On January 19, 2016, Kevin spoke at the Co-Founder Meet-Up hosted at the Capitol Factory in downtown Austin, TX. You can see a video of the presentation on Kevin’s YouTube channel or read an edited version here.
“My name is Kevin Koym. I’m the founder of Tech Ranch. I like to have a really interactive style. We only have a few minutes to talk, so I’m going to try to be brief, but I want to challenge you to a couple different ideas.
Here’s a great article of 6 things that help being productive. I find this list od link insightful = especially #4 – spending more time eliminating distractions versus just working faster.
via 6 Subtle Things Highly Productive People Do Every Day – Business Insider.
Seth Godin recently shared a short blog post about challenging conventions. As innovators, we’re challenging convention all of the time… yet we must be consciously clear which conventions that we’re intending to challenge, and do this with a designer’s eye. This is a great admonition- be careful to not break all of the eggs to make an omlette, only the eggs that you’re intending to do so, and that are needed to do so.
Challenging conventions is precisely what makes your thing new. Hence unconventional. The difficulty comes when you challenge conventions and defy expectations that you weren’t planning on upsetting. The inadvertent skipping of what we expect causes you to frustrate us, or to appear as an uncaring, unprepared amateur, or both.
Today I had the honor of leading Aikido class at the dojo (martial arts training hall) that I have been practicing at over the last decade. Although I am a second degree blackbelt, and have been training for the last 16 years, as might be somewhat traditional, I taught Aikido basic techniques. No matter how long I train, and no matter how much experience I might have, the basics are always something to return to in sharing Aikido with others. To offer a new lense on the basics, I shared experience of being injured to be the frame to look at basic techniques through- exploring how loosing some ability (due to injury) taught me to learn the underlying Aikido technique better.
Many Aikido techniques can be simulated with too much strength being used- trying to overpower the person that a student is practicing with… yet that’s not true Aikido. Aikido can be very powerful, yet in many ways its very subtle in how the technique attaches to an attacker’s attack, and harmoniously ends the attack. Learning how to be subtle, to be gentle, and through doing so, generating more ability to respond to an attacker.
Yet in getting to learn this subtlety, injuries do happen in Aikido (as in life 🙂
What’s interesting is that its because of some of these injuries I, as a 205 pound male who is use to using his strength, at times have had to “re-learn” how to be more subtle. On the Aikido mat, I have broken my left foot, separated my right shoulder, ripped my right knee (ACL), and broken my nose, among other injuries. Each of these injuries has been a training tool… forcing me to not to be able to use my strength as I tenderly try to heal an injury while still training. Each injury has a lesson that it offers, especially while the injury hasn’t healed, on how to be more subtle in the technique, requiring less physical power, yet creating an even more powerful ability to throw an attacker.
As a side note, its because of the use of subtlety that women or a youth or a smaller framed man can master Aikido perhaps faster than a “stronger” male- and have an effective means of defense in protecting themselves… those of us use to having sheer strength are, in a way, at a disadvantage to learning the subtlety of Aikido. In my case, that’s why I have learned so much after an injury.
What’s an example of this injury teaching process? One example- when I ripped my right knee ACL a year ago, I had problems stabilizing myself when moving quickly on the mat. My ACL ligament’s condition forced me to find stability in my muscles for the ACL wasn’t there there to hold me stable naturally. Relying on my muscles for stability made me bend my knees even more, bringing me closer to the stance that my Aikido teacher always told me to do before injury (the lower to the earth an Aikido student is, the more power he/she can generate from their legs in a throw). So now its been a year later since the injury, and I am at least 5 inches closer to the ground when executing a throw… and through this need, I’ve become a stronger Aikido practitioner, even though my injury has not yet fully healed.
There are many lessons that I offer from this idea, and as i have found Aikido to present insight for life, and insight for entrepreneurship. First, realize that injuries happen.. and many times injuries end up offering a way to learn a practice (like Aikido, like entrepreneurship) at a deeper level. Learning how to avoid getting hurt is important, yet, when getting hurt, or perhaps as in entrepreneurship hitting a business failure, see if you can, what is possible to be learned from the hurt, and go deeper. You’ll take your insight to a more subtle level in the practice that you’re following.
A financial instrument can be designed in the mind of a man that enslaves 10,000. A weapons system can be designed in the mind of man that kills as many, if not many more. As well, today’s productivity enhancements have the possibility of going two ways. One of these directions can further separate and enslave people at a level that’s never been imagined before… or to liberate people from the world of work in a way never imaged before. The question is what mental models are we operating in? What mental models are we opening up that make it possible that our next technology moves end up liberating versus enslaving? What part of our present simple historical economic understanding and the labels of the past (e.g. Socialism, Capitalism, Communism) must we break apart to develop a new, deeper understanding of the future that we can build together? Its time to look beyond the past, to realize that we’re in a new world, and this new world is coming at an ever increasing rate. Models of old don’t work here anymore. Its time to wake up, and build anew the world that we want with the technology this is coming.
How do you help an entrepreneur (or anyone for that matter) be more innovative and creative? You teach them to be vulnerable- vulnerable to failure by having them take risks. Yet what blocks them from taking risks? Dr. Brené Brown of the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work says that it is shame that blocks individuals from being vulnerable, whether in personal relationships, or in the actions that they take- many times not risking “failure” because of these views. In the following TED talk, she speaks of “the power of vulnerability“, explaining that although the emotion guilt produces the internal response in a person “I did a bad thing” versus shame producing the internal response “I am a bad person”. The reason that this is so key is because in the shame example, the individual has no way to redress the situation, therefore feeling trapped, many times having the individual squelch their abilities in trying to compensate for being incomplete. As well I could imagine this also has the opposite effect, of having individuals go too far in trying to compensate as well- going to the point of unhealthy results that we see associated with many startup companies as well.
Here’s a link to the video:
For a quicker synopsis, and a personal snapshot, online performer Ze Frank produced a very personal snapshot of how shame blocks his own creativity. Here’s a personal snapshot, a bit shorter, that shares similar insight:
In my work with entrepreneurs (and myself) what this says for how to help them overcome the internal blocks that block many times block the individual entrepreneur (and therefore the startup). I would posit to say that most “failures” at the early stage in startup development are not for some external set of circumstances- but internal ones. Entrepreneurs can pivot their startups to success around roadblocks… but they have to be internally prepared for doing so as much as being prepared with external resources (e.g. technology and funding).
Around the Tech Ranch, we have recently had our first team launch a commercial startup based around the Arduino microcontroller. What is the Arduino? Simply put, it is a microcontroller- a simple set of computer chips that are easy to program and configure for small projects- that either stand alone (e.g. like a robot) or are tied into other computers (e.g. like some external system tied to a computer). The team that has launched the startup around Tech Ranch has not yet publicized their work… so I can’t tell you about that just yet… but it is exciting… for the “revolution” in this is that new hardware products can be made by entrepreneurs very inexpensively… allowing an ever increasing amount of innovation.
The following documentary gives a little bit of overview about the Arduino, including many projects that give you a flavor for the scope of this new technology platform. Enjoy and imagine what you can build! 🙂 (and go build it!)
I have spent the last few days at the Quantified Self Conference in Palo Alto, California. Quantified Self is an emerging movement that’s focused on opportunities at the intersection of low cost sensor technology plus health information, with big data analysis. What’s key is through having real time health information in the hands of the user, great strides in better health are possible. The areas strongest impact is that most of the leaders in this field are citizen-scientists versus being academic researchers, for the technology that are emerging are inexpensive and accessible.
This is an area that I invested in 1999, and started a startup in in 2001, although this was way before the maturity of the area. At the conference, where Austin was represented by myself with the Tech Ranch, as well as Kevin Callahan, founder and CTO of MapMyFitness, UT professor Neal Burns, and Skyler Thomas of IBM, you could feel the excitement of a fiend that is emerging into maturity. Although this conference had only 300 attendees, Google, Intel, Fujitsu, and several investment firms were represented, as well as many veteran Bay Area entrepreneurs.
It is my belief that Austin is well positioned for being a strong player in this emerging industry because of Austin’s historical capabilities in software and hardware engineering, its health conscious citizenry, startups that are leading the way like Map My Fitness, not to mention the coming UT Medical School. At the Tech Ranch, we’re paying particular attention to this area for future development, given the exiting promise of entrepreneurs that inexpensively provide to customers personalized health insight.
Startups at Tech Ranch were in the news on KXAN tonight. 98% of the jobs that are available for graduating students are actually coming from startups and small business, not the Google’s of the world. In this segment from KXAN you’ll hear me talking about the job creation engine that startups represent to the community. Tech Ranch startup 5×5 is profiled, and Campus2Careers, who helps students find a pathway to startups and small business are profiled. One of our very talented interns Kathleen Hetrick (who has done great things for the startups around Tech Ranch also shares her insight about what it has meant to learn in a startup environment. This reminds me when I was still a student when I joined NeXT Computer while a junior at the University of Texas at Austin. Great to have the video exposure of the great work being done by entrepreneurs around the Tech Ranch.
Watch the video here:
My reading tonight reminded me through the wise words of MLK Jr:
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilization are written the words, “Too late.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence
New York City, April 4, 1967