Katherine von Jan

In last week’s radical Briefing, Jeffrey made a strong argument that we explore (and embrace) the “messy middle” in our endeavors to shape the future. His remarks hit a nerve with our community—we had lots of good conversations both on Substack and in our WhatsApp channel. Building on Jeffrey’s insight, I believe for organizations of all kinds to successfully navigate the ambiguity (and thus “messiness”) of our world, it is paramount to have clarity on their North Star. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once observed that “if you know the why, you can live any how.” And, of course, American author Simon Sinek, in his famous TED talk, urged leaders to “start with why.” If this sounds familiar, and you count yourself lucky to work for (or run) an organization that has done the work of creating and communicating a good mission statement, consider this wrinkle: Is your mission statement, your North Star, your why clear, concise, and memorable? Can your people recite it by heart and do they truly understand your organization’s direction? Does it work not only as an aspirational tagline but as the ultimate clarifying device it ought to be? All too often, when I look up a company’s mission statement, it reads something like this: …blah blah blah blah innovation blah blah blah culture blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah market leader blah blah blah blah blah blah honesty blah blah blah blah excellence blah blah integrity blah blah blah blah strategies blah blah blah blah… To make sure your mission statement is not just a fancy marketing slogan but truly operates as your organization’s North Star, Kevin Starr, CEO of the Mulago Foundation, created the Eight-Word-Mission-Statement: Formulate your mission statement in the form of Verb – Target – Outcome—using eight words or less. In more detail: What are you doing (verb), for whose benefit (target), to what end (outcome). It is a powerful method to clarify and create a yardstick to measure whether any activity is inside or outside your scope. Want an example? Be radical’s mission statement is “Enable leaders and learners to seize the future.” We enable by teaching tools and frameworks, focusing on leaders inside organizations, not frontline employees, to build the future, which means we don’t work on day-to-day strategy. Your Eight-Word-Mission-Statement might not be suitable for marketing materials, but it will become the guiding star for you and your team, helping you clearly understand your activities (and, equally as important, what you don’t do). It is the sentence your people can recite even at 2am if asked: What does your company (and you) do? And it provides the clarity you and your organization need to navigate the messy middle, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Lastly, you can create Eight-Word-Mission-Statements not only for the company but also for business or organizational units, teams, and even for yourself. Give it a try—and if you like, share it here. #strategy #missionstatement

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Today marks a groundbreaking moment for BLCK VC and our fellow collaborators—Diversity VC, All Raise, 2Gether-International, SomosVC, StartOut, and VetsinTech—as we proudly announce the launch of the Diversity Data Alliance. This important alliance underscores our unwavering commitment to nurturing a venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem abundant in equity and inclusiveness. By standardizing and linking our data, we empower ourselves with the essential tools to track deeper trends that have, until now, eluded us to identify and fill funding gaps for historically excluded investors, founders, and operators. We can’t change what we do not measure, and now with the Diversity Data Alliance, we're now equipped to do both. Join us in this mission. Learn more and get involved: https://lnkd.in/eEZKdrac #DiversityDataAlliance #BLCKVC #VentureCapital #MeasureToChange

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How does AI Changes Your Workforce? A great video from MIT Sloan School of Management, where they share insights on how AI is reshaping work, workers, and talent ecosystems.. 👀⤵️ If your a founder (or investor) in this space of AI, I would suggest you to have a look. All credits to Elizabeth Altman, David Kiron and M. Shawn Read. 👏🏽 #firstdegree #founders #investors 
#changethewaywework #whyrelationshipsmatter https://lnkd.in/e36qzpHr

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I echo and a firm believer of Laurel Mintz take on Diversity - "Diversity in thought, diversity in boards, diversity in public companies, diversity in all of this is what creates a better culture. It's what creates better outcomes, both financially and emotionally. Ultimately, it's just a better approach to creating a more well-rounded society.” #ImpactInvesting #VentureCapital #PurposeDrivenInvestors

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While David C. Baker focuses on the agency space, this article outlines a very useful decision-making framework for leaders across industries. A lot of startup CEO's and founders are grappling with the same questions/opportunities. VC's trying to coach CEO's should also read this and lookout for the signs of paralysis.

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If you're an LGBTQIA+ founder, you NEED to apply to StartOut Growth Lab. As a current cohort fellow, I can tell you it has been a transformative experience surrounded by the best people imaginable. Not only the staff, volunteers, and mentors at StartOut, but also getting to know the other queer founders in the cohort. We're only halfway through and already the deliverables have been priceless. Don't hesitate! You lose nothing by applying and have absolutely everything to gain. #accelerator #startups #founderresources #startupsupport #applicationsopen #lgbtqiafounders #underrepresentedfounders

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Drop In Venture Funding To Black-Founded Startups Greatly Outpaces Market Decline Chris MetinkoGené Teare February 27, 2024 Venture funding to Black-founded U.S. startups last year totaled only $705 million — marking the first time since 2016 that the figure failed to even reach $1 billion, Crunchbase data shows. The decline in capital to Black-founded companies greatly outpaces the overall decline in startup funding. While total venture dollars in the U.S. fell 37% last year, funding to Black-founded startups dropped a staggering 71%, according to Crunchbase data. Last year’s total investment in Black-founded startups in the U.S. marks the lowest amount since such startups raised only $582 million in 2016. The drop in total dollars also meant Black-founded startups received their lowest share in the venture market since at least 2016, per Crunchbase. Black-founded startups received less than 0.5% of the $140.4 billion in venture funding all U.S.-based startups received last year. In 2021, Black-founded startups received 1.4% of all U.S. venture funding. In 2022, it was 1.1%.

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Watch the replay of our latest webinar, "The Role of AI in Cultivating Tomorrow's Leaders." Josh Bersin, founder and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, shares insights on Heidrick Navigator and the power of leveraging a leadership intelligence platform to manage and create robust pipelines for senior leaders, paving the way for unparalleled growth and success: https://bit.ly/3JfTUYg.​ Josh Bersin Academy #HeidrickNavigator #Leadership #FutureLeaders #AI ​

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Check out the first episode of Balderton Capital's new video series, "What's Next," where deep tech entrepreneurs share their experiences developing innovative technologies that have the potential to impact millions of lives. In the debut episode, James Wise interviews Alex Kendall, founder of Wayve, who recently announced their impressive $1bn Series C fundraise. Don't miss this insightful conversation on the future of tech! #BaldertonCapital #WhatsNext #DeepTech #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #TechLeadership

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What should an aspiring #CMO know? Fantastic bonus question from Kathleen Booth at the end of the panel discussion ’How is the cmo role being reinvented’ with Andrew Davies Paddle, Jack Foster of WorkRamp and Alex Poulos of Crossbeam. Andrew P says: "First and foremost, prioritize the business goals over everything else. Care more about growing the company than sticking to your budget. Stay curious, not judgmental, and make sure to deeply understand the company, its customers, and your team." Jack F adds: "Talk to customers regularly and have a bias towards action. Don't get stuck in analysis paralysis; get stuff out the door and iterate based on feedback." Andrew D, the accidental CMO(!) advises: "Understand the business inside out and allocate resources strategically to drive revenue. Be the primary source of customer insight within the organization to steer marketing efforts effectively." In summary, aspiring CMOs should focus on the business, prioritize customer interaction and action, and drive revenue through strategic resource allocation and customer-centric insights. #CMOInsights #MarketingLeadership 💼📈#goldenhour

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Last week, IVP convened 20 of Europe’s most ambitious CEOs to London for our annual CEO Meetup - an intimate day of conversation, learning and connection featuring leaders at UiPath, Miro, GitHub and others. The community and shared learning in the room was off the charts! ➡️ Daniel Dines talked about why humility is at the core of UiPath's success ➡️ Hryhorii (Grisha) Pavlotskyi talked about "secretly hiring" the superstars in your industry, and why he never wants to be an expert in anything at Miro ➡️ Paul S. talked about the "community-led growth" he created while leading worldwide sales at GitHub - and why he eschews demand-gen strategies ➡️ Andrew Dudum described his approach to building brand and taking a 4-year young company public during hypergrowth ➡️ A world-champion Formula 1 team performs a lot like a startup 🏎️by bringing together technically gifted people to pursue max performance. Nick Fry shared relatable advice on innovating when your back is against the wall. Building Europe into a tech powerhouse will require collaboration. It was energizing to see these connections being built in real time.

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Some midweek wisdom from Y Combinator founder, Paul Graham, on why startups shouldn't stress over competitors. According to Graham, based on Y Combinator's extensive data set, few of their startups are actually killed by competitors. He compares the protection a startup has against competitors to the vastness of space, emphasising that the market is large enough for multiple players to thrive. Graham's analogy likens encountering a competitor to suddenly finding another runner in your race lane - the best course of action? “It’s sort of like if you’re running the hundred meters and suddenly a lane appears with another runner in it. What should you do? Run as fast as you can, just like you presumably were.” #Startups #Competition #Entrepreneurship #wearehiring

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Something that stuck with me from my chat last week with Kwasi Ohene-Adu, founder and CEO of Groovetime, about how he uses #Dots. “We ask our creators how they like to get paid…They’re not thinking of #Dots, they’re thinking of the different ways we can pay them.” Basically, embedded payouts. Groovetime is a #marketing platform for artists and record labels, a gamified entertainment #app for consumers, and a channel dance #creators use to monetize their intellectual property. It uses Dots to send money to creators when they’re sponsored by artists and labels. Kwasi and I spent a solid half hour talking about why real-time #globalpayments matter to creators, what made him come back to Dots after working with web3, and how the Dots #API helps Groovetime build trust with end users. Read Groovetime’s customer story: https://lnkd.in/gr4tHhrU #dance #fintech #payouts

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Wonderful article about Emily Knight and the whole The Engine Accelerator team on the amazing work their doing changing the world with #ToughTech!

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Fun to see some insights appear in Rachel Feintzeig’s fantastic The Wall Street Journal piece over the weekend! 👏🏼👏🏼 “To get to your next big idea, you have to be OK with bombing a bit, says Jeremy Utley, a general partner at a venture-capital firm who teaches at Stanford’s design school, known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford ( d.school ). “Most of life is not punctuated by win after win after win. Most of the time, it’s kind of painful,” he says. Brainstorm 10 possible answers to a question or dilemma at a time, he advises. Focusing on quantity over quality takes off the pressure. Use a bad idea as a jumping–off point. What else does it make you think of? Or try taking what Utley calls a “wonder wander.” Head off with your problem in mind, and relate everything you see to the problem. Spot an Amazon truck? Consider how Jeff Bezos might solve your quandary. Walk past a playground? Imagine the connection between your issue and play. ChatGPT could help too, if you use it right. It isn’t going to pop out the perfect answer on the first try, Utley says. Kick off the conversation by describing the boss you want to impress. Then ask: What are three projects that could blow that boss’s mind? Keep chatting with it until you spark something great…” Link in comments …

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Today, I was reminded of two remarkably prescient 1997 ACM, Association for Computing Machinery presentations: the first by Nathan Myhrvold and the second by Bran Ferran. If you are not a member of the ACM - I highly recommend joining. Nathan Myhrvold The future of software, the software industry, and Windows '47 https://lnkd.in/egMwYty Bran Ferran How IT will transform the experience of telling and listening to stories https://lnkd.in/gqF7C7TK

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There are emotional and strategic complexities founders face when considering selling their tech startups, emphasizing the need to evaluate all stakeholders' benefits, explore alternatives, understand post-acquisition roles, and plan future endeavors amid potential M&A market revival. https://lnkd.in/eG8dubQw

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Connections, Community and support. I just finished listening to Anna Kincannon, MBA and Rebecca M.'s latest podcast “Is That Cashmere” Their interview with Andrea Markstrom ,  has me reflecting on connections. The value of purposeful networking:  which isn’t just about collecting contacts, it’s about forming relationships that have depth and potential for mutual benefit. Supportive networks, as connectors:  Andrea’s i.WILL ((Inspiring Women Igniting Leadership & Learning) and,  Anna and Rebecca’s Twin Cities Finance Women  are platforms that help individuals rise and succeed. Networks that act as a  safety net and springboard enabling members to take risks and grow. Empowerment Through Community:  Andrea’s initiative to start i.WILL without barriers, enabling a diverse group of women to join, reflects a commitment to empowering others by  making connections accessible. Her emphasis on giving back and supporting women across different sectors highlights how connections can extend  beyond immediate personal or professional gain to broader societal impact. A powerful conversation  between some powerful women,  sharing about overcoming common challenges,  such as feeling unheard or battling imposter syndrome. But as I drove home   after a particularly tough week. I was unexpectedly moved to tears. they mentioned my name, you see I had connected them. Often, my efforts to drive culture, nurture the new, and make impactful connections don't unfold as expected. Yet, here was a tangible affirmation that even small efforts can have significant effects. This isn’t about me..  it is about all of us, who strive to make a difference through the connections we make. This was precisely what I needed Thank you, Anna, Rebecca and Andrea for reminding me of the power of Simple acts of connection. I look forward to more "Is that Cashmere" Conversations.

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What do you do when a radical new technology puts your main product right in the crosshairs of disruption? Listen to David Okuniev — co-founder of Typeform | Ask awesomely — discuss the challenges of innovation within existing structures. David shared a game-changing insight: Radical innovation is really, really difficult to do inside your own product. He emphasized the need to break free from the constraints of familiarity and embrace change from outside the box. Henrik Werdelin and I have both seen our fair share of this in our respective careers. What struck us most was how David leveraged structure to overcome the innovator’s dilemma. By creating a culture of experimentation and providing space for bold ideas, he propelled Typeform beyond incremental improvements. What other hacks have you seen or employed to help your organization overcome the innovator’s dilemma? Share your stories below! 👇 And if you want to dive deeper into our conversation, click the link in the comments to catch the full podcast episode!

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