Being a Disciplined Entrepreneur

In focusing on what Nate and I need to do to make sure our business plan is feasible, we must look at our assumptions, see what are the deal killers and big bets are, and make sure we take a disciplined approach. The article by Donald Sull, "Disciplined Entrepreneurship," really made me think that one has to take a hard look what the pillars of you business plan are, what supports those pillars, and if your assumptions about those pillars are well founded. For us, I feel the first step in this assessment is to look at the three stakeholders that our business plan is based off.

First and foremost, we need to assess the buy in from government sources. We assume that we will be able to get funding from government sources. In fact it is the only source of funding we consider, so a lack of buy in is certainly a deal killer. The question then becomes how to create an experiment to see that a sufficient level of buy in is possible. Should we do a partial or holistic experiment? I would say a partial experiment done through canvasing some state legislators. I feel that we would need to repeat this many times with refinements. I suspect that we will need to narrow down what the SIBs are focused on and maybe specialize in a particular area. By canvasing, we should be able to refine what areas that the legislators would back and therefore be able to refine our business plan. A push into an area that is not supported by those with the money is most certainly a deal killer.

Next, once we have deeply assessed where we could get government buy in, we must decide where our investors fit in. Our bet is that by offering SIBs more similar to options, we will be able to tap a bigger market. I think the next step after verifying that we can get government support is to find a way to try to do some market research with these investors. I think we need to do some consideration on this some more.

Finally, we need to make sure we can find non-profits and social organizations that would support the missions the government and investors want and follow our funding requirements. Finding areas and organizations that would allow us to measure outcomes reliably is  certainly a pillar of our business model. We need to make sure that the assumption that we will be able to do this accurately, at a low cost, and to the satisfaction of all parties is feasible. Discrepancies could make our system fall apart, or, even worse, lock us up in court.

Looking back at the assumptions that our business is based upon, we have a lot of work to do. Thoughtful ways to do this need to be considered. Got some work to do.