5 Traits of Earlyvangelists, aka How to solve problems that pay.
Sep 23, 2011

While mentoring at Lean Startup Machine London, I covered one of the most fundamental concepts in Customer Development, the 5 characteristics on an Earlyvangelist, which Steve Blank covers in more detail in his book Four Steps To The Epiphany. Trevor grabbed me for a quick interview.

Early-Evangelists:

Have the problem you think they have
Knows they have the problem
Tried to solve the problem themselves
Looked for a solution themselves
Put budget behind solving the problem

Issues can happen when an entrepreneur finds someone who fits 3 or 4 of these traits but not all of them. The example Sal gives is when someone has everything except for the budget, you don’t want to invest the time and cost in building a solution if you will end up empty handed.

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So, uh, what's happening?

I’ve recently become a Kernel Fellow and am exploring new models for collaboration.

I’ve done a few advisory gigs too - for Polygon, Limechain and Bankless on education and support programs.

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Fun crypto projects

Cuppa - decentralised collaboration protocol (WIP)
Nonfungo - completely on-chain NFT sale notification bot for Discord. (Look ma! No Opensea API!)
Powerplays - real-time token launches

Collected practices

DAOistry - practices and mindsets from successful blockchain communities
Decision Hacks - early-stage startup decisions distilled

Peer Learning work

Peer Learning Is - a look at peer learning around the world, and a program design methodology
Mentor Impact - approaches used by top-performing startup mentors
Source Institute - skunkworks I founded with open peer learning formats and ops guides

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