My First Week at Anything Goes Lab

Post about the 2nd week.

Interns working at Anything Goes Lab

When 2 ladies you did not know tell you that they are your groupies, you know you are doing something right. This happened to me at Innovation Breakfast, when I told Bobbie and Janet that I was one of the members of Anything Goes Lab. I have always been envious of rock stars; I felt so flattered.

What is Anything Goes Lab?

It is a workshop for entrepreneurs, founded by Bill Warner and Nick Tommarello. Instead of building our companies with our heads, we are learning to build them from our heart. Business plans and how to raise capital are still important, but instead of working on these topics we spent the past week talking about our passions and motivations; trying to establish who are the people we want to help with our invention.

As humans, this makes sense with most things we do in life, but how do we apply it to starting a business? This is what Anything Goes Lab is about. Bill has worked for several years creating a methodology and tools to help entrepreneurs achieve this goal, we are the first group of people with whom he is putting his ideas into practice. It is why we are called Launchpad 1A, and yes, we are guinea pigs, which makes it even more exciting.

You can watch this presentation for details. Here, I am just telling a short part of the story from my perspective.

The first task is to complete a statement. I would share mine if it were ready. This is Bill’s statement:

• I intend to help people follow their heart
• I believe people need tools to follow their heart
• I believe people are pushed to follow their head
• My people need help to follow their heart

Simple but powerful. The success of your company will depend on how your actions (and your co-founders) are aligned with this statement.

What Do We Do?

Before starting the program I thought it would be "work" with some conversations. It happened to be the opposite: conversations with some "work". It fits Bill’s idea of what a startup is - a long intense conversation, peppered by bursts of invention, fueled by intention, motivated and moderated by beliefs.

We are divided in 5 groups. Mine is called In2Possible; we are 7 guys and 1 girl. Each group has a board where we compose our statements. We use cards with different colors for intentions, beliefs, people, inventions, stories and goals.

Collaboration is everything, we talk to everyone, not just within our group. I feel psyched being surrounded by such smart people working on so many cool projects, with so many clever ideas.

An interesting aspect of the experience is that we feel as if we knew each other for a long time. In part it is because we share similar interests, but also because we are discussing intentions and beliefs, we have been talking from our hearts.

Broadcasting

Bill Warner describing how to use the board

We intend to tell the world what is happening here. It is why I am writing this blog post. We want to spread the word about the concept of starting a company from the heart and want more people involved in the project.

We have been blogging, taking pictures and recording videos: http://ag1uncut.posterous.com, but have not done any editing - thus the name uncut. We want to make the content public and welcome anyone who wants to use it.

We tweet with the hashtag #anythinggoeslab and this is a list with most of the members of Launchpad 1A: http://twitter.com/chrismyles4/launchpad1a/members

What is Next

But how do you go to the next step: building the invention?, this is what we will be addressing this week, I will tell you how everything goes.

Post about the 2nd week.