Sunday, March 1, 2015

Building a Vision for GDF11 for Pets

As I was putting together my stakeholder presentation,  I couldn't stop thinking about this whole venture through the lens of this article Harvard Business Review's "Building Your Company's Vision".  Though it's aimed at analyzing existing companies' core ideologies, for anyone attempting to build a company aimed at social impact from the ground up, this is some really important stuff to think about from the start.  


So, in the spirit of building a company around GDF11 for Pets from essentially the ground up, here is what I'm thinking as far as articulating a vision for the "stakeholders" presentation.

Vision: To live in a world in which we and our beloved pets enjoy a longer, stronger and playful Healthspan, (and that everyone knows what both healthspan and GDF11 are)

Mission: Be the first lab to find the best molecule (booster?) to react GDF11 and produce an affordable/profitable dietary protein for pets

BHAGs:
  1. Raise the funding ($2 million) to find that booster using Indiegogo by getting over  2 million views
  2. Create and spread literacy in our target market about the meaning and value of GDF11 using viral video featured on Indiegogo through public relations efforts targeting related *blogs*, local/national newspapers articles, news stories, achieving that “GOGO Factor”.
  3.  Build partnership and/or rent capacity with a major and innovative vitamin/supplement distributor.
  4. Produce and distribute trials of the dietary protein supplement to top donors, B2B with Vets, Vitamin/Supplement Retailers, Boutique Local/Online Pet stores
  5. Continuously grow marketing/PR campaign, build a brand, and expand to humans, improve aging wellness for all
Some of these goals aren't quite what the article would define as BHAGS, since they are more immediate than that distant envisioned future, but they feel pretty big, and hair and audacious. Sometimes when I'm talking about this venture, the whole concept feels too audacious...there are big players in this $750 million pet supplement market and this is a tiny lab on the south side of Pittsburgh.  But then we have a meeting like the one we had on Thursday and I see the huge capacity/potential of that lab and it feels like this could happen.  

I'm feeling especially optimistic about Indiegogo.  It's their idea to increase the goal and they want to help promote the project this time. Our lead scientist had a call with the Senior Director of Tech for Indiegogo, John Vaskis and we're planning an GDF11 for Pets campaign 2.0, based around a most excellent explainer viral video that I'm trying to produce with one of my old film production colleagues.  My question is to you guys is, what are some of the best explainer videos you've seen out there? And do they communicate their core ideology?  Does it matter?  What matters the most to you?  

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