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FS Weekly No. 75: Give Yourself Permission to Experiment 

Hi there: I'm Ruhul and Future Startup Weekly is a newsletter about entrepreneurship, expertise, and doing good work. Please let us know if you enjoy the newsletter and have any feedback for us to improve. You can read past issues here and subscribe here.

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Today, I want to share an idea — the idea of giving yourself permission to experiment and try things out. Under the burden of our daily lives, we forget that all good things in life are a function of iteration. I recently interviewed two founders. One founder started a company providing enterprise AI solutions. Another founder is building a coworking space in Dhaka. A common thread in both of their work that surprised me is the pervasive and necessary presence of experimentation and iteration. 

Every aspect of a company requires iteration. Take the idea of company culture as an example. You start with a highly flexible culture where people are empowered and given a lot of autonomy to operate and perform. While such a culture can be hugely inspiring, you can also forget the fact that everything has a shadow side until you find out autonomy is not empowering for everyone. Some people need guidance and handholding. 

One founder told me that after trying one approach for quite a while they found out that it was not working. They took time to review the process, learn the lesson, and make changes to their recruitment and internal communication approach with people. At the heart of any improvement and progress is this willingness to try things out, find out what’s working and what’s not, and then apply the lessons to do better the next time. 

In the growth hacking language, this is called the high-tempo framework where you generate a bunch of growth ideas, experiment with a few of them, learn from the outcome, and repeat the whole cycle again. We can apply this idea of continuous experimentation, reflection, and learning across our work and life, from building a company to building a good life. See what are some of the practices and approaches in your life work and what are not working and then replace the ones not working with some new ideas and see what happens. Give yourself permission to experiment, make mistakes, learn, and improve. See what happens. 

That’s about it. Now, on to the updates.


Best of the Week 

These are a collection of articles, essays, and readings from around the internet I enjoyed last week. This week’s collection has a theme: how to live a life that you want to live. 

The first essay is a birth reflection that goes deep into the tension between the life that we have and the life that we want. 

The second essay explores how stating the obvious and accepting our dominant inclinations and fascinations can lead to a better and happier life. 

The final essay explores ideas around why we must leave the flatland and elevate ourselves to some higher dimension in order to find and do our true genius work. Genius doesn’t occur following earthly logic, we have to find the divine connection to achieve a true breakthrough. 

1. 32 Minutes and 29 and a half years 

2. Admitting What Is Obvious

3. Paradigm Shifts


What We’ve Published Last Week 

1. Don’t Accept Failure Too Easily

The fruit of our desire almost always lies on the other end of a dragged-out long and rough trail of action. However, our doggedness doesn’t make things any easier, it simply enables us to endure challenges to cross the chasm. 

2. Review + 14 Powerful Quotes from Born To Run by Christopher McDougall 

A regular guy plagued by running injuries embarks on a quest to understand the science and art of distance running without pain.

3. 10 Ways to Boost the Productivity of Your Team 

Startups often are resource-constrained entities and need to make the most of their time and effort. A set of ideas to achieve greater team productivity at your startup. 

4. Matritto Launches Affordable, Non-judgmental Counseling Services for Women and Mothers

Matritto, an online platform that provides content, courses, and services for mothers in Bangladesh, announced a new mental health service for women and mothers. 

5. Eight founders on organization building, dealing with entrepreneurial challenges, culture-building, surviving and thriving

The stories of building an organization from scratch, shedding light on the challenges of entrepreneurship, how to survive and thrive entrepreneurial journeys, the critical work of building culture, and much more. 


That's all for this week.

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Thank you for reading.

Ruhul

On behalf of Team FS.

Mohammad Ruhul Kader is a Dhaka-based entrepreneur and writer. He founded Future Startup, a digital publication covering the startup and technology scene in Dhaka with an ambition to transform Bangladesh through entrepreneurship and innovation. He writes about internet business, strategy, technology, and society. He is the author of Rethinking Failure. His writings have been published in almost all major national dailies in Bangladesh including DT, FE, etc. Prior to FS, he worked for a local conglomerate where he helped start a social enterprise. Ruhul is a 2022 winner of Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He can be reached at ruhul@futurestartup.com

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