Earl Valencia is an award-winning tech leader and venture-backed startup founder, best known for co-founding Ideaspace and QBO in the Philippines, and Plentina in the USA. 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 (YMMA), Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of the Philippines, and Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. A summa cum laude graduate in electrical engineering from Boston University, Earl 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.
Q1: There are countless books on startups—why another one?
A1: When we were waking 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, but its really the mindsets of the venture backed founder and investor. This book goes into the question “why start a company” vs most books which is focused on the “how” to start a company.
Q2: What is a startup mindset, and why do business leaders need it?
A2: The biggest friction in starting up a company companies from the state “negative one to zero” or the stage where you come up with an idea and the moment you commit and decide to doing something about it. Someone startup mindsets are a set on internal principles and ways to think that someone must have in order to make the leap into starting an initiative. This goes beyond startups but even if you want to do something uncomfortable, like starting a non profit, buying your first investments or even going back to school for a new direction in life.
Q3: What are the key principles of a startup mindset?
A3: 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% typically, but what we found out is that even with this crazy statistic these founders still make the commitment to give it a shot. Most founders need deep reflection to even know the answer to this question, and one of the key principles.
Q4: What makes the Silicon Valley ecosystem the benchmark, and why should it be emulated in this day and age?
A4: 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 vs 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, particularly the willingness to experiment in emerging tech that we see now like AI or robotics they can set their goals to scale faster than a traditional SME.
Q5: How do leaders trained in the industrial economy differ from those who’ve adapted to a digital-first world? Why is this shift important?
A5: 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 applies 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 adapt 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?
Q6: Can you share one or two stories from your book that readers must not miss, and why are their actionable strategies so important?
A6: 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 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.
Q7: There’s a high failure rate among startup entrepreneurs. What separates the few who succeed from those who fail, and how can investors spot them early?
A7: 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” vs. an entrepreneur. This is thesame 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 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.
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Josiah Go is the chairman and chief innovation strategist of Mansmith and Fielders Inc.
