Mar 31, 2011

Web Business Models, Lean Startup & The Missionary Position.

A talk I gave at The Hacker News meetup in London, to inspire hackers to hack their business models too.

I'm Salim Virani. These days I'm a Kernel Steward, and also having fun building random stuff.

In the past, I designed peer learning programs for Oxford, UCL, Techstars, Microsoft Ventures and The Royal Academy Of Engineering. I also played a role in creating the Lean Startup methodology, and the European startup ecosystem. You can read about this here.

What am I up to these days?

I’m working on a communication tool for community groups and unconferences. It focuses on autonomising focused teams rather than top-down coordination.

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, and how to use them altruistically and prudently.

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