METHOD
Four steps.
How the house starts a venture, and how it ends one.
THE STEPS
I. Find a problem we already pay for.
A venture starts with a cost one of our companies already carries. If the house is paying for a problem today, the problem is real, and so is the first customer.
II. Build the smallest version that earns money.
The first version does one job well enough that someone would pay for it. The rest waits. A small first version is cheap to change, and it shows early whether the idea holds.
III. Put it in front of real customers inside our own companies.
Our own companies use it first, in their daily work. They are real customers, and they tell us plainly what fails. A venture has to work there before it goes anywhere else.
IV. Spin it out or shut it down. Nothing lingers.
A venture stays under the CEJ Ventures name only until it earns revenue. Then it is organized as its own subsidiary of CEJ Holdings. One that does not earn its place is shut down, and what we learned stays with the house.
WHAT WE DON’T BUILD
- Things without a customer inside the house.
- Things that need outside capital to exist.
- Things that can’t be shut down cleanly.
Founder and Principal, CEJ Holdings