Mixmash Ideas Until You Get Something Sexy with Blake Minho Kim (Myosin)

Startups thrive on groundbreaking ideas, narrative, and execution.

But how can you fuel your creativity to craft innovative solutions again and again?

Javelin’s Jim Duivenvoorden welcomes Blake Minho Kim - Co-counder of Myosin - for Javelin Zine 001 to chat brand narrative, startup building, and Minimum Lovable Products.

J: How do you creatively recharge during downtime, with activities that involve minimal active thinking?

B: I think it's straight up a vacation. I think I need time to actually unplug, and get off of Discord and my work stuff. I can be at my most creative when it is during the day, I lay down on the couch or the bed and just stare at the ceiling. I visualize things and let everything come together.

J: Kinda like The Queen's Gambit on Netflix. There's a shot of her laying on the bed, visualizing the chessboard on the ceiling and projecting all her moves.

B: That's what I like to do. I've always been of a bit of a planner and I like to think ahead and kind of visualize how these things all come together.

J: What did you learn at Ralph Lauren?

B: I think the common thread through a lot of this was brands, because I think that's a different form of creativity, and I think that's where I've gravitated towards more now in my job. I've done startups and venture my whole career. But I feel like the deeper I've gotten into company building, the more I realize everything in life is narrative.

If you're a lawyer, you're creating a narrative to get your client out of jail. If you're an investment banker, you're creating a narrative to sell a company. If you’re a salesperson, you're creating a narrative to sell something. So everyone is creating stories to sell to other people, and bringing it back to Ralph Lauren, I think brand, and creating a brand strategy is another form of narrative. And it's something I'm particularly excited about.

Ralph Lauren has an incredible brand. I mean, it's an incredible story: Ralph Lauren is actually Ralph Lipschitz from the Bronx. He has no actual history or heritage in this country. He just created it out of thin air by changing his name to Ralph Lauren, selling a bunch of ties, and creating a brand and a narrative. And it worked.

J: Imagine a scenario where you had to start a new startup and you have a blank canvas. What are the first steps for you in discovering that why?

B: This is what I used to do when I was a venture designer. Human Ventures was one of the OG Venture Studios back in 2017. I was fortunate to join their venture design team as one of their first hires. My whole role was about finding out what the opportunities were and building an MVP to test those assumptions.

If we feel like we're confident about it, then I would pitch internally to our investment committee to say: hey, this is what we want to build. Here's why we should build it. Let's put money behind this, launch it and turn it into real company.

It's a business model canvas: What are the markets? What are the opportunities? I think being a good entrepreneur and being a good venture designer is all about staying on top of everything that's happening in the world. I think the reason I've been successful at what I do is I'm a voracious reader and I stay on top of everything that's happening.

So, to me, constantly learning about different things and different fields is the key to creativity. Because that's what creativity is, right? It's just mixmashing different shit that should not be together but somehow it works, right?

J: Like a musician who listens to so much music, that they can channel all these inspirations into original ideas for new good music.

B: Exactly. If you want to create a new idea, you need to absorb a shit ton of other ideas to start to think about creativity. That's what an entrepreneur should do. And then research the trends you see in the world. Look at what is changing. The opportunity is when things shift.

J: On the topic of music, what music do you listen to whilst creating?

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6oxyNXEprWyaFiiTNGK8NE?si=dc89ab6d3b07426e

J: What do you consider as an MVP?

B: Actually, we call it Minimum Lovable Product. Because I think there are a lot of cases where it's not so much about creating the technical functionality as I said before, it's about narrative and selling the vision for what this can be. It can be as simple as a landing page, but make it look real. Make it look sexy.

And then put it in front of strangers. It shouldn't be just a Minimum Viable Product because if it looks like shit, people aren't going to react in the way that you want them to react. You need to sell them the big shiny toy and the facade of what this will be. Whether or not the functionality works, that's unimportant because you're testing your assumptions.

Not does it function, but is it lovable enough?