What Is "Yes And" Thinking and How Does It Apply to Entrepreneurs?

Q: What is "yes and" thinking and how does it apply to entrepreneurs?

"Yes and" is the improv discipline of accepting an offered idea and adding to it before evaluating. For entrepreneurs, it unlocks brainstorming, customer discovery, and team disagreements without killing momentum.

The story

Most founder conversations live in "no but" mode — every idea gets evaluated before it's developed. That's efficient, but it kills the kind of expansive thinking that leads to non-obvious moves. "Yes and" flips that order: accept first, build second, evaluate third. SideHustle's Labs format runs on this rule. In each 90-minute session, teams of 4 to 5 students pitch ideas in 4 rounds, judged on Funny + Fundable. The funniest pitches happen when one student adds to another's setup. Run one-time at Mars Hill, Oklahoma, Penn State, Xavier, and Wisconsin, the workshops reliably show that students who default to "yes and" produce more ideas — and better ones. SideHustle co-founders Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran use the same rule when riffing on stage.

What it means

Yes-and isn't blind agreement. It's a temporary suspension of judgment to give an idea room to grow. Practice it for 10 minutes at the start of any brainstorm and you'll get more usable ideas in 30 minutes than in a 2-hour critique session.

Try it

• Play free at playsidehustle.com
• See us live: Sept 25 at Pershing Hall in Austin. luma.com/playsidehustle
• Email team@playsidehustle.com