The Foundry System

Our approach to training entrepreneurial leaders is deeply rooted in the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. We draw on insights from over a half-century of entrepreneurship research, public/private sector programs, and knowledge/scar tissue gained through painful experience to build curriculum and mechanisms for delivery that are straightforward, potent, and focus attention and training at the greatest points of leverage.

We train people how to find an idea that fits, and to fit that idea to a market. Promising people and teams pursue failed projects because they do not know how to quickly and effectively evaluate person/opportunity and product/market fit. Great teams pursuing flawed businesses fail - and they rarely do so quickly, and thus it is hard to learn. In contrast, the Foundry draws on a longstanding and evolving domain of knowledge to teach people how to construct cheap, iterative experiments that wring the unknowns and risk out of the new venture, address the underlying economics of the business, and clarify what resources are missing to succeed. These insights are knowable, teachable, documented, well-understood in practice (think "lean startup" or "nail it and scale it") and they work.

We train people how to manage themselves and create great teams. Entrepreneurship is a team sport: even a one-person business has a community committed to its existence (you might call that community its customers). People with great ideas or nascent businesses rarely fail because the business is too complicated in its earliest stages. The bottom line is that most people cannot manage themselves out of a paper bag. This is a tough pill to swallow, as most people believe that they are good workers (just like most people overestimate their ability as drivers). Further, most teams - built as they are from people who overestimate their own ability - are profoundly dysfunctional, and unaware of their dysfunction. In our experience startups are, in the main, a couple of great insights followed by a mighty slugfest - and it is here, in the day to day ditch-digging that is company-building, that most individuals and teams come up short. Thus, at the Foundry we draw from what is known in the domains of executive coaching, behavior change, organization theory, and corporate training to implement a very simple, straightforward, lowest-common-denominator set of practices that help people learn how to learn. Said another way, we help people understand exactly where they are at in terms of their ability, and then provide an environment where they get quick feedback.