What makes it work when it works? The secret Sauce
Camaraderie. My definition: 'people being together because they all like the way it feels-way good.' That was the 'secret sauce' of the Pre-Seed team that I had the pleasure and honor to work with this past spring. We had all the ingredients, but as any good cook knows, it takes more than just that. Let's examine the recipe in greater detail.
The main ingredient was our 'idea champion,' Rana Zadeh. Now, this isn't a simple recipe; she alone had two parts: 'idea' and 'champion.' The 'idea' part was great. Let's leave it at that, as it, itself, had more sub-ingredients than a complex curry. The 'champion' part, however, was what made this special. It was exotic and inspiring, and it humbly invited all of the other ingredients to jump in and add their unique flavors in a way that, in combination, made a delicious, secret sauce. There were of course some of the basic workhorse ingredients without which no recipe will work. We had a 'heap'in help'in' of coach in Mark Wilson, a co-founder of the Pre-Seed Workshop. And generous portions of organizational skills, technical expertise, mentor, research, computer savvy, business insight, legal knowledge, all contributing in a way that absent any one of them our sauce would have tasted flat. And when the recipe called for that unique spice to be added at the end, a solid revenue model, well, we had that too.
Our sauce simmered actively for a full week, never boiling over and never cooling down. On that second Friday when it was finally ready, when we all got to taste our creation, it wasn't just good—it was 'special.'
I believe, though, that if you put a sample of this sauce in a spectrometer and identified all of the ingredients, you wouldn't be able to reverse engineer what we had made. There was some chemical bonding going on that remained very proprietary. My diet? I'll have seconds of this sauce anytime.
William Greener
If you would like to learn more about our alumni, click here.