Alex Lightman tells entrepreneurs to cut the nonsense and go after big challenges. He argues that only the most ambitious, daring, and seemingly mammoth ideas are those who often claim victory at the day's end. He lays out a plan to sift through ideas and find the winners, and to create a vision for those great ideas. This ultimately results in success. This content was produced for the 2015 Los Angeles semester of the Founder Institute by Founder Institute mentor Alex Lightman, author, entrepreneur, and futurist. Check out Alex's website to learn more: http://alexlightman.com/

1. Vision, Values, and Ideas: The Case
for Going After Big Challenges
Alex Lightman
Founder Institute
January 12, 2015

2. What do you want?
• What is important to you?
• Most people want you to ask this question.
• “Everyone’s favorite radio station is WIIFM.
What’s In It For Me?”
• Part of the fun and challenge of being a great
entrepreneurship is playing a game:
• articulating what you want, and then attracting
and enrolling other people to want that also, and
getting them to pay you to get it.

3. What Do I Want?
• A world in which anyone can buy, sell, borrow,
loan, and swap with anyone else, and can
meet, collaborate with, and accomplish
projects, from anywhere on earth, online.
• A world in which people can live their lives,
eat, their food, travel, and work entirely
fueled with clean renewable energy.
• A world in which people can eat fresh, healthy
food within hours of the food being picked.

4. How Do I Make This Happen?
• Chairman of Witkit – collaboration software
• Chairman of Everblaze – solar PV innovation
• Advisory board and first outside investor in
Natural Machines – 3D food printing
• Chairman of Global Innovation Network for
Entrepreneurship and Technology (GINET) –
commercialization of university technology

5. Vision
• Vision is highly focused and selective glimpse
of a future world that is different because of
you and what your company accomplished.
• Vision is a guilty pleasure.
• A great vision is a paradox. It’s egotistical and
solipsistic – the world remade the way you
want it to be remade. It’s also very benevolent
and selfless – you are going to dedicate your
life to changing the world.

6. Where Vision Fits In
• Vision – how the future will change after you
• Mission – Accomplishment your company is
focused on relentlessly
• Strategy – Your choice between low cost or
high service/customization.
• Tactics – Projects, partnerships, funding
choices. Includes “Must-Win Battles”.
• Operations – Plan your work and work your
plan

7. Ways To Convey Your Vision
• Videos (watch all the Sandwich videos)
• TV (watch all the Natural Machines news)
• Books (Brave New Unwired World, Reconciliation)
• Models (get a 3D printer, check out evrTree)
• Facebook group
• Kickstarter (includes video plus prizes)
• Fashion show
• Conferences and summits
• Placement in TV shows, movies, games…

9. Facebook Groups: Unfair Advantage
• Bitcoin and the Internet of Money (read and
copy the policies, if you wish) 5,428 members
• Solar and the Internet of Energy
• STEAMPuffs
• ET3
• Everblaze
• 3D Printing and the Internet of Things and
Food

10. Where Good Ideas Come From
• This is the title of a very good book, by Steven
Johnson, subtitle, “A Natural History of
Innovation.”
• Good ideas come from having lots and lots of
ideas and keeping track of them.
• A great way to get lots of ideas is to make a
daily habit of filling notebooks with mini-
analyses every day: Observation. Diagnosis.
Prognosis. Prescription.

11. Sifting Through Ideas
• If you do the four step mini-analyses 1 to 6x a day
of Observation, Diagnosis, Prognosis, and
Prescription habitually, you will come up with
thousands of new ideas.
• There are three primary ways to try these out and
see if there is merit are:
• Get together with trusted friends and
discuss…then do the same with adversaries.
• Put the ideas out on social media in specialty
groups. Delete after you test, if you wish.
• Publish the ideas and/or speak, and be open.

12. But It’s NOT Just About Ideas!
• The title of this section used to be “Vision,
Values, and Leadership.” And it still should.
• Values make a big difference, and are a great
way to both generate ideas, and to filter them.
• You can prove this to yourself by learning
about or recalling great business rivalries and
articulating the differences in values, and
results.

13. Values Make A Difference - 1
• 3D food printing has three leading entrants. XYZ printers,
ChefJet from 3D Systems and Foodini from Natural
Machines
• Spent hours with all three companies and their marketing
managers.
• XYZ and ChefJet examples were 100% candy, chocolate,
cookies, and wedding cakes. 100%!
• Natural Machines examples are 100% about “eating free
healthy food” with fewer preservatives.
• A world with XYZ and ChefJet is even more obese.
• A world filled with Foodini is more healthy.
• So I as of today I am one of the first three investors in NM.

14. 3DSystems ChefJet – Sugar Skulls

15. Natural Machines Foodini
http://www.naturalmachines.com

16. Values Make A Difference - 2
• Solar photovoltaics is a big industry and growing 100% a
year, with many companies installing PV and manufacturers
copying the same designs.
• Existing solar is roof-mounted and ground-mounted. Out of
sight, out of mind.
• Everblaze is a company that has already created six new
innovative designs that will take solar into new places,
including evrTrees, which will put solar in the middle of
cities, where people can see, touch, recharge, get shade,
and converse adjacent to solar, and use photons.
• My value of wanting people to SEE solar and interact with
it, led to the creation of the evrTree, through the team. My
value of helping farmers led to the creation of the evrPivot.

17. evrTree – dream in progress

18. Values Make A Difference - 3
• I have invested thousands of hours into
Facebook. If the hours invested by users into
Facebook were paid at minimum wage, this
would come to over $500,000,000,000.
• FB is valued at over $200 billion because FB
packages your information and sells you.
• My values are PRIVACY, security, and
collaboration, and the five freedoms from “The
Science of Liberty”, which informs the approach
of Witkit as the first encrypted collaboration SaaS
platform.

19. Think “Resume”, “Wiki” and “Bio”.
• Make sure that you have a great resume, a
great Wikipedia entry, and a great bio. It’s
better to live your life in such a way that other
people write these about you; if only you
know, then you are “pushing” vs. attracting.
• Be part of organizations that are worth talks
that TED, TEDx, BIL, and other groups want.
• Seek to win awards.

20. Think “Crowdsourcing”
• A successful funding, whether from friends and
family, VCs, or crowd-funding, is a right of
passage.
• Be a credible expert and leader of a community.
Create a focused community on Facebook or
other social media. Have good admin policies.
• Do a simple Kickstarter for $25,000 to $500,000
to build your mailing list, name recognition, and
reputation for delivering by succeeding.

21. Go After Meaningful Hard Problems
• Transition away from polluting fuels
• Transition toward clean fuels
• Reducing violence
• Reducing obesity and overweight
• Increasing peace, love, relationships
• Increasing collaboration
• Increasing safety, security, privacy

22. My contact information
• Alex Lightman
• alex@witkit.com
• 310-717-7745
• Feel free to friend or follow me on Witkit.
• If you’d like to know more about Witkit,
Natural Machines, or Everblaze, let’s talk.