Our Backstory
Good Ideas Deserve a Fighting Chance
SumoSum grew out of creator Steve Sue’s decades of turning ideas into businesses, brands, places, software, nonprofit programs and films. But one of its biggest inspirations came from an unlikely place: a kids’ lemonade stand competition.
Steve founded Lemonade Alley, an ID8 non-profit entrepreneurship program that gave kids simple workbooks for turning ideas into businesses. At events, he noticed something unexpected: foodservice professionals and other adults were using the kids’ worksheets to rethink and improve their own businesses.
The lesson stuck: powerful business thinking doesn’t have to be complicated.
Strategy Should Be Seen
Through Lemonade Alley and other educational curricula Steve developed at ID8, he saw how much easier complex ideas became when people could see them—especially students, first-time entrepreneurs and people without formal business or financial training.
Numbers buried in spreadsheets can intimidate. Turn them into intuitive charts, and relationships, problems and opportunities become easier to understand.
That insight became central to SumoSum: Strategy Made Visible.
From Idea to Scalable Strategy
An idea is only the beginning. SumoSum was created to help research it, question it, pull the pieces together and shape them into a strategy others can understand, believe in and get behind.
Instead of writing a business plan first and discovering the numbers later, SumoSum lets you test assumptions, collaborate with others and see the financial consequences as your strategy evolves.
Shape it. See it. Strengthen it.
Helping Good Ideas Flourish.
SumoSum’s purpose connects back to the ID8 nonprofit and its Global Aloha movement: helping people, ideas, organizations and communities flourish. Through SumoSum Workshops, Global Aloha helps entrepreneurs, students, nonprofits and community members learn to shape and test their ideas using practical, visual strategy tools.
It’s also why SumoSum’s FREE membership is unusually generous. We want people exploring an idea to have a serious strategy tool before risking their money, time or reputation—not a stripped-down demo designed simply to force an upgrade.
Good ideas can come from anyone. We want more of them to flourish.