It’s the end of Incubation Program week 3. The bunch of 10 strangers in the cohort are quickly becoming trusted confidantes, all excited to be meeting in person for the first time next week. And the 6 charity ideas on the table for turning into reality are becoming more familiar, in their strengths, risks, implementation options, demands upon founders, etc. It’s been a whirlwind.
These early weeks of the program have been largely spent working in pairs (rotating across the cohort to work with everyone at least once) on 2-3hr projects that vary from ice-breakers like “produce a 10min video on a subject that you and your partner think the cohort will find interesting”, to more abstract work like ascertaining personal weights attached to different schools of thought in moral philosophy, through to concrete tasks like building a budget or monitoring & evaluation plan for a certain charity idea. Time is always tight, so there’s a lot of trading-off quality vs getting to everything, learning vs having a decent deliverable, going with the flow vs challenging a partner.
The purpose of all these projects is to build concrete skills or knowledge, create resources to iterate upon later, but most importantly, to generate a sense of personal & workstyle compatibility with other members of the cohort – how good a match as co-founders would we be? With each passing week we reach a clearer view of our strongest co-founder matches and the we and others wish to pursue.
By the end of week 5, the co-founder pairings are worked-out. Happily these are not thrashed-out in some sort of high stakes relationship-destroying free-for-all. Rather we are surveyed confidentially each week for our co-founder and idea preferences, and the Charity Entrepreneurship team put forward a set of <person:person:idea> recommendations to maximise the overall output of high-potential charities. It’s unlikely (probably not possible) for everyone to get their first choice co-founder and idea, but a decent proportion should be happy with their matching, and there’s often other options on the table should folks look for a Plan B.
There is something reminiscent of a reality TV show about all of this. The Apprentice, but with people who are actually competent. Or Big Brother (maybe there’s a more recent comparison – I don’t watch these things any more) with Diary Room reflections on workstyle compatibility. Luckily the cohort is full of good people with their ego in-check, respect for each others’ strengths, weaknesses, preferences, etc, and who are disinclined towards treating this like a gameshow. And the Program is carefully structured to reduce the likelihood of angry exchanges over who’s got dibs on Idea#1 or Cofounder#2. If it wasn’t for all of that, TV Show Producers, this could have been your next big thing!
Having been fully remote to date (GMeet, Zoom, etc), we’re all together in London for the next 2 weeks. It’s really exciting to be meeting these people who have quickly become friends in-person for the first time. To be able to do things like grab a coffee, dinner, beer together or interact without a computer screen between us. And get a stronger sense of whether we would be viable as co-founders. It’ll be the longest I’ve yet been away from the kids – it’ll no doubt be tough in that respect (for me, and for Anna left at home with them both!), but definitely a crucial part of this journey. Looking forward to it!
G2CE 