Startup Advice
sari and
Startup Advice
Building startups is not a particularly glamorous thing in spite of how the media makes it look. A lot of it is just doing sales or doing customer support hundreds of thousands of times over and over again and being really committed to becoming exceptional at it.
The Not So Cookie-Cutter Approach to Company Building — 8 Lessons from Zapier
Here are (some) steps founders can take to get reporters to write about their companies (a thread). (Caveat: this thread is not exhaustive and really applies only to me)
✡️ Jon Shieber ✡️twitter.comIt can help to reverse the polarity of our relationship with new ideas. We often treat them with reverence; before long, confirmation bias sets in and we begin looking for reasons why they will succeed and ignoring evidence suggesting they might fail. A common failure mode is to jump on the first idea and get started—this is probably the worst... See more
Problem choice and decision trees in science and engineering: Cell
Two thoughts: The best startups are masters of asymmetric warfare -- they don't fight on the battlefield the incumbent selects. And, users often understand their problems well but are horrible at suggesting features to solve these problems.
Michael Seibeltwitter.comThe Levels of Delegation
An easy way to become a better delegator is to identify what will unlock more leverage for yourself. Jonathan broke it down into 5 levels, with one more that he’s building at Athena.
#1 — Novice: Delegation by Task
Jonathan has seen thousands of delegators start their journey and, without help from Athena’s delegation... See more
An easy way to become a better delegator is to identify what will unlock more leverage for yourself. Jonathan broke it down into 5 levels, with one more that he’s building at Athena.
#1 — Novice: Delegation by Task
Jonathan has seen thousands of delegators start their journey and, without help from Athena’s delegation... See more
Michael Houck • World Class Delegation (from a Unicorn Founder)
The 5 Levels of Delegation
The Jenga situation
seths.blog
The early days are exciting. Customers are seen and heard and served. Variations are created and value is produced as problems are solved.
In the early days, the most celebrated employees are the ones who figure out what someone needs and then determines a way to fill that need.
Once the organization gains traction, it’s possible that a short-term profit maximizer will join the team. They push to treat the customers as replaceable flanges, almost identical, income opportunities to be processed. And the employees? They are expenses, not part of a team.
It can seem like the fastest way for a stable business to increase profits is simply to remove some sticks. Process more flanges with fewer expenses. Lower overhead, measure the easy stuff, do it faster.
We spend too much time dealing with shaky towers. The resilience of people connecting, of organizations evolving, of service and clarity and generative work is far too important to be threatened by a few hustlers who insist on measuring the wrong thing.
Generally, teams think about switching costs as the amount of time and money needed to install one solution and remove another. But true switching costs are much more than that: they include the politics, emotions, career ambitions, esoteric business processes, competing priorities, and sheer laziness that all favor the existing solution. Those... See more
Jake Fuentes • Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it
