Starting a business can feel overwhelming. The whole experience can be fraught with doubt. Questions arise such as what do I build, will anyone want this, will it have the impact I want, what is the best next step, and am I wasting my time?

However, it is also a period of creativity, growth, and engagement.

I first started in social entrepreneurship where I developed and launched four microcredit programs in three countries, which have grown to have thousands of clients. In those days, being on a mission to change the world and away from friends and family, I prioritized my life around a singular focus, to build the foundation for a successful program, and would just work longer hours when I came to a bottleneck. Over time, I learned that working smarter and focusing on validating critical business assumptions would lead to productivity gains that far exceed the number of hours in a day.

Over the past 10-years I developed expertise in using entrepreneurial frameworks; including lean startup, customer development, design thinking, and testing business ideas; to launch and grow tech startups. For the past six years, I have mentored early-stage technology startups in how to use the principles and tactics from these methodologies to uncover business models that are profitable, desirable to customers, and technically feasible to build.

In seeing how these techniques maximize the rate of learning and ultimately build a better businesses faster, I have begun to simplify the content into actionable steps for one-person businesses.

• MBA from University of British Columbia

• Certified Leanstack Mentor

• Consultant to technology startups

• Expert in using entrepreneurial frameworks to build better businesses faster