Every day, startups make quick decisions based on limited data. Common wisdom holds that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve a level of mastery. But startups need to show results long before reaching that expertise. Given these constraints, how can a company hack its 10,000 hours?
I say: HIIT it.
High-intensity interval training. In order to hack our 10,000 hours, we need to pack our minutes with dense, effective, measurable results tailored to our goals.
That explains why we’ve spent the past thirteen weeks shuttling from coast to coast. ProductionPro was selected for an elite spot in Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH Incubator, which kicked our butt in the best way. Every week, we pitched (three-minutes max!) to a group of world-class investors and then fielded questions for four minutes. “Intense” barely begins to describe the experience of having 4 to 6 investor meetings in one seven-minute session. The hours spent at the Incubator were among the highest quality of my life. Early on, I learned that I was a solid presenter but that my ability to field questions from an audience of investors needed serious strength training. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have answers; the problem was that my answers were couched in terms of show biz rather than tech biz. These weeks at the Incubator challenged our entire team to experiment, iterate, and recalibrate on overdrive.
Jason’s passion for startups and founders is relentless. He watched ProductionPro pitch a dozen times and knew our story backwards and forwards. The man is an idea machine. So many ideas streamed out of him in so little time. He’s unbelievably fast and smart and agile, and there is no question that an hour with him is worth ten (thousand) more in the bank.
Twelve weeks at the Incubator is a sprint in the ultra-marathon that is launching a tech startup. That’s where community comes in. Because of the Incubator, ProductionPro is now part of an elite and growing group who share advice, horror stories, updates, and investor flow. In a sense, we pool our 10,000 hours and become jedis so we can make quicker, better decisions at every turn. We keep extending our funds, jam-packing our minutes, and gritting our way forward because, hey—we’re out to change the world.
– Alex, Founder & CEO of ProductionPro