Anthony LewisCorporate to startup:

Crossing the great divide

We hear stories of successful entrepreneurs all the time

The reality is rather different for many of us.This is where we drink coffee, eat biscuits, and dream of big ideas

© Bruce Dunning© Lionel Dricot

Having ideas is not the problem.Lots of us have more ideas than we could ever fit in to our lives

Demand

Price

The Penny Gap

Free

£0.01

From a diagram by Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital

Venture Capitalists talk about the huge gap between demand for a free service, and the much lower demand as soon

as it costs just one penny

Idea Viability

Thinking Doing

The ‘Doing’ Gap

I think the same principle applies in the difference between Thinking and

Doing.

Anything seems possible, until you start trying to do it

This is what I’m doing – based on my Co-Founder’s original idea of self-reporting for children in care.

It’s a web app to help Primary School children articulate how theyfeel, and to make it easy for teachers to see who needs some help

We prototyped it, and tested it with 109 kids in 6 schools, ranging from 6 to 11 years old. The response we got was better

than we could have hoped.

Step 1

Talk to people

© Martin Couzins

Step 2.

Read.

A lot

Step 3.

Use the support available

It’s a Balancing Act

Sometimes it’s more complicated

Impact(on everything

else in your life)

Speed / Effort

“Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.” Hunter S.

Thompson

Don’t believe the tech press – faster isn’t always better

It’s a rollercoaster, and it isn’t for everyone

But….

Learning stuff

Talking to interesting people doing interesting things

Thinking about how to improve things

Makes you a more valuable employee

And sometimes, unexpected things happen.This is a sample of the output from our prototype where the

kids wrote whatever they wanted in the system

This is the note that one of the children wrote to us.It’s the moment when your baby smiles at you for the first time.

The time when you realise it’s worth it.

Thank you

Anthony Lewisanthony@speakr.org.uk

@anthony__lewis