Attending The Lean LaunchPad Training
Attending The Lean LaunchPad Training
I’ve been into Tech Startups and then Venture Capital since 2005. I invested in 23 companies so far as part of the firms I worked for, they were between seed and early growth (Series A). I mentored many more and I screened hundreds of other startups and met with their founders. I’ve seen some make it to the next phase and raise more funds and some fail.
As an entrepreneur myself, I officially started two companies (e-Traindex and VenturePicks), both didn’t succeed, with the longest to last made it for a full year. I also had full plans for 5 more startups for which I recruited different co-founders and almost started, but there was always something wrong few weeks down the road! (BlogSouq, Crowdever, MailTxtr, BlinkReads). I even wanted to raise a fund and start my own VC Firm (Sinbad Ventures), but that didn’t work either.
Like anyone who is into startups, I always wanted to know what’s the secret recipe for startup success. Steve Blank, Eric Ries, and Alexander Osterwalder provided the answer few years ago. I loved their books and I watched almost all Steve’s videos on Udacity of “The Lean LaunchPad”. I also tried to apply what I learned from these books and videos on some of the ideas above, but for some reason I didn’t follow through.
Few weeks ago, I received an email about conducting the official Lean LaunchPad Course in Dubai for the first time. I said to myself, first, as a VC I must learn this to be able to help and add true value to the startups I invest in, and second, as an entrepreneur, I really wanted to learn this to satisfy my passion to disrupt the VC industry by an innovative startup (this is what VenturePicks was actually all about and this is why I called myself a VCpreneur. Here is the full story of VenturePicks).
To attend the course, I formed a new team, and filled the application form online for another idea I have (Valatics, a new VC-disrupting idea), and we were luckily short-listed. The next step was an interview with the local trainer (Hisham Al Gurg, an amazing Emirati entrepreneur who attended the course in the states) and we were accepted!
Now, as I am going through the experience first hand, I feel like I knew nothing! It’s so different when you actually do it yourself with a specific idea as opposed to just watching the videos or reading the books to explore! I am watching the videos and feeling that I am hearing this for the first time. It amazingly helps organize the thoughts and validate the assumptions. In addition, I find the software LaunchPad Central very helpful and forces me to work systematically.
Regardless of the outcome (hopefully a $1b startup), I’m in it for the adventure and the learning.
