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