“A startup is not simply a smaller version of a large corporation.” We could not put it more succinctly than Steve Blank in his book. As a result, many timeless lessons and established practices in corporate settings are not applicable to the early stages of building a company. Wisdom about economics and business fundamentals remains the same but application without contextualisation can cause a lot of disruptions. It works beautifully for large corporate by high flying corporate executives, but rendered useless on startups. This is the early-stage entrepreneurship and company building knowledge and application distortion. It gets even complex when certain market dynamics changes with demographic and geographic settings.That basically kickstarted our journey to build GUIDE from the perspective of establishing a structured education foundation in entrepreneurship for hands on individuals that wants to build companies from scratch.
Many timeless lessons and established practices in corporate settings are not applicable to the early stages of building a company… This is the early-stage entrepreneurship and company building knowledge and application distortion.
Startup knowledge and wisdom gained through fast-paced trial and error experiences are not well documented for highly structured education. There’re always discrepancies in what is taught in school about entrepreneurship versus what it is by startup accelerators. The art of building startups follows the operators as they change careers or embark on new endeavors. We can only learn about these fragmented experiences through podcasts, private mentorship, and occasional startup community events, if we have the luxury of time while building our businesses. It's always a hit or miss or too serendipitously. It shouldn’t be that way.
We can only learn about these fragmented experiences through podcasts, private mentorship, and occasional startup community events, if we have the luxury of time while building our businesses… It shouldn’t be that way.
As an official inaugural curriculum, GUIDE introduces Zero To One, a curriculum that combines the experience in startup operations, program building, venture capital investment, and startup ecosystem development. It is an Idea Validation stage operating blueprint codify into a development blueprint with carefully sequenced synthesized learnings (modules) led by a team of startup operating domain generalists and subject matter specialists, whom we call Creators and Contributors.
GUIDE act as a lighthouse, guiding entrepreneurs to avoid pitfalls and derisking them for the lack of awareness that could otherwise sink their ventures through hard earned best practices and way of thinking. We collect and curate knowledge, standing on the shoulders of giants on behalf of the founders and their early team, help them to contextualise learning. That calls us to develop ways to nurture resilience in founders. Helping them to able to build a more fulfilled entrepreneurial career in their own context. If they are well prepared for the tough road ahead, we believe, as role models of a fast-changing and transforming world, they can bring tremendous impactful and economic assets to their own organization, community, and countries.
GUIDE act as a lighthouse, guiding entrepreneurs to avoid pitfalls and derisking them for the lack of awareness that could otherwise sink their ventures through hard earned best practices and way of thinking… That calls us to develop ways to nurture resilience in founders.
While high-value knowledge is important, it alone cannot help entrepreneurs make meaningful, immediate, and mission-critical business impacts. Execution is key, and the quality and precision of execution determine the survival or thriving of a business. To ensure our curriculum helps founders move the needle, we synchronize it with learning facilitation by a team that has experience working alongside founders, serving as their growth companion and sounding board to apply that knowledge in their own contexts while keeping an eye on their progress.
Representing all the entrepreneurs we aim to develop, we have gathered and distilled practical perspectives, tactics, and insights from successful startup operators across the Asia region who have built, operated, sustained, and even scaled modern businesses.
All of this has led us to create an agile blueprint that aligns with critical business milestones. Founders can rely on us for precise advice tailored to their specific contexts and circumstances. So, we start from somewhere we are very familiar - Asia.
That’s GUIDE.
We are an entrepreneurship knowledge organization, startup program and ecosystem builder.
