What problem do you want to solve?
Earl Valencia is an award-winning tech leader and venture capital-backed startup founder, best known for cofounding Ideaspace and QBO in the Philippines and Plentina in the United States. He also serves as an executive member of the National Innovation Council, representing the business sector in the Philippines.
Previously, he was vice president for corporate development and Innovation at PLDT/Smart. Earl’s accolades include the Mansmith Young Market Masters Awards, Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of the Philippines and World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader.
A summa cum laude electrical engineering graduate of Boston University, Earl also holds two master’s degrees. His latest book, “Startup Mindsets: A Blueprint to Thrive in an Innovation-Driven and Globally Connected World”, co-authored with Dan Gonzales, is now available at Fully Booked.
Question: There are countless books on startups—why write another one?
Answer: When we were walking in the streets of San Francisco, we realized quickly that the secret to Silicon Valley is not just its location, access to capital or high-tech universities. It’s really the mindsets of the venture-backed founder and investor. This book goes into the question “why start a company” versus most books, which are focused on the “how to start a company.”
Q: What is a startup mindset and why do business leaders need it?
A: The biggest friction in starting a company is at the state “negative one to zero,” or the stage where you come up with an idea and the moment you commit and decide to do something about it.
Startup mindsets are a set of internal principles and ways to think that someone must have in order to make the leap into starting an initiative. This goes beyond startups—even if you want to do something uncomfortable, like starting a nonprofit, buying your first investments or even going back to school for a new direction in life.
Q: What are the key principles of a startup mindset?
A: We dive into key startup mindsets in the book. But it starts with the question, “what problem do you want to solve that is so important to you that you are willing to give it a try, even if it’s almost a guarantee to fail?” As we know, most startups end up not making it—less than 1 percent typically. But what we found out is that even with the crazy statistics, these founders still make the commitment to give it a shot. Most founders need deep reflection to even know the answer to this question.
Q: What makes the Silicon Valley ecosystem the benchmark, and why should it be emulated in this day and age?
A: The Silicon Valley ecosystem is special because of the density of founders, operators and investors that embrace these startup mindsets and the culture that values trying versus the fear of failure. This then creates a hyper creative environment for many high-risk companies to be started. Also, since most of the companies are tech-enabled—and particularly willing to experiment in emerging tech that we see now, like artificial intelligence or robotics—they can set their goals to scale faster than a traditional small and medium enterprise.
Q: How do leaders who are trained in the industrial economy differ from those who have adapted to a digital-first world? Why is this shift important?
A: The best leaders, either in the industrial economy or ones that were trained in the digital economy, have a strong dose of “intellectual humility” and constantly apply the startup mindsets, no matter how successful they or their companies are already. What does this mean? Leaders have to constantly evaluate the emerging trends and ask themselves, “can I adopt this new tool or tech to create more value for our customers or our internal processes?” If the answer is yes, then why not try?
Q: Can you share one or two stories from your book that readers must not miss, and why are their actionable strategies so important?
A: We interviewed close to 100 early-stage founders and investors for the book and also added a number of stories related to my time in helping build the startup ecosystem in the Philippines through IdeaSpace and QBO. One of my favorite stories is from my good friend and fellow Filipino: Jojo Flores, who founded Plug and Play, the incubator of PayPal, Google and many others. He mentioned that they had looked at an old building in Silicon Valley and imagined if “early-stage companies” might need a place to expand from idea to scale. It started as a real estate play, and now has evolved to a global venture fund and leader in the corporate venture space.
Q: There’s a high failure rate among startup entrepreneurs. What separates the few who succeed from the many who fail, and how can investors spot them early?
A: One thing we observed in our research is that the definition of most founders is not about their company not succeeding or not scaling, but rather, failure is not even trying. We dedicate a chapter to this, to distinguish a “wannapreneur” from an entrepreneur. This is the same set of mindsets that most investors will look for in the early stages. It’s called “founder-market-problem” fit, to really spot if the founder who really wants to solve this problem has the skills and experience to tackle a large market opportunity.
I’m excited to see all the amazing impact the readers will have by applying their own startup mindsets to their own lives.
