has to work somewhere first.
And so, getting it to a place where
the thing works, maybe there's
data and evidence behind it
working in one place
or even for one person,
that nucleus can be expanded upon.
But without that nucleus,
you don't have something
you can really grow and that will really,
I think, get to scale.
So that's number one.
I think number two is being
deeply thoughtful about the money.
Does the money come to
you because you're selling
this product or service
to the person you want it to serve?
Does it come from another pair,
like the government
like a philanthropist?
You've really got to be
thoughtful about that money
and then figure out
repeatably, how do you get it?
And that's really your business model.
And then I think the last thing is
you've got to ensure that
your business is not you.
That your business is
a system, a structure,
a machine, that can produce your results
without depending on
you, the entrepreneur.
So you have to decouple, in a way,
the process, the knowledge, the expertise
that you possess from you and equip
your business to replicate that expertise
and that I think is a very difficult thing
for a lot of founders.
But, so, those are some of the things
that we've learned
from, from our ventures,
in going to scale.
The people who had the greatest impact
are often people who gave power away.
They distributed power.
They wanted other people to be powerful,
to be capable, to be resourced.
So, that is actually the foundation
of our model at Unreasonable Institute.
We realize we know so
little when it comes to
some of the problems
that we want to take on.
We realize we know so
little about the locations
in which a lot of these problems exist,
but if we were gonna go and do
something about those issues,
we would be very ill-equipped
to actually have an impact.
But if instead, we can empower someone
who knew about that problem,
who knew about that location,
they would have so much more
of an impact than we would.
And so, we find those people and we try
to give them the resources, the systems,
the methodology that we have
at least found effective,
so that they can reproduce our program
and then contextualize
it in their own context.
And that model, has been
central to our ability to scale.
There are some industries that seem like
they're blossoming and ballooning
and are kind of hitting
critical junctures.
Education is one where you're
seeing an explosion of ideas.
Clayton Christensen, the author
of The Innovator's Dilemma,
called education the
most disruptable industry
in the world right now and it's because
the way we are educating people
is so different than perhaps the way
that we now can educate people
given what we have access to.
A great example is, the word
lecture comes from French.
Lecture, which means to read.
And the reason that we had lecture is
back in the day when
universities first existed
is that not everyone knew how to read.
Someone would come to
the front of the room
and would read a book out loud to people
and that's how they would learn.
But obviously in a day when
most people are literate
and most people have the internet,
that kind of system doesn't
seem relevant as much anymore.
And so there's huge opportunity there.
I think there's a massive
opportunity in energy.
So many people need energy
and we now have technologies
to source that energy
from the sun, from water,
from the wind and convert
it into electricity.
So that means that you don't need
a central coal plant necessarily.
You could have a distributed
sourcing of power,
and that means that there's a lot
of opportunity for
innovation there as well.
And there's a whole host of other things,
but, you know, those are a few examples.
Investors are people, too,
and if they're gonna bet, for example,
their daughter's college education
on your business, they want to
know that they can trust you.
They want to know that you're a person
of character and integrity
because they are trusting you
with their money and their future.
And that means that
you've gotta be someone
who will share bad news with them.
You've gotta be someone who is willing
to share every part of your business,
the soft underbelly, the vulnerable side,
the weaknesses with your business.
The building that trust with an investor
is the number one thing that matters
in building a relationship
and that is something
that happens over time.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs wonder,
"Why can't I get money faster?"
It's because the pace
that you're really on
is the pace of trust.
It's not the pace of making a decision
about how great the business is.
That's obviously very, very important,
but this person needs to trust you.
And your trust is
affected by whether or not
you do what you say you're gonna do,
how honest you are about the
shortcomings of your business,
your performance, your
growth, your delivery.
Your ability to pull in other
people to solve this problem
and your credibility
in tackling the problem
that you're tackling.
Do you actually know
this problem in and out?
So that trust is really important
in building relationships with investors.
