The Founder Comes First
The fundamental atomic structure of an innovation is comprised of at least two molecules: the idea and the founder. While these two are inseparably linked, the natural tendency is to overly-fixate upon the idea side of the compound. Indeed, as Pixar's founder Ed Catmull says in Creativity, Inc, "Too many of us think of ideas as being singular, as if they float in the ether, fully formed and independent of the people who wrestle with them... To me, the answer should be obvious: Ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas."
Many students who apply to the LaunchPad Accelerator at Stanford are surprised to discover that we aren't primarily interested in their ideas. It's something we have to repeat again and again, especially to business plan oriented, "Total Addressable Market" obsessed, business school students (nothing but love for ya).
Instead of focusing on the founders' ideas, as the shepherds of the program, Perry and I are much more focused on the founders' behavior. Specifically, in our context, the operative question is, what do they do in the face of the unknown? Are they willing to act in order to resolve unknowns, or do they default to planning?
I believe that the majority of our success isn't attributable to the things we teach in the program -- helpful as I hope and truly believe our curriculum is -- so much as who we let into the program.
As Catmull says, "If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. The take away here is worth repeating: getting the right team is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right."
We have seen this play out countless times: when we admit teams based on ideas, the founders almost always disappoint; when we admit teams based on founder behavior, the teams do amazing things, often with entirely different ideas than the ones that "got them into the class." Because as you now know, it wasn't their idea that got them into the class in the first place...
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