I'm Salim Virani. I used to design peer learning programs, and these days I'm having fun building stuff.
When I told a table full of biologists about Lean Startup, one asked, “doesn’t that mean you’re taking the creativity out of entrepreneurship?”
I replied, “it means we can test our hypotheses and adapt more quickly. If you could have run your PhD experiments in 3 months instead of 3 years, would you have been more or less creative?”
Same goes for your business. If you could eliminate what doesn’t work faster, think that’d make you more creative in your attempts?
I’m working on a communication tool for loose community groups and unconference-style interactions. It focuses on individual autonomy rather than top-down coordination.
I recently became a Kernel fellow, where I was exploring models for self-directing communities of care, the history of economic cultural norms, and the connection between mimicry, memes and our sense of belonging.
I did a few advisory gigs too - for Polygon, Limechain and Bankless on education and support programs.
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.
Safe spaces make for better learning (2021)
Choose happiness (2021)
Working 'Remote' after 10 years (2020)
Emotional Vocabulary (2020)
Project portfolios (2020)
Expectations (2019)
Amperage - the inconvenient truth about energy for Africa's off-grid. (2018)
The history Of Lean Startup (2016)
Get your loved ones off Facebook (2015)
Entrepreneurship is craft (2014)
Peter Thiel vs the science fiction masters (2013)
My latest posts are making sense of daos, an agile starter pack for daos and building ecosystems with grant programs.