Startup Systems
systems that power startups
Startup Systems
At a big company, you're trained to get it right and get it out. You can’t risk experimenting on your customer base. When you're at a small company, you don't have any product-market fit, so you have to get it out, then get it right.
How to Scale Yourself Down
But here’s the key for an early-stage startup: "As we’re building our plans, we only focus on those first three months, that first chapter. So we break that down into monthly high-level goals, and that's what I hold the team accountable for,” he says. In other words, don’t try to get detailed for longer than a few weeks out. "At a startup, it’s... See more
The 30 Best Pieces of Advice we Heard in 2023
The teams are currently structured by function (product, R&D, design, business, etc.), and different teams think about different layers of the company and stack. But all energy is directed toward improving the core product. We design objectives that translate to common top-level metrics and improve the user experience holistically. For example, all... See more
Lenny Rachitsky • How Perplexity builds product
Perplexity reporting
There is a whole lot of goodness out there when the right systems are in place.
“Why didn’t they simply do the perfect thing on the first attempt?”
The short answer is: that’s not how this works. Things are not linear or clean. We can only asymptote towards perfection through trial and error.
The short answer is: that’s not how this works. Things are not linear or clean. We can only asymptote towards perfection through trial and error.
Packy McCormick • The Experimentation Layer
Takeaways:
- Engineers continued to be the predominant function across the first three hires. Not shown in the chart, but 100% of companies hired at least one engineer among their first three hires .
- Interestingly, customer success/support continues to be a popular role for the first three hires. Of the non-engineer hires, almost a quarter of them are
Lenny Rachitsky • Hiring your early team
A startup’s biggest competition isn’t an established player, it’s inertia.
The 100 Best Bits of Advice From 10 Years of First Round Review
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.