If you wanna be startin’ somethin’you got to be startin’ somethin’.

A manifesto for idea realization.

I’m a designer and serial entrepreneur, and a startup advisor and investor.
I’m preternaturally excited by new ideas that challenge the status quo and change the dynamic of existing systems. I’m thrilled by counter-hegemony: there’s always a better way to do something, a new model to be invented. I’m also a native New Yorker — I get shit done — and I don’t wait for the walk sign to cross the street (it’s simply more efficient).

I started my first business at age 24. After 17 years of experiencing all its joys, insights, and successes with Fortune 500 global brands, regional non-profits, and startups alike, I saw there was a better way to deliver design.

Entrepreneurs and their business ideas find success with a mix of innovative thinking, decisive leadership, consistent vision, great timing and/or luck, and a team of trusted staff and advisors (whether on a board or for a shorter term). Right now, it’s easier than ever to start a business, with so many tools affordably democratized. And there’s a consistent and predictable set of things businesses need to move from idea to beta, beta to 1.0, and 1.0 to 2.0.

My next business is productizing design—arguably, one of the last tools of business that hasn’t yet been productized. We’re capitalizing on the startup ecosystems of San Francisco and New York, making a Levi Strauss move: rather than mine for gold, he equipped other miners with necessary tools.

Here’s our manifesto. Whereas:

1. Design thinking is an excellent way for individuals and businesses to articulate value, fundamentally differentiate, tell stories, rally troops, share purpose, experience delight, ensure loyalty, and measure success, but methods of execution — design doing — will become a formula, without the results being formulaic;
2. Design + technology are experiencing a most beautiful convergence;
3. Existing structures of client-designer collaborations will continue to evolve to the fast-paced go-to-market needs of startups, with rapid prototyping and quick feedback with real customers—in other words, hustle;
4. The way we work doesn’t work, multitasking is bad for us, nobody pays attention during conference calls, and it’s too easy to remain interrupt-driven, as opposed to goal-driven;
5. Every meeting wants to be a strategic moment of impact, and we’ll capture this mindset and apply it to a new kind of workshop — one with investors, founders, designers, visual and verbal storytellers, researchers, developers, and more — working openly in real time, gaining insights from multiple perspectives, iterating and making decisions together;
6. Focusing on an articulated goal (big hairy audacious, or otherwise) with a purpose-based team of smart people presents the opportunity for achieving flow, and in flow, we are happier, and make quality work;
7. Great ideas are a multiplier of execution, and simple constraints like time timers help to harness throughput, and produce results swiftly;
8. Design thinking and doing can only be truly productized once pricing is transparent, workshops are delivered in fixed tiers, and expectations are clearly set during onboarding, thus empowering customers to deploy as their needs dictate, and enabling them to bring their ideas to the next level efficiently and beautifully.

This system of working engenders stability in a time of rapid change, and clarity in a time of transformation. We’re designing both the environment and the methodology for decision-making, to dramatically improve our customers’ time-to-market. We’re connecting the dots across industries to help navigate common pitfalls. We’re partnering in the value created by offering a mix of cash and equity. Ultimately, we’ll forge a beneficial relationship between entrepreneurs and design thinking — and doing.

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

Anyone can have ideas. Taking the first step to make them happen no longer needs to be hard. Start — because you gotta be startin’ somethin’.

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