Unmasking Entrepreneurs
I recently spoke to Jonathan Littman and Susanna Camp, authors of The Entrepreneur’s Faces: How Makers, Visionaries and Outsiders Succeed. Jonathan collaborated with IDEO on the bestsellers The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation and his written ten books, five of which have been optioned for films. His award-winning journalism has appeared in Playboy, the Los Angeles Times and Forbes. Susanna is the Editor-in-Chief of SmartUp.life. A journalist specializing in emerging technology, she was an early team leader at Wired magazine, and has also been on the staff of Macworld, PCWorld and Outside magazines.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Jon: I’ve been fortunate to have had a few different careers: journalist, author, keynote speaker, innovation expert. I had the rare experience of collaborating with IDEO on two bestsellers, wrote two major books on hackers and penned some crazy big national stories for Playboy about Barry Bonds, The Masters and the Super Bowl. What I’ve learned is that at key junctures it’s time to say goodbye, to reinvent yourself. The life of an author is rewarding but lonely and often narcissistic. A decade ago I started to teach aspiring international entrepreneurs and chronicle this new wave of startups. San Francisco and Silicon Valley were the center of tech, but it wasn’t the whole world, so Susanna and I set off for Europe to see how this takes shape in other cultures, a tremendous experience that led to our new book and opened my eyes. Lots of people will tell you what you can’t do, and I’ve learned that’s usually a sign that I’m onto something good. I had to quit a great job in my mid-twenties to author my first book, and we took a big risk to write The Entrepreneur’s Faces. Effort matters. You can do all kinds of new things at any stage of life if you jump in feet first.
Susanna: I started my career in tech publishing, at a really heady time in the early 90s. First at Macworld, then as the editor of an Internet yellow pages (imagine, a print publication!), and then as an early team leader at Wired magazine’s online version, Hotwired. Wired was a hive of excitement, where everyone shared a passionate commitment to the early ideals and the seemingly infinite promise of the Internet. I left publishing soon after that, and entered a decade of relative stasis where I’d gone back to earn a Masters while working a salaried project management job. Several years ago I awakened to what felt like a tech renaissance. Entrepreneurship was in the air, and everyone was talking about their startup.
I took on a second job as editorial director for a women’s networking group, and soon was attending and covering events nearly every night of the week, both for that group and for our online innovation site, SmartUp.life. These events became increasingly international, and our networks expanded to include people from all over the world. That’s when Jon and I realized we needed to get outside the Silicon Valley bubble and find out where all these international startup founders were coming from. What were the social, political, economic conditions in their own countries that were driving this global surge in entrepreneurship? We set out on a series of trips to begin research for the book.
Adam: In researching and writing The Entrepreneur's Faces, what are the best lessons you learned about entrepreneurship and successful entrepreneurs?
Jon and Susanna: Entrepreneurs move quickly and boldly. They accelerate from dreaming to doing. We think there are seven stages to your journey of entrepreneurship, and we find that successful founders speedily move from the idea (that initial stage we call the Awakening) to commitment (the Shift), where they take tangible steps toward making it real.
Entrepreneurship is a team sport. We’ve identified ten classic types, and find that savvy entrepreneurs don’t look for clones of themselves, but complementary types. For instance, a Conductor, someone who is great at building a platform, may look for an Outsider’s exploratory mindset to help create something genuinely new. A Maker, who knows how to build a product, may bring in an Evangelist to help her get to market.
Finally, you have to be all-in. On a personal level, that’s finding both your natural type, and the type you want to embrace to fulfill your dreams and ambitions. No dipping your toe in the water here. The best entrepreneurs have a positive mindset. The unknown, the risk, that just raises the stakes. That’s a big part of what motivates them – the reality that they must make this happen.
Adam: What are your best tips specifically applicable to entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs?
Jon and Susanna: Choose your co-founder well. The biggest mistake you can make is to team up with someone who either lacks your motivation or fails to bring complementary skills to the effort.
Prototype, prototype, prototype. We teach young entrepreneurs and find that if there was one thing nearly everyone could do better it would be to learn to approach almost everything as a prototype. Need to create a 10 slide pitch deck? Sketch out the key first three slides/ideas on a piece of paper. Got an idea for app? Prototype the one thing it could do that people would pay for. Then make a quick version of it – and see if people really will pay.
Escape your bubble. Leave your Zoom dome. Get out in the world. Discover, interpret and cross ideas to something new. We call this cross-pollination. This very instant, thousands of people in different countries and industries are doing amazing things, creating incredible new businesses. Get out and explore these ideas. They are great sources for brand new products and services. When we set out to meet entrepreneurs from all over the world, our own networks grew exponentially, and our opportunities also expanded.
Solve something that matters. It doesn’t need to change the world, but it does need to move your customer. Provide a true benefit. If you haven’t found that yet, keep looking.
Learn to love feedback. Cliches abound about embracing failure. We think that’s overdone. Embracing feedback is far more important. Feedback from customers and wise mentors. Listen, and when it makes sense, adapt.
Enjoy the ride. Nearly all successful entrepreneurs love the battle, the camaraderie of teamwork, the fight for funding, the all-out push to go to market. While much has been written about the money and fame a founder might achieve, the real inspiration for most entrepreneurs is that it’s just darn exciting to build something genuinely new and valuable that you can call your own.
Adam: Given your extensive research on the topic, what are your best insights on the topic of innovation?
Jon and Susanna: Interestingly, innovation tends to come from the people and voices that corporations tend to marginalize. The introverts, the oddballs, the radical team. Diversity also plays a huge role in bringing fresh ideas. In our new book, we profile the Outsider type. This is the person who brings a “beginner’s mind” to entrepreneurship and innovation and can really push your team to consider new angles overlooked by the more established players.
Writing The Entrepreneur’s Faces taught us that ideas come from lots of unusual sources that bubble up if you are willing to listen and care. Another favorite type is The Accidental. Craig Newmark was a programmer at IBM for 17 years, then came to San Francisco to code for Charles Schwab. The Internet was just catching on. Craig was lonely. He created an online list of events. He had no ambition to create a company. Now Craigslist makes more than a billion dollars a year. There are lots of Craigs out there, and the truth is companies have a long way to go in creating the true openness and diversity where these great new radical ideas can get a hearing and funding.
Adam: How can leaders build a culture that fuels innovation?
Jon and Susanna: We think the first step is embracing human-centric models like our own. It’s clear that more teams will be distributed in the future, and we will all need to rapidly accelerate our remote collaborative capabilities. One of the best ways we can do that is through self-awareness and empathy for others on your team. A good place to start is by looking in the mirror. How have you treated your people during the crisis? How will you support and spark their creativity and drive today, and in our uncertain future?
Innovative companies today recognize the need to invent and share new, positive rituals to build and strengthen bonds. Distributed workforces and remote work are just the rough frameworks. Innovative cultures will come when companies start truly recognizing that we are entering an entirely new way of living and working. It’s going to take a lot of openness throughout companies. A lot of prototypes. A lot of entrepreneurial thinking and doing. Purpose will be central. Take away the great food, perks, and benefits, and what really matters in a company is alignment: everyone in the company should be able to identify the culture and purpose. At Apple, any employee will tell you that the underlying value is essentially “quality.” If you truly build a thriving culture, your people can sum up its essence in a word.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Jon and Susanna: Great leaders wholeheartedly study and practice leadership. In our book we tell the remarkable journey of Allan Young. Despite being a near dropout in high school, he set out on a highly intentional journey to learn leadership, enlisting in the Marines, becoming student body president in college, then joining a student club that created a wildly successful $20 million VC fund while in college. Allan even joined a startup entering Y Combinator simply to learn from the emerging model. We think there’s great power in fully embracing your leadership – and that means not just at your company but in your community and the larger world. You may need to get outside of your comfort zone. Allan eventually created one of San Francisco’s greatest tech incubators, Runway, which became a place for founders and entrepreneurs to give flight to their dreams. Leaders love creating the space and opportunities for others to step forward.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?
Jon and Susanna: We think most teams need a mix of types. True diversity. They need idea people, what we call Pioneers. These are Outsiders, Accidentals, and Visionaries. Every great team has at least one of these forward-leaning, curious types.
They also need direction, what we call Navigators. These are Conductors, Leaders and Guardians. And finally they need Performers – Makers, Collaborators, Evangelists, Athletes – the day-in and day-out men and women who take the initiative, rise to the challenge, solve problems, and get jobs done without being asked.
Strong teams have a healthy mix of these types. As they grow and flourish the most important roles will be the Performers, who meet the challenges and get the work done.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Jon: “Relax the edges.” My father was a hard charging Harvard-trained trial lawyer. I happened to be an expert skier, and though he wasn’t really a skier he would often tell me to “relax the edges.” That advice hasn’t changed my skiing, but it has helped me tremendously with my many collaborations, and my speaking and books. I’m a big believer in bringing commitment and intensity, but I’ve also learned that you can shift to another gear when you make room for improvisation and other voices, when you’re open to taking a turn you hadn’t planned.
Susanna: “You are what you ship.” When we came up with the original idea for this book, a lot of experts tried to change our idea. Don’t tell narrative stories, they said. Ten characters will be too many. They’re not famous enough. We were also told that we’d have to wait until mid 2021 to publish. But we had a vision, and we went ahead with it. As a Maker, I really wanted to create a platform to go with the book: our website, a “What’s My Face” quiz, a course for executives and others wanting to build teams. It’s important to me that we walk the walk by committing to adding value for our readers and supporting them along the way to success.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Jon and Susanna: Take the Entrepreneur’s Faces quiz! Find out who you are, and share it with the world.