May 30, 2014

Expanding through partnerships

Bulgarian startups, like those in many other European countries, continually face a problem: growing beyond our local markets.

I find too many of my friends in hustling hard for potentially Zombie startups.

All that hard work, but not a lot of progress in the numbers that truly move them forward. On the other hand, there are clear strengths here in Bugaria; companies that have grown globally, and investors building broad networks.

So I asked them.

Vessy Tesheva from Telerik shared her approach with me: “Partnerships mean each company can act proactively on the others’ behalf. This takes trust, which comes from thinking about relationships, not deals or connections.”

Max Gurvits from Teres and Eleven explains to me how, for any networking goal, he makes a list of 100 potential people, since that research means he’s more likely to make contact sooner.

At Leancamp, I’ll be digging in with a few more local founders who’ve built their businesses through international partnerships. Join me!

Originally posted at betahaus.bg

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What am I up to these days?

I’m on the Kernel Stewards team, where we help ~2,000 fellows understand the what the development of blockchains mean to humanity on anthropological scales. I’m particularly interested in enabling fellows to build things with blockchains that are altruistic and prudent.

I’m also building a communication tool for community groups and unconferences. It focuses on autonomising teams rather than “coordinating”.

In the past, I've designed peer-learning programs for Oxford, UCL, Techstars, Microsoft Ventures and The Royal Academy Of Engineering, careering from startups to humanitech and engineering. I also played a role in the Lean Startup methodology, and the European startup ecosystem. You can read about this here.

Books & collected practices

Peer Learning Is - a broad look at peer learning around the world, and how to design peer learning to outperform traditional education
Mentor Impact - researched the practices used by the startup mentors that really make a difference
DAOistry - practices and mindsets that work in blockchain communities
Decision Hacks - early-stage startup decisions distilled
Source Institute - skunkworks I founded with open peer learning formats and ops guides, and our internal guide on decentralised teams

Random 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