focus, that is. Focus, focus focus! What we learned on Friday is that without focus, we will likely not achieve our great big vision, our Epic Dream.
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| The sum of the whole is greater than its parts. That is the value of focus in an Epic Dream. - from my 2008 collection of New Zealand photos |
Arribaa's Epic Dream is to blur the cultural divide by encouraging travelers and locals to connect over real mutual interests. Instead of having travelers travel to places and do activities simply because the guidebook said they should, we want travelers to chase those activities and experiences that they actually value, and connect with those locals who can share their particular location through those particular activities. And not in a pre-packaged sort of way but in an organic, human way.
This is our Epic Dream. And this is where Mick Liubinskas from Pollenizer (a Sydney-based incubator/ startup accelerator) stepped in on Friday morning and shrunk our idea down to size. Not in a bad way - not at all! Mick gave us his infamous talk about FOCUS. We quickly learned that we would be wasting our time and money if we couldn't focus on the smallest market, in the smallest location and pull that off successfully before starting to think about scaling and expanding. So our team of three quickly regrouped to define our focused plan of attack - hey, we're all about agile development and iterating in small steps at Arribaa! By focusing on the smallest of operations we forced ourselves to be clear and realistic about what needed to happen next, where to start and how to pull it off.
Having focus by no means minimizes our epic dream - it actually enables it by showing us what the first baby step towards it is.
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| An exercise in focus: it all looks equally white out there until you get down on the ground - from my 2007 collection of Canada photos |
