Startup Systems
systems that power startups
Startup Systems
Startups will have “we’re amazing” moments and they will also have “we’re crashing” moments. In order to weather those storms, you need high levels of trust.
Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People
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.
So what is systems thinking? In his book The Fifth Discipline , Peter Senge gives a systems thinking definition as “A discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static ‘snapshots.’ And systems thinking is a sensibility—for the subtle interconnectedness... See more
Systems Thinking vs Design Thinking, What’s the Difference?
Because big businesses aren’t built on gimmicks. You can blitz your way through Sand Hill Road and spike up the App Store charts on gimmicks, but you can’t actually use them to replace Gmail, or Salesforce, or Instagram, or Instagram, or Instagram, or Instagram. Even seemingly instant successes can’t become lasting companies without putting in the... See more
Benn Stancil • Why Are We Surprised That Startups Are So Freaking Hard?
I like to say the devils and the details and the devils and how you execute. And so coming back to how do we execute just a little bit differently and some of the learnings there where I think the first time we started growth, we could have been more user-centric and been a lot more hypothesis driven. We were following a lot of best practices that... See more
Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)
Not all best practices fit for all orgs. Right-size and test when trying on your ops!
From Tiago Forte of Building A Second Brain-- We have spent most of our lives in the Attention Era. Our attention today is clearly the most scarce, valuable resource we have, which means we feel the need to capitalize on every bit of attention available, which often means filling almost every minute of the day with information consumption. Even
... See moreMomentum is Everything
Most founders implicitly realize that in order to get a startup off the ground you need to will it into existence and keep momentum high.
This is good for the startup but it’s also essential for the founder — when momentum is high most founders feel more optimistic about what they’re building, which is obvious to anyone they’re... See more
Most founders implicitly realize that in order to get a startup off the ground you need to will it into existence and keep momentum high.
This is good for the startup but it’s also essential for the founder — when momentum is high most founders feel more optimistic about what they’re building, which is obvious to anyone they’re... See more
Superhuman
They looked for first principles thinkers, so not necessarily your experience, but how do you approach problems, how do you know the right questions to ask? And then create your own framework around that.
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Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative and team oriented. And the combination of those two things,... See more
(00:08:32):
Dropbox also hired for people that were just really humble, collaborative and team oriented. And the combination of those two things,... See more