5 startups in 10 weeks?

Where I build in public, just ship it, and fail fast.

I’m one week into my ten week run as an OnDeck Climate Tech Fellow. So far, so awesome. Here’s what I’m trying to build/learn.

I like to electrify old motorcycles. Here’s the latest one: 

photo by Michael Lichter

See that shiny box sitting where the gas motor used to be? Those are batteries from a Nissan Leaf electric car. After they got too tired to move a car around, they still had plenty of juice left to make this 1973 BMW go plenty fast. 

I’ve been cramming batteries into bikes for about 15 years now, occasionally completing an actual build. I’ve been at my newest project — a 1984 Vespa — for two years. You could say I have a problem finishing things. 

Two years ago I got a call from a good friend — way better at finishing things—who’d finished building lots of solar power plants in California over the last decade. We were riffing on the role cheap energy storage needed to play on the electric grid, and he was starting to experimenting with grid-scale storage using the same used Nissan Leaf batteries I was cramming into motorcycles. 

Same batteries —different problems to solve. I was looking for a cooler way to pull up to my local coffee shop; he was trying to keep the increasingly solar-dependent California power grid from going down when the sun set. His pilot worked. Now I’m a committed investor in B2U Storage Solutions. Along the way, I’ve learned about the duck curve, energy markets, and acronyms like CAISO, and SCADA. I’ve also learned something about myself:

Electrifying stuff is my jam. 

Turns out there are lots of way smarter people, actual scientists, who have the same jam. Saul Griffith thinks we should electrify everything we can as fast as we can. 

I agree with Saul. Earlier this year, I started volunteering for his inspiring new non-profit — Rewiring America — and I’m learning how hard the work ahead is and how to maintain hope that we humans can do this.

How to be useful in ten weeks?

Electrifying everything is probably not going to happen in a ten week fellowship. But building a few simple tools to help people just electrify something? That I can do. 

As long as I ship.

Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder once said, “if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.” Marissa Mayer was right, too: “Creativity loves constraints.” Before the fellowship kicked off last week, I surfed around for examples of time-constrained sprints that might help. I found two great ones: 

• Jennifer Dewalt learns to code by building 180 websites in 180 days

• Peter Levels launches 12 startups in 12 months

I split the difference between daily and monthly and committed to once every two weeks — 5 launches. In our very first session together, the On Deck team challenged that idea—encouraging us to ship things in the second 5 weeks and focus on learning from other fellows in the first 5. That sounded familiar.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” — Albert Einstein

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Weeks 1–2: Crowdsource 99 problems people have electrifying stuff

Inspired by Peter’s Nomad Lists story (and Jay-Z), I’m asking for help before I build something shiny nobody needs. Like Peter, I’ve built a google spreadsheet and shared with anyone who wants to help. If you click this link, you’ll find 3 tabs:

• 99 problems people face electrifying something at home or around town
  This doesn’t have to be comprehensive, just good enough to get a handle on real roadblocks worth moving for people.

• Potential solutions from adjacent spaces
  This is a space for crazy ideas, even bad ideas, with a special emphasis on solutions to similar problems in adjacent spaces.

• Design elements that matter to me
  A space for how we should build — the stuff that might turn into values & culture if one of these actually works.

Weeks 3–5: Build 5 simple Software MVPs with no code

If we’re talking 5 made-from-scratch software tools for people to use in the next few weeks, I’m doomed. The more I studied Jennifer and Peter’s experiments, the more I learned about the fascinating world of no-code software development. Before you whisper to your neighbor, “Matt finally found it, his Fountain of Laziness,” I’d challenge you to spend some time in these communities. The energy, enthusiasm and generosity is infectious. And its familiar. 

• Indie Hackers

• MicroConf

• No Code Devs

• No Code Founders

• Side Hustle Stack

Weeks 6–9: Ship and learn with users

Building in public’s not enough, I’ve got to ship whatever I build and try to sell it to real people. Places I’m thinking about launching:

• Product Hunt

• Reddit — gulp

• Hacker News — double gulp

• Tik Tok

• Etsy

• Dribbble

• Shopify

Week 10: Shut down what doesn’t work

I’m a firm believer in the brutal math of startups, especially in regulated, hyper-localized markets like energy and education. There may be a genius or two who gets it right on try one or two; I’m not that genius. It will take reps to find founder/product/market fit. That #’s closer to 10 than 1, so I might as well get on with failing as fast as I can while still learning something from each try. 

Along the way: Share what I’m learning — about the future of school

“Yes, and” seems like the only way to respond to Jennifer, Peter, and others who’ve taken the time to share, so If I have any new hunches, I’ll share them. 

I have two half-hunches already, both are less about the future of software or climate than they are about the future of school and learning: 

1. There’s a profound commitment at OnDeck and in most of these communities — say Li Jin’s Side Hustle Stack — to iteration and popular participation — things Highlander Folk School founder Myles Horton and Brazil’s Paolo Friere considered fundamental to education that liberates and equalizes in We Make the Road by Walking.

2. High-quality, high-volume hunch collision is happening. In Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson says caffeine was the enabling tech of the Enlightenment coffeehouses of Europe. In the hands of the baristas at On Deck, a artisanal blend of Zapier, Integromat, Zoom, and Slack is opening up another type of space where humans can supercharge innovation.

We’ll see what my inner entrepreneur learns about finishing things, but I’m pretty sure my inner teacher’s already jamming on the lessons he’ll learn about what school could look like some day. I’ll keep you posted on both.

Please follow along at nightshiftbikes.com, twitter.com/mcandler, and if you want to see me finish that Vespa, instagram.com/nightshiftbikes.

Onward, 

Matt