Entries by Anthony Nathan
Start(up) thinking…
To create anything meaningful, particularly innovating for the market – the approach to one’s thinking is paramount. Warning to innovators: EXPLAINING one’s innovation by analogy is helpful, but THINKING by analogy is limiting…. Here is more context: Thinking by ‘analogy’ and thinking by ‘first principles’ are two distinct cognitive approaches used for problem-solving and decision-making. Let’s […]
Unicorns are never ‘nice-to-haves’
“What is a unicorn, daddy-preneur?” “It’s considered a start-up that quickly became a market MUST-HAVE and capitalized upon it ( the “it” being their perfect product-market fit), to become highly prized as a start-up, in a short space of time.” “Where do MUST-HAVEs like these come from, dad? “ “They do pop up unpredictably in […]
Co-create and invest in AFRICA’s (non-obvious) new market category kings – that can gravitate up to 75% of the market cap in their new-found CREATIVE spaces
Welcome to IFFAC – Impact Fund for African Creatives There are disappointed investors who passed multiple times on opportunities to invest in nascent-stage ventures like Uber, Airbnb and Google. How can the world’s best early-stage investors not be able to see the future potential of some of the greatest start-up success stories, those that became […]
DO YOU KNOW WHY YOUR STARTUP IS LIKELY TO BE A BIG SUCCESS?
Virgil once proclaimed, ” Lucky is he who has been able to understand the cause of things.” Said another way, ” Lucky is he who knows WHY”. Successful start-up pundits claim to get better at predicting the winners by adopting a portfolio strategy. Their pattern recognition certainly gets better with experience, but let’s […]
Creating new market (sub)categories (3 tasks)
“There are three tasks required for creating a new category / subcategory… A firm must manage that subcategory so that it wins the subcategory battle. Subcategory energy, appeal and associations need to be conceived and communicated. Customers need to be knowledgeable about the subcategory and motivated to first make the decision to buy into the […]
FRAMING
When people are told to not think of an elephant, they can’t get the image out of their minds. When President Nixon said he was “not a crook” what emerged was a reaffirmation that he was a crook. So, it is necessary to be disciplined to consistently use the language of YOUR frame and never […]