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The below is a framework to think about the current entrepreneurial ecosystem in Louisville, diagnose what is wrong, and provide an alternative strategy for a more efficient path to better outcome.

A better outcomes is defined as:

more startups getting to Series A;
more efficient use of funds;
and better leveraging Louisville’s advantages. </aside>

Framework

Axes

x-axis - work ethic

y-axis - skill. note “skill” not “experience”.

Group

Normal Career - This is the red blob. These are normal career 40 hours a week individuals. This is the vast majority of people. They put in the required work.

Lifestyle Founders - This is the yellow blob. These are the Tim Ferriss “4 hour work week” founders. They become founders because:

They opt out of a normal career due to lack of career advancement
They mastered their normal career and looking to get the same for less work
Being a founder has been idolized and “the grass is greener”
Ego
This group is no different than normal career except they have diminished the work ethic.

Thoroughbreds - This is the top right purple blob. They have more skill and more work ethic compared to normal career. 80 hours a week is “normal”.

High Skill and Stallions Students we will touch upon later…

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Lifestyle founders create businesses and companies. Thoroughbreds create scalable startups.

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Current Situation

Louisville (and Kentucky) targets “entrepreneurship”. This vague term lumps both Lifestyle Founders and Thoroughbreds together. There are an order of magnitude more lifestyle founders than thoroughbreds. Metrics of success are early funnel and therefore select for lifestyle founders. Metrics include: “number of businesses started”, “number of workshop attendees”, “size of e-mail list”, “number of engagements”.

We (Louisville & Kentucky), think that if we optimize early funnel metrics, this will increase our likelihood of later funnel (i.e. Series A & IPO etc..). This is flawed thinking. This optimizes for a local maxima. The results speak for themselves…how has the last 10/20/40 years been?

Have we

caught up to our peers,
kept pace with our peers,
fallen further behind?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Current Solution

Current efforts in Louisville focuses on “programming” and “training”. The thesis is that Lifestyle Founders need the skills and can become Thoroughbreds.

The flaw in this is that skills are not the issue; it is work ethic. YOU CANNOT TEACH WORK ETHIC. Or more generously, it is very hard to teach work ethic.

Lifestyle Founders became “founders” in the first place on reduced work ethic. The paradigm we stress for Thoroughbreds is that more work ethic is required.

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For a founder, 40 hours a week is not even the minimum! 40 hours is called a normal job!

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<aside> ⚠️

I will receive push back here with stories of the rare exception. My thesis here is centered around ecosystem and placing bets on the highest likelihood outcome.

An analogy would be, who is more likely to be in the NBA, a person who’s 6ft or 7ft. Yes both are “tall people”. Yes there are 6ft people in the NBA. and yes the NBA requires skill, but a 7ft is much more likely to be in the NBA than a 6ft.

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Alternative Strategy

Given the framework, an alternative strategy is to focus on Thoroughbreds. There are two methods for getting Thoroughbreds.

Create - we train more thoroughbred (via skills)
Import - we import them from other geographies

Thus the only option is to import Thoroughbreds.

Retention

Creating Thoroughbreds is not enough, we must also retain them. Thoroughbreds stay for 3 things:

Other Thoroughbreds. - Thoroughbreds want to be “locally” surrounded by other Thoroughbreds . (the “local” distinction is to emphasize that 40 Thoroughbreds that interact daily is better than 400 that interact infrequently. collision density).
Stallions - Thoroughbreds respect and want Stallions. They share the same work ethic (and mindset) and can help the Thoroughbreds build the company.
High Skills (people) - Thoroughbreds need High Skills to fill their company.

Alternative Solution

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Our solution focuses on two tenants

Cultivate (and import) Stallions
Build a retention ecosystem focused on Thoroughbreds </aside>

Cultivation

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This will be the Deep Work Enclave

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To cultivate Stallions we will model our approach to https://www.justlaybrick.com/. We will import Stallions.

We will offer:

Free rent ($2K / mo - $24K / year)
Free office space ($30K / year up to 16 people)
Free food ($100 / person / month)

Assume 4 teams of 4 people - $150K total cost ($100K rent, $30K Office, $20K Food)

Optional Additions:

Health Insurance - ($200 / person / month) We can create a shell company that can provide them with health insurance
Gym - Grab membership to the JCC
Car - Louisville is a heavily car dependent city. We can do carshare so that they can get around.
Laptop - Provide them a laptop Day 1 as a perk.

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