Startup Systems
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Startup Systems
How to build a system of information-gathering to get an ROI on time spent
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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
... See moreThere are two types of founders.
Those who do lots of research, validate ideas, test many prototypes, and iteratively get to a product. This is a more technical and user-focused approach.
The other is where the product vision emerges fully-formed in the founder’s eye before it is brought to existence. Here, the founder zeroes in on their self... See more
Those who do lots of research, validate ideas, test many prototypes, and iteratively get to a product. This is a more technical and user-focused approach.
The other is where the product vision emerges fully-formed in the founder’s eye before it is brought to existence. Here, the founder zeroes in on their self... See more
sari azout • Things I'm Thinking About
It’s hard to get a company to do a new thing, and the bigger the organization, the harder it is to change. Companies that are trying to change tend to require an equal and opposite force to overcome the inertia. Large enterprise sales teams are built around signing a single customer, while on the small business end of the market all you need is a few quick calls around an otherwise self-serve solution. When an executive wants their company to change, they often hire expensive, high-status consultants like McKinsey to make a plan that gets everyone on board.
If organizational inertia is one form of resistance that you might want to overcome, what are the business equivalents of simple machines that create mechanical advantage and multiply your input force into a much larger output force? And if they exist, do they have an equivalent trade-off of physical machines where you have to apply the force over a longer distance to gain leverage?
Maybe! Startups often hyper-focus on a small number of customers that share specific traits. This compresses all of the startup’s energy and force into a small space. It’s the opposite of being “spread thin.” The advantage of this approach is that you’re more likely to solve a problem, overcome inertia, and gain adoption by the customers you focus on. The trade-off is that it might be questionable how many more customers you’ll be able to find. I call this a market wedge, where you sacrifice scale for power.
And what you see internally is what I'll say is razor-sharp focus on reducing cycle time and bias to action and how do we reduce cycle time. I think it's basically the core of it culturally to me is getting people to think about smaller units of time for decision making. It seems obvious but I think you really have to reinforce it culturally. So... See more
Lessons from scaling Ramp | Sri Batchu (Ramp, Instacart, Opendoor)
“It's just to remind people that we don't work in years, quarters, weeks, we work in days. Each day matters and so never put out something tomorrow that you know can get done today. And that bias to action really permeates not just in the product teams but everywhere.”
Pick a customer instead of an idea: “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that when you're starting a company, you often think you're picking an idea, but you're really picking a customer. It's actually pretty easy to change your idea, but it’s way harder to change the customer you're serving,” says Agrawal.
Superhuman
Most owners consider themselves product creators and not actual business owners.