Guidelines for Hot Seat sessions in Monthly Forums
While the Master Collaboratory isn’t meant for exchanging financial capital, my prayer is that this would be a tight-knit community of founders who generously invests intellectual and social capital to help each member of the group thrive. I believe this will happen organically and regularly through the Slack channel, but in designing the Monthly Forums, I wanted to put together a more formal and structured way to encourage us all to invest in each other. That is what the Hot Seat is all about.
Each month, three members of the Collaboratory will have an opportunity to do a deep-dive on a big problem, opportunity, or question facing their venture. Then, the rest of the group will be asked to step-up and contribute advice and concrete offers to help the presenting member.
Here’s an example of how this could play out. Let’s say it’s Sam’s turn in the Hot Seat. Sam is struggling to choose which product to prioritize next on his product roadmap, and chooses to use his Hot Seat session to get advice on the topic. Sam has a total of 30 minutes to present his problem/question and solicit feedback from the rest of the Collaboratory. Sam spends 10 minutes walking the group through a simple deck that outlines the three products he is considering, along with the pros and cons of prioritizing each. Sam then opens it up to the group to ask questions and solicit advice. In addition to contributing advice on the call, Joey offers to email a PDF which outlines a framework he has used to make similar product roadmap decisions in the past, and Jordan offers to introduce Sam to a brilliant Chief Product Officer of a non-competitive company to help Sam make the decision.
Here are three guidelines to keep in mind as you prepare for your Hot Seat session:
- Be as specific as possible when framing up the problem, question, or opportunity that you want feedback on. The more focused and explicit your presentation is, the easier it will be for the rest of the group to help.
- You only have 30 minutes total for your presentation and feedback from the group, so make your presentation as brief as possible to leave ample time for collecting advice and offers of help from the group
- Make your presentation as formal as informal as you’d like. This is not a PowerPoint deck competition. Feel free to use zero visual aids so long as you can effectively communicate what you need to communicate to the group.
Click here to access the schedule for Hot Seat sessions to see when you’re up next.
