My Fifth Entrepreneur Epiphany

By Larry Chiang

This epiphany is a whopper.

My fifth epiphany is the culmination of four (4) authors’ lifetime work and one Stanford Engineering book by Steven Blank. Mr Blank taught ENGR 145. Yes, it is the same class, Technology Entrepreneurship E145, at MIT with the execution done by the undergrad Jacob Cole. LOL, i tipped the class, changed it 35%, kept the name. It is What They Do Teach You at HLS 🙂 Steven Blank’s engineering book is called “Four Steps to the Epiphany”

My fifth epiphany is critical to this tweet staying or becoming true:

	The Harbus News (@TheHarbusHBS)
11/20/13, 5:09 PM HBS tops the list of B-Schools for Entrepreneurship harbus.org/2013/hbs-tops-…

Epiphany: you should get paid to launch your startup (at SXSW, on the App Store, at TC Disrupt or Launch Conference via #EUBM-ing

Huh?!

If you use the rap lyrics translator: “The fifth epiphany states that you should get paid (cash) while you’re getting paid (in shareholder equity). Use EUBM which is engineer up a business model.

Before you think I’m cray cray, off my rocker, or over-partaken in Gua Gua Guacamole, let me derive this “Fifth Epiphany”. Fun, fun this derivation will be. Let me pattern replicate a geometry proof similar to Angel-Side-Angel (see what I did there w Side-Angle-Side ;-). The derivation stems from the five previous mentioned authors lifetime work:

/1/ Geoffrey Moore’s four books. His life’s work is ‘crossing the (innovation) chasm’, “tornado” and lol “escape velocity”

/2/ Eric Ries’ “Lean Startup”

/3/ Biz Model Generation

/4/ Steven Blank “Four Steps to the Epiphany”

/5/ Mark McCormack “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School”

These author’s lifetime work breaks in to specific, hashtaggable sub-routines in understanding and executing my fifth epiphany.

/1/ Geoffrey Moore’s next next book is “Crossing the Chasm from the Right CTCFTR” I’m sorry I couldn’t wait so I’m giving me and you the knowledge now, #CTCFTR. It has 35 steps to help u a lot. Pay close attention while I DJ this hashtag into another, #EUBM (Engineer Up a Business Model #EUBM)

Right on cue…

/2/ Lean Startup makes me wanna #LCMCC, #ENGR145 #MVBP, and of course, #EUBM. All of them help you gain free entry, gain wider access, augment distribution

[Larry Chiang Mini Company Concept, #LCMCC]

{MVBP is (Less Than) Min Viable Blog Post #MVBP}

Eric’s book led me to my Fifth Epiphany and is built on

/3/ Business Model Generation

Only three boxes deserve all of your attention. #EUBM. There is an image that I drew that summarizes all 200 pages on to one Facebook photo album called Hashtag EUBM

(If Facebook is being silly, I’ll text you the access from my cell: 1-650-283-8008)

/4/ Steven Blank’s Four Epiphany’s.

I’ve read that book 10x. I’m a scholar on this. My conclusion is perhaps his sequel tome? Anyway, #EUBM works and I wedged it in at ENGR 145 when Professor Blank went to teach ENGR 245.

My role at ENGR 145 was EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) where I felt the tingle of this Fifth Epiphany but could never make it simple enough. In essence, this epiphany circles back to…

/5/ Mark McCormack. #WTDTYAHBS and #EUBM

To even get the opportunity to transition from Stanford Athletics season ticket holder to coach/mentor/EIR/co-hort mentor/ class crasher, I simply regurgitated Mark McCormack’s NY Times triumvirate:

– #WTDTYAHBS

– #WTSDTYAHBS

– #WTWNTYAHBS

CONCLUSION:

There is no warm fuzzy sign-off. There is only more work.

Conclusion: Think of this HBS post as GitHub but for entrepreneurship “recipes” via ‘hashtags’. GitHub is a repository of computer science code that developers bang out. Harbus is now a set of not, HBS case studies. But, Live Action Business Case Studies (#LABCS. I co-founded that w/ Tom Kosnik at Stanford Engineering). HBS cases study the past like GE is the 90’s, Alfred Sloan in the 50’s or Yelp in the 2000’s (LABCS is documenting how you execute adopt and swallow the Fifth Epiphany 😉

Conclusion: Read https://bit.ly/vc0311a and get paid to go to SXSW

ENGR145’s Anchor Concept: Lemonade and Gua Gua Guacamole

It moves you to the right on the entrepreneur bell curve