An opportunity to jump-start Nascent Startups (11)
This Fellowship could change my life and many founders' lives too 😲 🤞
Recently, Lenny Rachitsky opened applications to a Fellowship as a “low-risk, low-friction way to unlock the knowledge in your head and help the next generation of product builders.” Winners of the Fellowship will get to publish three guest posts — meaning, if I become a Fellow then I’d get to introduce his audience to Nascent Startups!
Lenny’s newsletter/podcast is for people interested in creating tech products — he currently has 600,000 subscribers. For context, this newsletter/podcast has 200 subscribers. Lenny’s audience is mainly people working at established tech companies; however, I expect that many folks in his audience are also interested in creating a startup but struggling to navigate their first step. There couldn’t be a better opportunity to support those current and aspiring founders.
Below are prompts from Lenny’s Fellowship application in italics followed by my responses. I’m publishing my submission to Lenny as part of my effort to build Nascent Startups in public 🛠️.
Mike’s application to Lenny’s Fellowship
Where have you worked, what have you done, what's your story
I believe there are at least two stages of startups: nascent-stage and early-stage. A nascent startup consists of just the kernel of a business idea, but no customers, no product and no funding whereas an early-stage startup has initial customers, product and funding. There’s tons of “startup methodologies”, but they mostly apply to startups with customers. Founders of nascent-stage startups (i.e., no customers) face dramatically different challenges and lack a methodology for their unique situation. To that end, I’m obsessed with finding answers to the question: When you’re a founder with just an idea for a startup, what’s your best first step?
My professional goal in life is supporting founders of nascent-stage startups. Over the last 20 years, I’ve created 10 startups, mentored 100 founding teams and worked in 3 corporate innovation labs with the (nominal) goal of creating new businesses. The corporate roles have been at world-class companies in consumer electronics, healthcare and telecommunications, all with $10B+/year in revenue.
I’ve been mentoring founders since 2014 and they’ve consistently said that my approach is unique and compelling. In 2018, I started writing a book called “Nascent Startups: How to spend your first 100 days and $100 when you have an idea for a tech business.” In January 2024, I pivoted the book into a project that I’m building in public. To that end, I launched a free mentorship program and newsletter/podcast partly inspired by you, Lenny! I’ve often said that I want Nascent Startups to become a hybrid of Lenny Rachitsky’s knowledge sharing and the next evolution of Steve Blank’s entrepreneurship strategy. I’m incredibly excited that your Fellowship could help accelerate achieving my goal.
Unique lessons, insights, or stories you’d be able to share with Lenny’s readers
Help Lenny understand why you make you a great fit for the fellowship
The big reset: April 2015 was an inflection point in the world of entrepreneurship. Before then, a founder’s highest priority was securing funding. Now what’s most important is searching for People in Pain and quantifying the pain. Understanding this shift unlocks a world of opportunity for founders of nascent-stage startups.
Case study: How a founder invested just 10 days and $0 to decide whether her good idea for a startup was the right opportunity for her right now. What’s most important is the speed and affordability to make the decision, not the decision itself. For context, I’ve mentored many founders who invested 6 months and $1,000 before deciding whether to pursue similar ideas.
XYZs of a “crappy” startup idea: I present two extremes: the best idea and worst idea for a startup, ever. You can use this yardstick to gauge the potential of your startup idea.
Why do you want to do this?
You can link to a video here if you’d prefer.
Any writing samples you can link to?
Here’s my first newsletter:
Anything else you’d like to share?
Here are brief bios for my partners on the Nascent Startups project who are supporting the free mentorship program:
Adam mentored 1,000 founders through TechStars, Google for Startups and Lean Startup Co.
Kathleen is a UX researcher who has worked at Nike and Imperfect Foods.
P.S.
It feels very “meta” writing a newsletter about applying to a Fellowship for newsletter creators 😂. I’ve gotta say that Lenny’s Fellowship really feels like a perfect fit for me. Now we just need to see what Lenny thinks 😜.
Here are a few of Lenny’s podcast 🎧 episodes that I thought could benefit founders of nascent-stage startups:
This would make me super happy. Good luck!
Your application is compelling, fingers crossed!