kevin donaldson

According to Christopher McDougall, we humans are all literally born to run.  Leonardo daVinci said the human foot is a masterpiece of engineering, and a work of art.  26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments and 19 muscles.  Coupled with our unique ability to breath at various rates and about ability to sweat, makes us unique and different from any other running organism on the planet.  Thinking about this I can’t help but be even more amazed at the intelligent design of humans.

I personally wouldn’t call myself a runner.  I like the idea of running, and I do a lot of hiking, but running has never really done me any favors.  I can do about 6 miles before my knees tend to suffer.  I remember going to a sports medicine doctor in college with a knee injury after a triathlon and his comment to me was ‘you just don’t have a runner’s body’.  I thought ‘well that sucks’!  So when I picked up McDougall’s book Born to Run and hear the author fighting a similar battle, I got intrigued and read on with fascination all the way to the end of this book.   It was an amazing read that had me enthralled and learning throughout.

The book is what I would class as a docu-drama.  It was a great yarn of a story interspersed with documentary style sections on running related topics such as persistence hunting in African tribes, the history of the running shoe, the ultra-marathon culture as well as unique stories about the people in the book, that made the characters much more interesting to read about, and also know that they were all real people.

The book has also got me fired up about running without injury on my 6 ft 205 lb frame.  While my wife thinks I am nuts I have started barefoot running!  While I first heard about this movement back in early 2009 from the blog of Tim Ferriss, reading this book, gave me the kick in the pants I needed to try it out.  I have been easing into it slowly but last night was my 4th go and I did close to 3 miles on both pavement and trail.  I did some research and there is actually quite a bit available on the internet to help you learn the proper technique.  I have to say what I love most about it is feeling the ground and connecting with the earth under my feet.  Every step I feel my foot land and role before the next one hits.  Its makes running shoes feel like ski boots.  The second thing I like is the feeling of freedom of just walking out the front door and just taking off.  Barefoot running forces you to run completely different, and because you normally have your feet packaged into shoes, barefoot running has you using muscles you have never used before in your feet so while you may not be winded your first few times out, your soles need some time to adjust and your legs will be sore in entirely new ways.  However now that I have a taste for it, I will likely try out some barefoot running sandles. (Here are a couple: Luna and Invisible Shoe).  I have known about the vibram five finger for some time but wearing a neoprene foot sock doesn't seem like it would feel as good as open air sandles.

The other thing I have tried based on the book and quite like is a natural energy drink called Iskiate.  Hey anything that gets described as frog pond water and tastes good has to be interesting!   Its actually very good and made with lime, sugar, water and chia seeds.   Yes you heard right – the same seed from the  more widely known chia pet!  Here is the seed I ended up buying.

At the end of the day I will not be running in any ultra marathons anytime soon, but I love to get out and finding a way to run without injury will allow me to go further into the outdoors and enjoy are uniquely human trait of endurance running.  Plus as the book correctly states running is most enjoyable when its fun - when you are doing it for no other reason that the art of craft.  I would say that this goes for almost anything in life and business - not just running.  My next thought is, how will I continue to train like this through the winter? ... but of courses there are solutions to that as well

A couple of months ago I was given the opportunity to review some early work on an e-book by Brant Cooper (Market by Numbers) and Patrick Vlaskovits.  It was rough at the time but the idea of simplifying the very meaty 'Four Steps to the Epiphany' by Steve Blank would be a nice thing to add to the available materials in the Lean Startup community.  I had a great conversation with Brant at the time and looked forward to the completion of their work.  At the end of April they officially launched their book "The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development - A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany" at the Startup Lessons Learned Conference in San Francisco on April 23!  Last week I received a free copy for review.   Over this past weekend I read through the 73 page book and was very impressed on this nicely written, concise and easily referenced content.  The e-book focuses the Customer Discovery aspect of Customer Development, which is arguably the most important step for startups.

It's also much more than just a summary of The four Steps by bringing in other concepts from thought leaders in the space including Eric Ries, Sean Ellis, Brant Cooper and others.  While you can find all of this information scattered across many articles and blog posts over the past couple of years, it is really nice to have it consolidated in one place in a well organized format.  It is much more of what I would all an MVLP - A minimum viable learning product.  For example - just recently i wanted to introduce the concepts of customer development to a member of my team.  I gave her my copy of  The Four Steps which she is currently wading through, however, from a learning perspective The Four Steps is way more than an MVLP.  This e-book is much closer to that model and much more digestible for those looking to understand the basic and get started.  I also believe it would be a great introduction to managers and practitioners that may not be directly involved in Customer development but still need a good understanding of the concepts. 

While customer development is optimal for use in startups and chaotic environments I would contest that every business should operate as if they were under these conditions.  And while I agree with the authors when they say that these concepts can become more difficult to implement in a pure way the further you are down the path you are in the development of the business,  they can still be very useful in any organization.  Minimally it can serve as a great mental model to help move towards customer centricity.  Take for instance a large mature organization: An internal IT shop could use these concepts on all software projects, and no matter what aspect of a business you are working in you can always get out of the building more and better understand your customers and market.  After all, the market doesn't stand still and its moving faster than ever - why not be ready and on top of your game.   As I heard Eric Ries say in a recent presentation 'Disruption is coming to an industry near you'.  Be prepared with Customer Development.

A good friend/VC I know asked me recently about what the biggest lesson I learned from the book Rework by the guys at 37 signals that I would take back to my own startup. 

It is this: Getting to great starts by cutting out the stuff thats merely good.