Hello and welcome to the Netcetera newsletter. As most of our readers will know, Netcetera is “powered by Myosin” or, more specifically, the Myosin.xyz DAO. Today marks a special moment in terms of what that phrase really means as, in the spirit of progressive decentralization, we hand the pen over to a member of the DAO (other than Chevy) for the newsletter for the first time since Netcetera’s launch late last year.

Olly Jones has been a member since fall 2023 and is now the co-lead of our Business Development Guild. Previously at Amex, Olly now advises all manner of web3 companies and organizations on biz dev and more. In today’s newsletter-exclusive piece, he does just that for our readers with the first installment of ‘Go To Market Fundamentals.’ Read on for his insights on commercial sprints.

Rowan Spencer | Editor-in-Chief

How To Take Your Idea From Concept to Reality (And Win) Using Commercial Sprints

Every time a new startup explodes — Slack, Stripe, Netflix — you can bet there’s a handful of people at large corporates in that space saying, “I had that idea, I wanted us to do that!” 

…but they didn’t, because no one could decide on how to take it to market.

Without a paradigm shift in cultures of corporations, how can this change?

Tech teams have managed to change some of this by adopting agile development cycles. Back in 2014, I attended my first “sprint release breakfast” at Amex in New York. These were bi-weekly progress reports visible to the whole division — or at least to those who weren’t too focused on the free breakfast food. It blew my mind, frankly, and ever since I’ve been thinking about how non-technical teams can try to adopt some of these learnings.

Often things that get stuck in the decision-making process are either:

1. Not properly understood by stakeholders, or

2. Impact a stakeholder's goals in a way that's not apparent to others involved

Sometimes it takes an outsider (e.g. consultant or agency) to come in and shake things up, typically by:

• Taking the time to make sure all stakeholders truly understand the concept

• Overcommunicating motivations of different stakeholders to each other (awkward as this may be)

• Persist to get a yes or a no and eliminate any maybes

In many cases, an intense 2-3 week project that focuses on these workstreams can act like a commercial version of the agile sprint that tech teams perform –  a so-called “commercial sprint” – all with about the same time/resource/budget allocation of a whitepaper.

A commercial sprint is designed to move a concept that is already well understood at a high level, through the various decisions required to have a comprehensive GTM (Go To Market) plan. This helps avoid concepts falling into inertia and never getting the time, resources, or attention they deserve, leading to a competitor/newcomer getting to market more quickly and commercial opportunities being missed.

I’ve worked on running commercial sprints from within an organization and also as an outsider. It’s mind-blowing how much easier it is as an outsider; people simply apply what you say in a more earnest, trustworthy way. In fact, sometimes we’d even make sure - as outsiders - that we were clearly dressed differently than those in the company, just to make it even more explicit that we’re bringing a fresh approach. But our approach to the work, tools and formats used would be more consistent with the client’s own “language.”

So how do you build a team to perform commercial sprints?

This mix of enterprise and emerging tech is admittedly difficult to resource and scale. People with experience in both are often hard to find — and even harder to coax into full time employment. 

That said, here are some foundational pieces of the puzzle:

1. Source personnel that know how to get to yes and no answers, and move people away from ‘maybes’. Fighting inertia is crucial.

2. Prepare your key stakeholders - they should be expected to be as transparent and available to the commercial sprint team as possible. Without that preparation, your investment can be wasted

3. Expect the unexpected, as well as some tough conversations. If this was easy, you could solve it around a water cooler. Idea analysis and its impact on the business should go deeper and broader than you have before

Knowing and having encountered these challenges first hand is why I’ve been in such awe of the Myosin.xyz model. As a global network and DAO, which I’m a member of, Myosin is perfectly balanced to attract talent that can bring the new, often ethereal world of emerging tech to organizations that have been doing what they do best for decades. 

And you can feel it in the Myosin community - the comfort with talking about everything from AI to ERPs. They’re working with big brands like Shiseido on their innovation experts, and they have several incredible “Future of” reports committed to verticals like Hospitality & Sports.  

If your new idea process needs a shake up, connect with the Myosin team. And don’t be that next person who passes a good idea by because you couldn’t get stakeholders off the fence.

Olly Jones | Biz Dev Co-Lead @ Myosin

P.S. want help implementing a sprint?

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That's it. That's all we got! Talk next week.
The Netcetera team 👋

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