Startup Systems

A new business is complicated. It involves weaving together suppliers, partners, customers, processes, technology, leases, employees, logos, capital and more.

Along the way, it’s easy to get distracted, but focusing on the hard parts is a useful way to move forward.

If you’ve ever worked at a fast-growing startup, you’re probably familiar with the concept of “technical debt.” Code is scrappily thrown together so that the product can function. It’s done with the understanding that this debt will accumulate and eventually cause things to break if not addressed down the line.

Something similar can also happen... See more

It’s easy to be excited about what the company seems to do... to choose our path based on the public’s perception of the output. But once the company has more than one person in it, most of our day is about satisfying the customer, meeting supplier requirements and dancing with the tension of doing our jobs.

Often, we use the product we make as a... See more

"I've noticed three main things holding people back from being more productive and achieving their goals.

They resist creating processes for themselves: This might be baggage from the past where processes were used to control and subjugate them. But processes chosen and designed by YOU can become liberating. ​

They resist making decisions: Most

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The first thing to do when thinking about starting a project, before you invest in systems design, infrastructure or fancy tools, is to practice getting some customers. And the second thing to do is to find out what it’s like to delight or disappoint those customers.

Customer traction is just about the only thing all successful organizations have in... See more

How to build a system of information-gathering to get an ROI on time spent

From the Forte Labs Newsletter:

How to read this newsletter:

You'll always find different topics and different content formats (e.g., video, blog posts) in this newsletter. That's intentional.

But for some, that can feel a bit overwhelming.

I want to assure sure: You absolutely

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Being a founder requires constant calibration between arrogance and humility, optimism and pessimism. You need the arrogance to believe that you have something important to say, but the humility to know most people won’t care. You need the optimism to convince yourself and others (employees, investors, customers) to believe in you. But you need... See more

Managers should always be prepared to give away their people, and when the time comes for a high performer to leave, Shen argues that managers will actually be better off for it.

Pulling from the ethos of Molly Graham’s blockbuster Review article “Give Away Your Legos,” Shen has architected her own framework for how managers can avoid being caught... See more