The Startup ManyFesto

Dear reader — hopefully you’re an entrepreneur (aspiring or experienced) interested in solving the problems within entrepreneurship itself — please find this as a first in a series of posts, or perhaps versions of the Jovian Manifesto, where I make a humble attempt at elaborating & communicating the vision & strategy behind JUPTER for finding, funding & launching the future! We know that this is now more important than ever in the history of our company and so we’re hereby committing to a more transparent & communicative future about what we do and how do we plan to, with your help of course, drastically reduce the startup mortality rate — & I mean by orders of magnitude!

This post first appeared in December 2018 on Medium here: https://medium.com/@JovianKaz/the-manyfesto-18d90a797ae9

What’s a ManyFesto?

A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. So a “manyfesto” (many manifestos) would be a compilation, group or multiple versions of such manifestos. The purpose here is to stimulate more entrepreneurs from startups that are Orbiting JUPTER to produce & launch their own declaration of intentions, motives or views about the unique problems and markets that we each are attempting to solve for! So what’s your manifesto? Feel free to contribute to the #Jovian #Startup #ManyFesto with your declaration of a problem you’re going to solve with your start-up.

— “The Jovian Manifesto v1.0: A pragmatic approach to building the future” was first published (mostly internally) during the year end period of 2016, the year when JUPTER was officially born & things began to take form — Here’s the original UNCUT version which should be read as pre-requisite for the rest of this post to make the most possible sense.

The Jovian Manifesto v2.0: How to find, fund & launch the future

Over the past 2 years we’ve experimented with quite a few solutions and, even though most have failed, we have seen overal positive results for the companies orbiting JUPTER and consequently the capital resource providers in the ecosystem have also started to see benefits.

How are we approaching the problem so far?

We set out a vision based on a system that would be based/focused on:

Open — free of the traditional friction-prone types of relationships. Open innovation. Open data. Open knowledge.

Science — free of traditional biased & inconsistent decision making methods. Back to the drawing board with a first principles approach and development based on the scientific method.

Origination — the inception stage where 1–5 individuals embark on the mission to solve a significant problem & before they’ve achieved Product-Market-Fit

We implemented and executed on a go-to-market strategy we call the “Big Bang Funnel” where we run experiments within the “modules of the startup ecosystem stack”

• BigBang — almost 10,000 people attended events where JUPTER co-organized, hosted at our TechSpace or particpated somehow significantly and which were (mostly) outcome oriented ex. people entered with or without ideas & learned by doing via a process that simulated the Startup Development Lifecycle to some extent
• Orbits — 100s of entrepreneurs running dozens of startups participated in our partner & co-operated acceleration & incubation programs like the Founder Institute & ACE Aceleratech

• TechSpace — dozens of companies call our “Startup Development Lifecycle R&D Laboratory” their home where their basic very early stage needs are met. This is where we experiment around the unique conditions which specifically favor what we consider to be extremely early stage startup development.
• AdVentures — dozens of early stage startup investors (new to experienced, angels to VCs) & startup companies have so far benefited from the smart money mechanisms and investment vehicles co-developed, co-operated & co-invested by JUPTER AdVentures

What did we learn?

We tried several things to do and several ways to do things. Some worked. Most failed. Some of those that worked, worked well (so far).

The core group of startups that Orbited JUPTER posted the following numbers after working with us from a few months to 2 years:

• they hired one new team member every two months
• they inscreased monthly sales by almost 1000%
• they almost doubled in valuation (based on markups of several follow-on rounds including multiple series A raises)

What’s next going forward?

We’re going to focus! We’re focusing on helping talented people find repeatable and scalable ways to solve the world’s biggest problems. We’re focusing on helping entrepreneurs get from 0 to 1 — from inception to product-market-fit or PMF — via experimental paths that we hope will eventually “corner the Startup Development Lifecycle ambiguity problem.”

We’re focusing on Jovian Success: helping startups go from 0 to 1

This means helping the non-preneur (doesn’t want to, yet), the want-preneur (wants to but doesn’t know how to) & the fail-preneur (tries hard to but failed/failing), each find their own way to building a successful startup as defined by Product-Market-Fit (or 1), the only other binary, quantifiable point in the early stage Startup Development Lifecycle (other than non-existent, or 0).

So does this mean that we now have the answer?

Of course not! As a #Day1Forever company (learn about the Day 1 concept here), we’re only begining to learn about the tip of the iceberg. The good news is that we think we may have found the iceberg. The great news is that we’ll have even more learning to do over the coming months, years and decades as we relentlessly experiment and iterate until we find the optimal Startup Operating System that helps early stage startups achieve product market fit faster & with lower resource requirements, making the entrepreneurship process a much more effective & desirable one.

This is how we hope that the best potential entrepreneurs will come forward to solve the world’s biggest problems knowing that they’ll be able to, eventually (especially if they first come and help us get there faster), count on building startups that solve problems in a world that’s more:

• Reliable — protocols, processes & tracks towards “true north”
• Focused — less noise & more signal in the resources, products & advice offered
• Capitalized — social & financial capital coming together under the right terms

What are we building now?

We’re building a Startup Operating System (S.O.S.) that helps talented people transform their ideas into successful startups.

To help startup teams achieve product market fit, we’re launching the #Jovian S.O.S. (Startup Operating System) based on a scientific frameworkthat helps entrepreneurs:

1) find solutions to day-to-day problems & challenges

2) identify & mitigate risks & leverage opportunities

3) boost performance & lower costs with offers & products specific to your startup

Call for Applications: OpenLabs V1 “experimental”

The Jovian S.O.S. (in its preliminary versions) will be delivered via our newest Orbit OpenLabs:

It’ll be optimized for teams of 1–5 people trying to solve a problem via a solution that’s repeatable & scalable

Features included in V1 (experimental cohort):

1. Startup Concierge — with basic framework (Disc: V1 via concierge MVP)
2. App Ecosystem — with offerings (V1 is manually done)
3. 4 months TechSpace Incubation in Curitiba (physical presence mandatory in V1 )

Investment for Startups to participate in OpenLabs V1: 

NO EQUITY! OpenLabs does not compete with accelerators, incubators & startup programs. Start-ups don’t do OpenLabs instead of an accelerator or incubator. Some start-ups participate in leading programs AND subscribe to OpenLabs to take advantage of the additional value.

In fact we encourage entrepreneurs to participate in our Orbits partners like the Founder Institute (2018 highlights) & ACE (2018 highlights) while leveraging the benefits of OpenLabs (with limited & experimental features for now) to improve their startup’s “product-market-fit experience.” Think of it as an assistant or guide to your startup founding team.

Inaugural Cohort Subscription Price:

$2800 / 2 co-founders / 4months

*smaller/larger team? other limitation? let us know about your unique needs

Core Ecosystem Apps (offers for OpenLabs participants):

1) Founder Institute — world’s largest idea stage startup launch program

2) ACE Aceleratech —Latam’s best startup accelerator

3) AdvisorBPO — open your company free & get first 6mths accounting free

4) BossaNova — simplified investment offer for 200 qualifying B2B startups

5) More APPs coming soon! Your App Here? Contact us!

Applications for OpenLabs V1 “experimental” the INAUGURAL & LIMITED batch are NOW OPEN via: JUPTER OpenLabs

Finally, a Jovian Disclosure & Call for Talents:

To say the least, 2018 was an extremely volatile year for us and, as we noticed, for many around us. But throughout the turbulence we understood from within that we needed a new focus, a new framework for organizational development and a new “level-up” at which we were to operate, both individually and as a team, in order to continue to exist, nevermind trying to get to PMF! Be it that it was the toughest year in the history of our 2 years young company, it was a year full of lessons, wisdom & persistence for our dedicated team (thanks to all collaborators) basically our only ammunition at hand. Finally 2018 ended up as our biggest & best year since inception!

The year ended up on an upswing with a MASSIVE positive boost, thanks mainly to Bossa Nova Investments (official announcement here) & a few other forward thinking visionary investors & partners, which now puts us firmly back in the game and in full force. We’re also grateful for being a part of the initial group of entities forming the dreamy alliance that includes the likes of ACE, Founder Institute & now Bossa Nova, helping us be a part of what could be considered, across several dimensions, one of the largest startup groups in Brazil and LatAm!

Now that doesn’t mean we have less problems. On the contrary. We now have bigger and tougher challenges to deal with including the need to source hundreds of investment ready startups via qualified dealflow mechanisms like ACE & FI as well as possibly other sources as needed. We also need to build up the foundation & capacity to be able help the many startups who continue to seek our help in achieving PMF. Any ideas on how to execute better on this?

What do you say? Come build the future with us!

Come help us build the #Jovian S.O.S. by participating (apply, subscribe, volunteer etc) in the experimental OpenLabs cohort. Come help build JUPTER as of #Day1 by joining our growing teams of core developers, volunteers, advisors, investors & partners. Come help us build the future. Get in touch with a Jovian in your network today. #InDWeTrust so the more diverse the merrier!

Some of our strategic partners & investors. We also count on several additional investors & advisors not named here.

The current team of cofounders, directors, core developers, associates, advisors & board members of JUPTER. Several other amazing people have, & some will still continue to, pass through the Jovian team, each in their own special way, & we consider them, as well, great contributors to our very existence!

So what’s your manifesto? What problem are you identifying &/or solving with your start-up?

Post your content here or anywhere else and tag it with #Jovian #Startup#ManyFesto & share it with us so we can all learn more about your vision, your work and also let us know if there’s perhaps something we can do to help your startup get to product-market-fit faster!