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September 2024 — Digital Nations, Fractional CTOs, Proof of Complexity

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MISSION+
September 05, 2024

We’re On A Mission, and we want to share it with you! Welcome to the new monthly MISSION+ newsletter. This is a short collection of things we’ve learnt this month, interesting articles we’ve read, and anything new from the team.

Please let us know your feedback: what worked, what didn’t, and what would you like to see? And don’t forget to share with your friends!

Digital Nations

A couple of weeks ago, Nas Daily published this fun short video: The Country Not On The World Map

Draper Nation is the world's first borderless, self-governed digital nation. MISSION+ is proud to be the development partner building it, and we’re excited to see where it can go.

Now is the time of emerging digital institutions! As well as Draper Nation, Balaji recently announced the Network School - a place for students to come together, mingle, and participate in continuous education.

Even Bryan Johnson - the famous entrepreneur attempting to extend his lifespan indefinitely - is in on the play: "It seems like the right time to build a don’t die nation state. To create and provide what society can’t and won’t on any relevant timescale."

I love the “Think Big” aspect to these projects - no ambition is lacking in their goals and ideals. Support by signing up for a Draper Nation passport today.

Fractional CTOs

This month saw the launch of our more formal Fractional CTO offering. MISSION+ has put Fractional CTOs onto projects since we started, but we’ve decided to expand the number of world class individuals on the team significantly.

Each Fractional brings deep experience building teams and delivering delightful products. They can navigate complicated situations, but also understand what "Think Like A Startup" actually means. Because they've... been in and built startups.

Organisations who engage a MISSION+ Fractional CTO get access to that experience in a cost-effective manner, because it is compressed into typically 25% of the week. Setting strategy, resolving core issues, and building team alignment often doesn’t need 8 hours a day. The key decision and messaging can be compressed into an organisational injection of pure condensed superpower.

A couple of examples of successful Fractional engagements include our FCTOs Kenneth Ham working with Hivrs and Alex Biediger working with FOME.ai. Hivrs is a process automation tool to build and automate complex workflows enabled with AI capabilities. Kenneth brought his experience to help guide the development team, allowing the founder to focus on his vision while growing the business.

FOME.ai is a pioneering sportstech science venture, devoted to elevating athletic performance to unprecedented heights. In an exciting partnership with federal authorities, MISSION+ and FOME.ai partnered on a mission to unearth and cultivate the Olympic stars of tomorrow. Alex helped them build out & refine their innovative approach; combining cutting-edge computer vision technology, tried-and-true predictive models and widespread scale-up mobile app engagement - ensuring no potential champion goes undiscovered.

Fractional CTOs are not just for startups! If you’d like to engage a Fractional for board advisory, technical due diligence or a ‘second brain’, we have a track record of such collaboration and we’re interested to discuss. Just let us know what you’re looking for, and we’ll match you to the most appropriate individual with the skills and experience to help out. Learn more about what a Fractional CTO can do for you and when you should hire one here.

Enterprise AI - Proof of Complexity

Generative AI is all the rage, but too many projects get stalled in the Proof of Concept stage. To get past these speedbumps, we have to approach the problem more thoughtfully. The AI Adoption Pyramid shows the essential foundations required in order to run success projects.

Each level of the AI Adoption Pyramid supports the one above it, and everything falls down if a layer’s foundation is not strong.

At the base: Compliance, Data Privacy, Security & Alignment. As well as concerns around data being sent to external AI providers, Generative AI models introduce new risks, such as hallucinations that could have serious real-world consequences. Similar to cloud adoption, regulated organisations and mid-to-upper scale startups face a complex journey to align AI with compliance and risk teams.

At a minimum, policies:

  • Need to be updated to reflect what is and isn’t allowed in terms of models used and data transferred

  • Need to include information around what productivity tools are allowed

  • Need to be created to handle the new situations that may occur

Next up: Organisational Architecture. Decisions must be made about which AI models, tools, and processes are allowed - following the decisions made in the layer below. A team needs to be put together to drive adoption throughout the organisation, evangelising the benefits, but ensuring compliance to the processes.

Finally, at the top are the Projects. Now we can decide where to focus our efforts, and which PoCs are worth investing in. Jumping straight to the top without ensuring robust support from below leads to project stagnation when it comes to productionisation, and ultimately failure.


I go into a lot more detail, and give some ideas around how to select projects here. I would love to hear your feedback!

Interesting Articles

We’re On A Mission

Hope you enjoyed the update, and I leave you with some LinkedIn wisdom:

Until next month - Ned & the MISSION+ team.