What We Learnt From Speedrunning the Idea Maze

In July last year Commoncog case writer Rhea Purohit and I ran a course titled Speedrunning the Idea Maze. It was a bit of an experiment: how would a course built around the Calibration Case Method work? Would we be able to change the way people think about finding product market fit? Could we change their perceptions of uncertainty and risk? Could we make them act differently?

“This course basically teaches you to be an entrepreneur,” said a course participant to me, after we wrapped things up. I wasn’t 100% satisfied with what we did, though this made me pleased. In truth, we didn’t know that this would be the primary takeaway when we started the course. We didn’t know many things when we started the course — which is sweetly ironic; doing better with uncertainty was one of our learning goals.

Also, in the same way that what you learn changes you, what you teach also changes you. Teaching the course changed me — it made me reexamine my relationship with uncertainty. I hope to explain why.

On the eve of the second cohort of StIM, I want to catalog a few things we’ve learnt from the first iteration of the course. We’d listed most