You're bad at entrepreneurship, and you should feel bad

This is a high level problem that’s rampant in the startup space, and it’s the number one contributor to an epidemic of over 80% attrition rate on startup success. People being bad. Not because of a lack of intelligence or insight, nor lack of effort or hustle, but because startups rely too heavily on improvisational learning and inefficient procedures. Procedures that for the most part have already been optimized by someone working on or for another startup.

There are three types of knowledge that contribute to competitive advantage when running a startup:

• 1. about the industry in which the startup competes;
• 2. about the type of business approach the startup is pursuing; and
• 3. about creating, building, and harvesting new sustainable distribution.

We focus on helping startups deliver on 2 and 3, and we provide a network for entrepreneurs to collaborate on transferring knowledge for number 1. We do this by focusing on Procedural knowledge.

Startups need “Procedural Knowledge”

Procedural knowledge, or implicit knowledge is different from other kinds of knowledge, such as declarative knowledge, in that it can be directly applied to a task. For instance, the procedural knowledge one uses to solve problems differs from the declarative knowledge one possesses about problem solving because this knowledge is formed by doing. Knowledge useful to the new startup is developed either through relevant personal experiences or by accessing relevant knowledge possessed by others.

ex. You may know which pedal is the accelerator and which is the brake. You may know where the handbrake is and what it does. You may know where your blind spots are and when you need to check them. But until you get behind the wheel and learn how to apply all this theory, you do not know how to drive.

This is why we built accel.io (the platform startupplays.com runs on) so that the World can benefit from the procedural knowledge of others. Successful entrepreneurs, mentors, lawyers, accountants, and people who have done it before and benefitted from the learning curve.

What goes into Procedural based knowledge absorbtion?

• 1. Chronologically based milestones pre-filled with a subset of tasks that break down the milestone.
• 2. Protips to distill important knowledge about a subject and share it with those new to said subject.
• 3. Comments for team members to share important insights; and
• 4. of course documents and templates the author has used to facilitate the procedure in the past.

THIS is how bad entrepreneurs get better, and how we will fix the failure rate among entrepreneurs. To get started:

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