Xceleration Labs Blog: Rock Climbing

Showing posts with label Rock Climbing. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Every so often Xceleration designs and distributes new T-shirts to share with Xceleration clients and friends. Many of the recipients of these new T-shirts also include Aki's belay buddies in the Taipei climbing community. (More on belay buddies and their importance in a future blog).

Kudos to excellent Xceleration team creative director, Haichen Hsu, who you can follow on Behance. Out of the various designs (there were four) and through informal polling it was pretty much a good spread, but in the end I settled on the "Climber with Moon" background design.

I'd love to tell you that we had this profound concept when we came up with the shirt design, but basically, I choose the one that was most aesthetically pleasing. And as with most things in life, after we choose something, I'll now give you the whole theory and concept behind the design, cause we after all have to ascribe meaning to everything. If you're going to do so, might as well be something empowering.

SHOOTING THE MOON

So what came to mind is the the expression "Shooting the Moon," which comes from the classic cards game - Hearts. For those of you growing up in the internet, smartphone gaming age, this is pretty old school stuff. If you know the game or remember the game Hearts, you'll be able to follow along (for everyone else the rules are clearly explained in your handy wikipedia entry)!

Jesus going for it with a climb at Y17
while wearing his "Shoot the Moon" Xceleration T-shirt.

HOW CAN A CARD GAME INFORM STARTUPS?

So what is Shooting the Moon? As defined in Wikipedia, it is:

"Shooting the moon, in card games is to obtain the highest possible outcome through the very risky strategy of achieving the lowest possible score."

Love this idea. So yeah, of course, in startups we want to do that old Casey Kasem classic sign off from his American Top 40 radio program, "Keep reaching for the stars." Totally, admirable and something we should certainly strive for.

But I think Shooting the Moon is more apropos, as it requires you to be "contrarian." Let me explain. The basics of the game is not to end up with any of the cards in the deck with the hearts suit (and also the Queen of Spades), in doing so you end up with points. You'd play the game for several rounds and the more points you get the more you're "losing." But one actually interest facet of the game is to the do the contrarian strategy of capturing all of the hearts, called "Shooting the Moon." In order to do so, you can NOT "advertise" that this is your strategy, for it is easy for someone in the group to "sacrifice" and take a heart, thereby loading you with the rest of the hearts and pushing your score way up (which is bad), instead of "shooting the moon", and thereby gaining negative points, putting you ahead of the others.

"Shoot the Moon"

Translate this into startups. My general take on startups is to work diligently and away from the limelight, potentially using a contrarian strategy, instead of following the herd. Not necessarily to be secretive, but rather not running around telling everyone of your "how to" strategy, but justing working it. Many times the other folks in your community will be contributing to your success in ways they didn't even realize, as with the game of Hearts, many folks in the community unwittingly become your helpers and supporters for you to reach the greatest height that you can reach.

So when you "shoot the moon", it'll be a bit of a surprise! Think about all the ways, you may try a contrarian strategy in your startup venture. Perhaps this will open up new avenues of thought and help with your "out of the box" thinking.

Shooting the Moon with Xceleration Labs and Being Contrarian

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Shooting the Moon with Xceleration Labs and Being Contrarian

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Hannah and Sebastian

From the above photo of Hannah and Sebastian, you may wonder what's rock climbing got anything to do with doing a startup?

If you're familiar with rock climbing, you'll note that Hannah is tied into the belay system as the climber and Sebastian is the belayer.

According the Merrim-Webster Dictionary the definition of BELAY:

: the securing of a person or a safety rope to an anchor point (as during mountain climbing); also : a method of so securing a person or rope.
: something (as a projection of rock) to which a person or rope is anchored.

Using an analogy, Sebastian as the belayer acts to secure the climber or the anchor point. In a similar manner, Xceleration Labs acts as that belayer or anchor point for our startup teams.

What is Xceleration Labs?

Sure, in the beginning, Xceleration was formed with the basic idea that we would "accelerate" a startup journey, potentially in some sort of laboratory setting. Like we'd be cooking up some sort of mad science experiment. Show you a couple of shortcuts. Help you move faster toward your success.

Whereas this may be true with many accelerators, incubators and such, I've found that "accelerating" isn't necessarily what it's about. At least in our experience, it's not the short term project or engagement where Xceleration is the most impactful. Typically, it's hard to affect lasting impact with less than six months of time. Our consulting gets really hands on and is typically engaged on a weekly or nearly daily basis with any given startup team for a long period of time.

(Certainly not for everyone)

So if it's not "Accelerate" then what do you do?

Chloe making her climb! Still secured by belayer (see rope connected to her harness)

I was once asked this question by your stereotypical Silicon Valley self proclaimed serial entrepreneur aggressive Type A personality. The conversation went something like the following:

"What do you do?"

"I'm a business consultant. I help startup teams," I replied.

"How do you make money doing that?!" smirked the Silicon Valley startup guy.

He didn't ask with the intent of wanting to know how I truly make money doing so (curious - check out our How we are compensated? tab), but rather he meant, "that's dumb."

Since we've already concluded it's not "accelerating" that we're about, then what do we do? To go back to the climbing analogy, like the belayer for the climber, we provide beta.

According to Wikipedia, "Beta" is defined as:

Beta is climbing jargon that designates information about a climb. In rock climbing this may include information about a climb's difficulty, crux, style, length, quality of rock, ease to protect, required equipment, and specific information about hand or foot holds.

So likewise, at Xceleration, we're here to provide Beta.

Provide the information about a startups' challenges, help you with the rivers you may cross, tell you what to sweat and what not to sweat, explain what's a consistent reaction from a potential client, and generally help you focus on your North Star.

So What does "Climb with Xceleration" mean?

I think I've known for sometime what it is. . . but it's akin to the natural "high' I get from climbing. That "high" is being PRESENT.

Whereas in many sports, your mind can wander such as while you're running (jogging) or doing yoga poses, in climbing you're forced to be present. In fact, you've GOT to be present. If you're not in the moment dealing with the next tricky hold or the next place to plant your toe, you'll likely to blow it and fall. There's nothing quite like having to deal with the immediate problem at hand to keep you present. There is no thinking about the laundry list of things you'll be doing later or checking an item off a task list while you're climbing.

Therefore, like climbing, I think "Climbing with Xceleration" is about being present. About focus and dealing with immediately what's in front of you. Being present.

Nancy, Chloe, Hannah and Aki

Another component of "Climbing with Xceleration" can also be found in one of the chief characteristics that I've found in climbing. It's humbling. It's you against that wall. Some days it's downright humiliating.

For me as a beginning climber, it was all about getting to the top. I climbed to succeed. Success vs. Failure was what it was all about.

It wasn't until I was around climbing culture for a while before I learned the truism, it's about "climbing to fail." What? You may be asking yourself? What heck does that mean?

As a climber novice, and perhaps even as a startup person, you may constrain yourself and not attempt the risky or outlandish, because you're about looking good. Being sure that you can climb to succeed. So you'd never try anything that you'd think was beyond yourself.

Besides failure looks bad. So you won't risk trying a more difficult route in a climb, just like for startups sometimes it's safer and doesn't look as bad just to settle for the something that you know you can succeed at, rather than stretching yourself. Stepping outside of yourself.

Climbing to Fail: Rid Yourself of the Success vs. Failure Dichotomy

Without climbing to fail, you'll never know that you could possibly do. In fact, it was after watching world class climbers and many of my climbing partners trying the same moves over and over again and still continually to blow it (falling) that I got that "failure" in climbing is part of the process. Just like for startups, failures, challenges, obstacles, and striving outside of what you know you can do, is part of the entrepreneurial process.

Instead of worrying about success, I started to immerse myself in the process of problem solving, of making it a project, of learning something new about myself and (sounds corny) about the journey. Not just about getting to the top. Not just about success. Sure it's great to reach the top, but the journey became as much, if not more, of the enjoyment.

Do I wish for a startup to fail? No, of course NOT. But should they potentially adopt the attitude of "climbing to fail," yes. Give "climbing to fail" a try. You never know where it might take you.

Available this Summer!

Besides, who ever heard of a startup guy/gal who hasn't had some failures along the way?

Climbing with Xceleration: It's about the Journey

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Climbing with Xceleration: It's about the Journey

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Screened SenderFilms rock climbing classic "First Ascent" with a group of startup folks in the office. The film is a documentary about those lone souls in Rock Climbing who are accomplishing incredible human feats to little or no fanfare and that the film is a celebration of these unheralded climbers. Their "Marching Band" so to speak. In other words, a celebration of their achievement and a chance to shine the spotlight on their achievements.

First Ascent DVD cover. Please go to Sender Films

You may ask what does rock climbing have to do with working in a startup? The similarities despite the obvious physical differences are in that of the spirit and motivation of just going out there and doing it cause its there. That the ultimate lesson of the film perhaps and for the viewer to draw upon is that success may not be all about the "glory" of being the first, but rather all of the relationships, friendships and journey that rock climbers and startup folks alike go on. Its often the road less traveled.

Ultimately this is a shout out to all of those startup guys and gals, who toil in obscurity. Who are not in it for the glory, but in it to make an impact on the world. Those whose success may never look like a billion users or a gigantic IPO. This is an affirmation of those who work day in and day out aspiring for more. Add oil!

Why Rock Climbing's First Ascent is Like Doing a Startup?

Thursday, September 12, 2013