Morning Walk #19
Why do I constantly fill in startup accelerator applications (spoiler: it's not for getting in or getting funded)
Hi. I’m Stepa Mitaki. Morning Walk is a personal weekly newsletter where I share some musings on tech, working on startups, productivity and some nerdy stuff.
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In this issue
Why do I constantly fill in startup accelerator applications (spoiler: it's not for getting in or getting funded)
Some interesting things I read/watched/listened to lately
📝 Why do I constantly fill in startup accelerator applications (spoiler: it's not for getting in or getting funded)
Yesterday we sent out our first application to a startup accelerator with our new company. When working on MyCity, my previous company, we did this exercise about thirty or forty times. In the early stages, that was never about getting there or securing the funding. We did this to understand our flaws better, find blind spots, think about the things we didn't think through, improve our pitch, and generally clarify what exactly we were doing. To make our business stronger eventually.
When you constantly think and talk about your long-term strategy or the overall business, it's one thing. But try to write that down, and you'd immediately face your white spots.
Adam Grant put this nicely:
Seriously. Try that exercise this week. Try to explain an idea in writing.
Preferably you want to use something you actually want to improve or work on, but anything would do. Pet project idea you have, work project you are working on, story you want to tell, business idea, anything.
Your first take will be terrible. This is where you get this epiphany moment that you don't know anything. This feeling is very liberating. This is where you start actually thinking deeper and deeper. You get better with the second take. You sleep on it. Then the third take, and the fourth one. You start pondering on issues related to your idea you couldn't even consider before. This is a phenomenal feeling.
Accelerator applications are great because they follow pretty much the same templates. What are you building, how are you better than your competition, how are you going to get to the market, and how will you measure your success. Your answers will constantly change from week to week, but writing them down will help you crystallize those ideas and get much better results faster.
If you work on something – write about it. It will help you make it better.
P.S. Just when I was about to publish this essay, Paul Graham posted his own called "Putting Ideas into Words."
Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought.
😌
👓 Things I've been reading/watching/enjoying
Innovating Personal Healthcare
Since their launch last year, I’ve closely followed The Lanby, a members-only primary care service. This is one of the first public interviews of Tandice Urban, CEO and co-founder of The Lanby. Highly recommend it to everyone working on primary care.
Thursday – where remote teams do their socials
There are too many startups popping up these days trying to solve the serendipity issue for remote teams. Most of them are trying to replicate the office surroundings (literally) in the metaverse. I'm very skeptical about that idea, but I love how guys from Thursdays approached that task.
It's super straightforward: fun group activities inside a Miro-like online whiteboard. Your team members join via video and play games like trivia, doodle race, or "would you rather." I haven't tried that one yet, but their videos seem super exciting.
Fantastical 3.6 Introduces Openings
Popular third-party calendar app Fantastical (available only on Mac, iPhone, and iPad) introduced a new feature called Openings this week.
Essentially it's a Calendly alternative, but this one might actually work for me. The main reason I can't use Calendly is that it doesn't allow me to determine my availability by selecting a specific calendar set. Fantastical allows you that, plus it's a native calendar app. What can be better?
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻
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