Reviews

I'd been circling the same project for months. The Fellowship gave me just enough structure to actually ship it. No fluff, just accountability when it counted.

The career framework helped me separate what I actually wanted from what I thought I should want. Made a lateral move that turned out to be the best decision I've made.

I came in wanting to fix my team. Left realizing I needed to fix how I was leading. The shift in perspective was uncomfortable but necessary.

They asked questions we should have been asking ourselves six months earlier. Saved us from building the wrong thing for way too long.

We had a dozen innovation projects going nowhere. RIL helped us kill most of them and actually ship the two that mattered. Brutal but effective.

Finished my open-source project in 12 weeks. The peer pressure (in a good way) kept me from abandoning it when things got hard.

Turns out I was optimizing for the wrong metrics. Now I know what actually matters to me, and I'm not apologizing for it.

Learning to delegate was harder than learning to code. RIL gave me frameworks that actually stuck. My team ships faster now, and I'm less stressed.

They didn't tell us what to do. They asked questions that made us realize we already knew. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.

We stopped treating innovation like magic and started treating it like work. Turns out consistency beats inspiration every time.

Had a half-finished design system sitting on my hard drive for a year. Fellowship forced me to either finish it or admit I never would. I finished it.

No BS career advice. They didn't try to sell me on management if that wasn't the right move. Refreshing honesty in a sea of generic coaching.

Stopped trying to lead like someone else and started leading like myself. Turns out that's what my team needed all along.

We were six months in and still building features nobody asked for. One session with RIL and we scrapped half our roadmap. Best decision we made.

Turned our innovation theater into actual innovation work. We now ship experiments fast, learn fast, and kill fast when needed.

Wrote for 90 minutes every Tuesday morning for 12 weeks. Published my first technical book. Sometimes the system matters more than motivation.

I thought I wanted to be a manager. Turns out I wanted to be an IC with more influence. RIL helped me see the difference and act on it.

I was the bottleneck. RIL helped me see it, then helped me fix it. My team ships features now without me in every decision.

We had ten half-baked ideas. They helped us pick one and actually build it properly. Simple but hard to do alone.

Innovation isn't about having more ideas. It's about executing on the right ones. RIL taught us how to tell the difference.

Spent 12 weeks building a research framework I'd been thinking about for two years. Now it's the standard across our org.

Was chasing titles. Now I'm chasing impact. RIL helped me see that leveling up doesn't always mean moving up.

Leadership isn't about working more hours. It's about working on the right things. Took me six sessions with RIL to internalize that.

Startup advice is either too vague or too specific. RIL found the middle ground with principles I could actually apply to my situation.

We built a portfolio approach to innovation. Some bets fail fast, some succeed big. The key is knowing which is which, early.

Academic life lacks deadlines that matter. Fellowship gave me external structure when my internal motivation wasn't enough.

Negotiated remote work, reduced meetings, and a 10% raise. Turns out you can reshape your role if you know what to ask for.

My calendar was full of 1-1s solving problems my team should solve. RIL helped me step back and let them lead.

Pivoted three times before finding product-market fit. RIL kept us disciplined about when to persist and when to change course.

Built a quarterly innovation rhythm. We ship, measure, learn, and decide. No more projects that drag on for years.

Launched my newsletter in week 3. Grew to 2,000 subscribers by week 12. The accountability pushed me to publish even when it wasn't perfect.

Money isn't everything. Flexibility, autonomy, and interesting problems matter more to me. Took RIL to help me see and act on that.

Scaling from 10 to 100 people broke everything I knew about leadership. RIL gave me frameworks that actually scale with the org.

We were three months from running out of money. RIL helped us focus, cut costs, and find a sustainable path forward. We're profitable now.

Research and business don't have to be at odds. RIL showed us how to connect our innovation pipeline directly to customer value.

Built and launched my SaaS in 12 weeks. Not perfect, but real users are paying for it. That's more than I had before.

My job was draining me. RIL helped me identify exactly what needed to change. I renegotiated my role instead of quitting.

Hire for potential, not credentials. Create environments where people grow. Sounds obvious, but RIL taught me how to actually do it.

We tried to serve everyone and served no one well. RIL helped us find our niche and own it. Now we're the obvious choice for our customers.

We now have clear criteria for what innovation bets to take. Every proposal gets scored against the same framework. Much less politics.

Shipping is a skill you can practice. The Fellowship gave me reps. I'm faster now at taking ideas from concept to deployed.

Moving from architecture to leadership felt like starting over. RIL made the transition less terrifying and more intentional.

Culture isn't what you say, it's what you tolerate. RIL helped me see where I was building culture by accident instead of design.

Test assumptions fast. That's the whole game. RIL gave us a framework for running cheap experiments before expensive builds.

Kill signals are as important as go signals. RIL taught us to recognize when to stop investing in ideas that aren't working.