#189 - Ivy Mahsciao, CEO of evrmore - On how value creation is often just about being useful

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help young people speak their truths and tap into their superpowers. My guest is Ivy Mahsciao, Founder and CEO of evrmore.

Ivy is a champion for human potential who has a 20+ year background in consumer psychology and product science, with a category-defining product management portfolio that includes Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Nike.

Today, she's the CEO of evrmore - a startup that's on a mission to help people see their innate potentials and impacts in the world by bringing our social and emotional selves back online. It's an inclusive betterment platform for young people to develop transferable core skills and social mobility. This is especially helpful for those who might be going through the most challenging time in their lives, such as the current pandemic, immigration trauma, grief, separation, and other difficult transitions, aka life.

This inspired me - and hence I invited Ivy to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's world when it comes to helping young people grow their self-knowledge and have a strong self-narrative.

We discuss how the non-stop push of information and chasing social proof has created a big problem in society. We then explore the journey Ivy has taken to fix the problem once and forever - and the challenges she's faced along the way. We discuss her strategies to scale and accelerate by leveraging the ecosystem in her tech stack. Lastly, we discuss her take on building a remarkable software business.

Here are some of her quotes:

The MVP in the traditional sense is just not going to cut it now for something like evrmore. So then what is that thing? This is again, another thing that I want to demystify for the founder’s entrepreneurial experience. When you're building something from nothing - from just the screaming dots you're trying to connect - you also realize that you're always going to feel like you're not going fast enough.

There's just not going to be any shortage of Crunchbase news, or acquisition news or funding news, you're always going to be like I needed to launch this thing, six months ago, eight months ago, two years ago, or something like that.

Not downplaying that anxiety, I think it's an important one to clearing the air and just being vulnerable. And just say "that is very much my reality."

You're always trying to balance those external pressures. So what is that gold standard of knowing what to measure, knowing what to validate before you hit that first Launch button and say, This is now my maximum minimal viable products?

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. How to find highly valuable innovation opportunities by growing your skills to capture any idea and actively connect the right dots
2. That the essence about the minimum viable product is often misinterpreted - and how thinking about maximum-minimum viable product can help
3. How asking the most piercing questions and describing it from a qualitative standpoint will help define the essence of your business
4. That it's your responsibility as a tech-entrepreneur to cherish your hunches and intuitions - and create the pathways for them to become useful.

For more information about the guest from this week:

• Ivy Mahsciao
• Website evrmore