How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between
1) All businesses are loosely functioning disasters.
2) Operating a small business feels like a daily knife fight where you get out of bed, try not to get stabbed, get back in bed, and do it all over again.
3) Small businesses don't stay small on purpose.
4) Most companies don't make much money.
5) What money they make is almost always reinvested back... See more
You need 2 types of people to keep early-stage startups from stagnating:
- someone who’ll shamelessly sell the product before it’s fully ready to be sold
- someone who’s embarrassed by this and will push to improve the product faster
One result of this past tech cycle was a view that companies needed to build hyper complex ponzi schemes of ambition in order to accumulate capital and be valued. This led to a variety of shooting stars that never realized their main goal.
Another view was an insane amount of value ascribed to hyper-narrow features masquerading as companies, leading... See more
The best tech companies drive strategy through product. This is why founders and CEOs tend to be product leaders, and product / design / engineering is more important than ops / marketing / finance. Here’s what this looked like for me as a business leader at Amzn and Facebook: