Who Not How

For the past few weeks I've started reaching out to folks with experience building successful hardware startups—for ...


For the past few weeks I've started reaching out to folks with experience building successful hardware startups—for advice on development strategies and financing strategies. At the same time, my Kindle recommended a book to me called “Who Not How” that I started reading and hope to finish today.

I don’t want to write a book report or a review, but it’s been helpful to absorb such a strong message that advocates for finding the right Who’s to help me solve problems and make progress on my goals.

In fact, it’s interesting to look back on my Company Updates to find a key example where focusing too much on the How actually cost me a lot of time and didn’t lead to any significant results for the company. Earlier this year I invested a lot of time and money—a lot of time… like… a. lot… into a very sophisticated development kit that I ultimately couldn’t get to work and ended up returning. Even the process of returning it and receiving my refund took months of time and constant nagging at the distributor and the manufacturer.

Whereas I can also find a couple of examples of where I found great Who’s to help me make great progress on the business:

  • I hired a lawyer to help me file my provisional patent — we got the work done faster, at MUCH higher quality, and was a huge boost to my confidence.

  • In May I was accepted into the MIT Enterprise Forum Mentorship Program. I have since received hours and hours of amazing support from my mentorship team that has helped me accelerate in ways I didn’t even know I needed.

As I look at my current list of business risks and technical risks to mitigate, I’m going to use an approach of finding the right Who’s to help me through.


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