This first-time founder's shortcut

Ambika Singh, Armoire founder, makes it a religion to learn from others.

She says it’s a shortcut to learning vs “the longcut of doing things ourselves.”

I feel like I’ve taken that longcut way too many times.

How does she start?

“Every time we come up with a problem we try to think about who are people who have solved this problem, perhaps not directly in the way that we're going to try to solve it, but how do we get in front of those people and hear what their lessons are?”

She’s made this practice a personal priority.

She’s also made it part of her culture.

“It's not negotiable. We will always do it. We will get better at it. We won't get worse.” she said.

At Armoire, employees are asked to find “buddies” outside the company. And because context is important, they are encouraged to develop long-running relationships rather than one-off mentorship transactions.

Ambika talked more about this at the 30-minute mark in this podcast

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P.S. The book Ambika is coming back to right now is Shoe Dog - Phil Knight’s memoire on building Nike. She says that Phil’s passion has been energizing.