Open Source Startup
Unit 12: Critical Thinking for Founders
Key Takeaways
- Learn key skills to maintain personal discipline and discipline of thought
- Learn how to quantify, measure, and estimate effectively
- Learn how to identify core assumptions of the business
- Understand how to make effective bets
Readings
- Ego is the Enemy
- To Be or To Do?
- Become a Student
- Don’t be Passionate
- Follow the Canvas Strategy
- Restrain Yourself
- Get Out of Your Own Head
- The Danger of Early Pride
- Work, Work, Work
- How to Measure Anything
- Chapter 2: An Intuitive Measurement Habit
- Chapter 5: Calibrated Estimates: How Much Do You Know Now?
- Chapter 8: The Transition: From What to Measure to How to Measure
- Chapter 9: Sampling Reality: How Observing Some Things Tells Us About All Things
- Disciplined Entrepreneurship
- Step 20: Identify Key Assumptions
- Step 21: Test Key Assumptions
- Thinking in Bets
- Chapter 1 -- “I’m not sure”: using uncertainty to our advantage; Redefining wrong
- Chapter 2: Wanna Bet? (full chapter)
- Chapter 5: Dissent to Win (full chapter)
Deliverables
- Write up a critical thinking skill cheat sheet
- Create a scorecard of key self-discipline skills and evaluate personal performance for a month
- Apply the new estimation skills to everyday challenges once a day for two weeks
- Apply the new betting skills to everyday conversations once a day for two weeks
- Write up your startup’s key business assumptions