The Expert Program PoV

Most days I have at least one a new idea.

They can be seemingly trivial, in an area I have no right to execute, like ;- Why isn't there a Premium shoelace brand so kids who can't afford the Nike Air Yezzy sneakers can still be cool with just the premium shoe laces.

Or, they can be in my swim-lane, intricate and complex, like;- The number of positive opportunities that extends beyond a well-executed digital identity that enables us all to manage our data and privacy.

Sometimes I go to the trouble of writing down, and refining a Point of View (shoelace PoV) to help me think through the idea, sometimes I go to the trouble of proving out the bullets in the PoV, and occasionally I write a business plan. And about 15 times I have 'got off the couch' and gone to the trouble of starting something

But, mostly I do nothing.

This Point of View is aimed at people who 'have the right' and are truly experts in a field, and have 'woken up' one day with a rough idea and actually want to do something about it;-

• Ideas are mostly worthless

• Everyday millions of people all around the world wake up with ideas

• Most of those ideas are never executed

• They are not executed because the person either;

  • does not have the risk appetite to develop it (the butcher who won’t risk investing her time or money) or;

  • does not have, or access to, the ‘material’ expertise to execute it (a non-technical butcher who has an app idea),

• That risk appetite is often a function of context or situation. Personal balance sheet items like dependents and mortgages all increase perceived risk

• These risks can be controlled or mitigated via various methodologies to improve confidence through the assessment process (ie. getting empirical proof of key success drivers)

• Even with controlled risks, the founder/s ideally needs core expertise in the space/market/industry where their idea resides

• From an early stage investor's perspective, this can significantly decrease the early market acceptance risk given ‘material’ expertise takes understanding, which comes with time, experience, mistakes, trial and error in a specific area.

• As a result, it appears ‘material’ expertise is one of two key independent variables in managing early stage ‘idea risk’. The other risk is commitment risk (‘people risk’) which is harder to assess

• So if material expertise is important to investors then how do these people with expertise get trained to improve their risk appetite

• Material expertise is increasingly important given the knowledge graph requirement for many future AI applications

• Given it takes time to gain material expertise, any such founder is likely to be mid-career, well paid, with commitments (family, mortgage, etc), leading to higher perceived risks.

• Hence there is a need to decrease the founders perceived risks whilst they maintain their ‘day job’ until the idea thesis is at a stage that success confidence outweighs perceived risks

• This often will take detailed advice, time refining, proving out a point of view, defining strategy, business model and unit economics before any risk is taken by investors or the emerging founder.

• Hence, Sector Light will be running a program for a small number of emerging founders with material expertise

Meaning, we will help emerging ‘expert’ founders determine if their ideas are original, directionally correct, important and whether they have the attributes and capabilities to succeed.

Learn more about it here.