Meet Monifa Porter, a remarkable leader who has been incubating new ventures with Mach49’s clients over the past 5 years. We recently had a chat with her to dig deeper into her journey at Mach49 and to learn more about her latest launch, heading Mach49’s own new venture, SHIFT^.

What’s most exciting about your role at Mach49?

It’s undoubtedly the launch of our latest brand, SHIFT^ and the incredible team behind it. At Mach49 we took on the tall task of building an AI-powered venture building platform that will drive exponential growth for our customers that provides the know-how and tools  to do so at any scale. 

SHIFT^ launches with 2 products, SHIFT^Playbook, repeatable, teachable ‘learn while doing’ content for new venture teams, and SHIFT^Personas, which are AI “customer doubles” that new venture teams can interview to understand customer pain and test value props and product concepts. 

It’s been an incredible opportunity to take Mach49’s ten years of venture-building expertise and operationalize it in an AI platform with a vision to democratize entrepreneurship globally. 

What are your favorite client and team experiences at Mach49?

We worked with a major oil and gas player that was trying to bring new renewables into their portfolio at the intersection of renewables and mining. Mining is heavily extractive, and uses a great deal of diesel fuel on site. We were trying to figure out how we could bring solar or wind or other renewable fuels to the mining site. We spent several weeks in our Incubate process determining where the opportunity was. Eventually we created a business plan that had us bringing solar power to mine sites during mining operations. That solar power could continue to be leveraged by the community that lives around the mine, even after the mine is no longer being used to extract raw materials. 

What are some of your greatest lessons learned at Mach49?

There are so many. I came into Mach49 as a product leader. I’d been Head of Product at lots of small startups, large companies, and different industries. I thought I knew how to do product management. Then I joined Mach49 and learned the Incubate method, and I thought, “What have I been doing for the last 20 years?” As product managers, we spend a lot of time working directly with engineering to ship a product. 

Mach49’s Incubate method is all about structured empathy: understanding what the customer's problems or challenges are, what value propositions resonate, and then what features to deliver, all while using an iterative experimentation process. You can learn a lot very, very quickly from your customers. 

Bringing that customer-centered exploration directly into product management is imperative and often we don't make enough time for it. We're busy turning the crank and running through sprints and working with engineering to deliver the product.

How is your work creating an impact? 

We begin with empathy, but our approach is rather unconventional because we turn to AI to find empathy. For example, while incubating a recent venture we leveraged our SHIFT^Personas product to identify the right set of stakeholders to interview, and very quickly craft the right questions to ask them. New venture teams often spend the two or three weeks of open-ended discovery interviews figuring out who matters most, and what matters most to them. Using ^Personas, this team was able to find that focus in days rather than weeks. Using this approach with our clients - who are some of the world's biggest businesses solving some of the world’s biggest problems - we can’t help but make an impact. 

How do corporations launch successful new ventures with diversity and inclusion front and center? 

Core to our business is launching new ventures inside of corporations to build future growth. We have the great fortune of being able to tap into the diverse teams at those companies to cultivate leaders who have myriad skill sets, ideas, perspectives, and parent company know-how. We blend this with the external experts we source to build a team that’s positioned for success. 

To truly democratize entrepreneurship, opportunities need to be extended to a more diverse set of entrepreneurs — there aren’t just one or two types of people who excel in a venture building environment. Global corporations are on the way to significant growth when they’re able to broaden entrepreneurship opportunities to the untapped leaders inside and outside of their organizations.