Raise enough to win

Overheard at Silicon Valley networking event...

Founder to VC partner they just met: "We're raising a seed round of 1.5m to build Y"

VC to Founder: "That's too small. You should be raising 3m+. We don't want you to underestimate what it takes to win and wasting time having to go fundraise again too soon"

Can you imagine if your tech/VC ecosystem thought the same way?

This is why Silicon Valley wins.

Can it create an overinflated bubble powered by FOMO? Yes.

Does it also create the most valuable and impactful companies in the world (and massive returns for the top funds). Also yes.

As a VC and/or Founder, do you know what game you're playing?

It's a big boy (or girl) game of power laws and the first to network effects wins.

Raise and fund properly. Win. Or lose. But take your shot.

BIG MISTAKE: "We're just going to do this for a few customers..."

BIG MISTAKE: "We're just going to do this for a few customers..."

When thinking about staying focused and avoiding working on the wrong things for the wrong customers and use cases, it's better to have ZERO or a LOT.

People who admit distraction into their org will often argue, "Oh, this is just for one customer" or "We're only going to do this for a few people" - as if this is some kind of virtue.

Having "just a few" is the WORST of BOTH worlds.

You get all the requirements and distractions and none of the scale.

Do it. Or don't do it.

If you're going to do it, plan to SCALE it aggressively.

Digitizing Confusion

Does your product make your users and/or customers' lives easier/better/cheaper/faster - or is it just digitizing their confusion?

Productizing your marketing

Sometimes, a PMM can not just help market your products but can also productize your marketing.

Productized, repeatable, and scalable marketing is the key to exponential growth. It starts slow and then compounds over time.

If you're finding yourself doing too many ad-hoc marketing activities that feel disposable, ephemeral, and hard to optimize, measure, and maintain - consider how you can add more productization.

Maybe a great PMM can help.

Do you REALLY commit?

Have you heard the saying "Disagree and commit"?

This is a fundamental tenant of Silicon Valley culture.

It's an easy catchphrase that means that even if some people disagree, once the decision is made, everyone gets to work to make it work!

However, I've noticed that some companies have a culture of "Agreeing but failing to commit."

There are lots of soft "yes" and soft "maybe" that never translate to a change in vocabulary and execution in the org.

Make decisions. Make changes. Move on.

It doesn't matter how good you are - you're still screwed

The hardest thing in the world, it seems, is to a) take your own advice b) take it consistently over time.

This is why 3rd party advisors who ostensibly do what you do and know what you know - even if you're awesome - can be enormously helpful in keeping you honest in your business (and in your life!).

It's always deeply amusing to me when I speak to someone about a struggle in my own life or work and they remind me of an axiom that I teach to founders every. single. day.

It's a big face-palm moment.

Even if you think you know what you're doing... Pick your metaphor

- You can't read the bottle from the inside
- You can't understand the battle field when you're in the trenches
- You can't see the forrest for the trees.

Hitting your North Star growth metric

Tips for product-led scaleups with global ambitions to hit their North Star growth goals

1) Alignment and repeatability > short term tactical wins

Alignment is creating.a straight line across Business Strategy -> product strategy -> product marketing -> marketing -> sales -> partnerships (in that order)

Imagine each team pulling a large bolder in the same direction. It’s the only way to get a big job done.

This sets up your business for long term success through compounding outcomes (and therefore hockey stick curves)

2) Sell what you have

It may not be the perfect thing for every cohort, but selling what you have has multiple advantages…

a) You actually have it for customers to buy

b) It reduces thrash and confusion for product and engineering- allowing them to focus on creating polished and valuable products that speak for themselves

c) It shows the market continuous material improvement - even if not every cohort wants that very thing at that very moment

And so much more...

Note: There’s typically multiple ways to sell the same thing to different cohorts and across multiple campaigns across time.

3) You don’t need to win everything all at once.

You only need to satisfy enough people to get to the next stage of adoption/usage/sales.

Focus on one or a few niche cohorts at a time. Lay repeatable processes/messages/funnels and then move on to the next.

Just like product - if you try to do too much at the same time you’ll build nothing repeatable and scalable.

Any other tips? Leave them in the comments.

4 toxic traits of terrible founders and leaders

1. Overestimated sense of competence

They overrate their instincts and perspectives, leading to derailed processes and work product as they inject misguided ideas and methods into their team's work.

2. Fragile ego

Their hyperactive imposter syndrome and/or overestimated sense of competence means that they get upset at the slightest pushback. Any suggestion that they might not understand the problem or have missed an important perspective or detail might even lead to outbursts and rants.

3. Blaming others for their failings

Their exaggerated competence and fragile ego drive them to blame others for their own shortcomings. They might set the team up for failure with:

Lack of specificity and clarity

Lack of context

Lack of patience

Lack of discipline

When failure inevitably occurs, they refuse to acknowledge their own mistakes. Their limited understanding of processes and excellence leads them to disrupt and confuse the team, constantly changing their demands and causing inefficiency and frustration.

4. Inability for self-reflection and correction

Their overestimated competence, fragile ego and blaming others means that they will never look to themselves as the possible source of thrash and failure. Worse, they will reject anyone and anything that might help them improve their own behavior and, therefore, the output of their team.

It's impossible to help these kinds of founders because their toxic traits are the very same defense mechanisms that block self-reflection, coaching and improvement.

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Can you name any other toxic traits? Share them in the comments below!

Permission to say NO!

One of the most valuable things you can do as a leader, is give your team permission to say NO.

I find you have to remind them every week.

No to distraction. No to feature creep. No to unfunded mandates. No to bad ideas.

No to ANYTHING that doesn’t get you to your Northstar as fast as possible.

Are you a bridgebuilder or a disruptor?

Are you a bridgebuilder or a disruptor?

It’s always so hard to help European founders understand the difference between building bridges and supporting incumbents vs driving Silicon Valley style disruption.

Even when they come to Silicon Valley, looking for smart money and venture scale outcomes, their head is still polluted with the scarcity and timidness of their European experience and cultural context.

Often they’ve tried a more direct and disruptive path, but they’ve been told over and over that it won’t work - so they come to Silicon Valley pre-compromised and afraid to return to the original vision.

This is why I have a lot of time for these kind of founders. I meet with them and try my best to nudge them along the journey of reconnecting with their original vision and making a dent in the universe.

Reduction of complexity is critical to good product.

An important principle of good software architecture, UX, and general Product design is maintaining the minimum possible set of core entities, metaphors, concepts, and surfaces.

So when iterating on your product, be careful about introducing new ideas when existing ideas, carefully generalized, can do the same job - or better.

However, be careful about OVER generalizing. This can lead to conflation and confusion and create an amorphous blob with a lack of appropriate specificity and clarity.

How do you know where to draw the line? Taste, judgment, experience, and user testing.

This is related to the axiom: "Genius is reducing the complex to the simple." You can replace the word "genius" with "product". Product is reducing the complex to the simple.

Also related: customers are not always right. In fact, they are almost NEVER right. Listen to their pain, but ignore their prescriptions. Look for simple, first-principles-based solutions that reduce complexity and move the domain forward.

Bad vocabulary can get you ignored

An inexperienced tech founder from traditional business just emailed me the following about their tech startup:

"We are looking to finalise a raise of up to $2M at the moment to allow us to complete the IT build for the solutions and consider opening discussions with potential partners in the USA."

In addition to a number of other niceties and details, I included the following excerpt in my response...

"Just some constructive feedback to help with your messaging - there are a lot of yellow flags in your framing that will immediately turn off investors. I'll highlight them below to try to be as helpful as possible.

- 'up to $2M' - Pick a number, not a max. How much do you need to win over the next 18 months?

- 'Complete' - Software and products are never complete. You only get to various stages. Also, investors don't invest in building software; they invest in growing companies and hitting growth milestones

- 'IT Build' - IT is printers and monitors and networks. It is not software/products/tech.

- 'Solutions' - They are products/services. The term 'solutions' is IT/old school speak as well

- 'Partners' - You're not looking for partners; you're looking for investors."

Using the right vocabulary in communication can be the difference between implicit credibility or instant dismissal on style alone.

It may not be fair, it may not be popular to talk about, but it's real and important.

Do you have any other examples of yellow flags in vocabulary you've seen?

#startups #scaleups #startupsnippets #advisory #consultingconvos

Developer Advocates for your domain

Today, I was reminded of the incredible power of developer advocates.

These superstars are former engineers who are excellent at communicating with other engineers.

They often have a mix of superpowers. Some are great at writing, others are running webinars, and yet others might be most effective at running hackathons or developing sample code.

They do this with the credibility engineers demand but with the finesse that marketing requires.

I wonder how many deep technical businesses/products require this kind of advocate for their domain.

PMs vs Everyone else

In relation to "identifying problems," the difference between PMs and general employees (those who have to use the software systems and live with the products) at a company is...

1. Good product judgment, taste, and perspective

2. Principled prioritization

3. Detailed requirements analysis

4. Methodical execution until solved

If you want to switch to PM, you need to get past the general sense of "there are problems everywhere" and get to specificity and clarity until problems are solved - one by one.

Dangerous Domain Experts

One of the most dangerous combinations of founders is the Domain Expert + The Engineering Wiz.

Why?

Because the Domain Expert tends to have a deep understanding of the breadth and depth of the problem and tends to believe it ALL needs to be solved on day one. The Engineering Wiz tends to embrace the complexity and dutifully and diligently build ALL the things.

What do they need to derisk their journey?

A product leader with taste and judgment.

The product leader can push back on requirements, find embarrassingly thin slices to build and ship, and ensure that technology becomes a product before moving into adjacent areas of the domain.

Magic + Bravery

Consider...

1. Startups are magical, and they defy gravity.

2. Being a founder is an act of bravery in the face of great uncertainty.

So, Startups are magic performed by brave people.

A tip for more effective OKRs

Ensure your team's OKRs align with a measurable business outcome—particularly the Key Results.

Even if your team is not directly responsible for the delivery of some given value to a customer or partner, it might be beneficial to measure the final delivery rather than just the underlying supporting work.

For Example:

If you're a science team delivering a new piece of supporting scientific literature to the go-to-market team. A mediocre OKR would be...

"Deliver 3 pieces of research."

However, a better approach would be to share the following OKR between both teams...

"Deliver 5 webinars on new research to 200+ doctors"

Now BOTH the science team AND the GTM team are responsible for creating AND delivering the content to market.

This helps in many ways...

1. It forces your team to be accountable for final and commercial outcome

2. It encourages you only to admit work into your team that will deliver real value

3. It facilitates pressure from your team to the client team

4. It gives execs visibility into work that's being completed but not delivered to market.

No more buck-passing, no more busy work, no more research developed but not delivered, and no more hidden wasted work that does not deliver value to customers.

You're probably wrong about that

Remember: All new and counterintuitive data at first appears wrong.

If...

1. You've been stuck at a given level or problem for some time, and you ask someone for help

2. That person has a genuinely insightful answer borne of experience and judgment

Then, their answer will likely be incongruent with your prior way of thinking.

Your first instinct will be to reject it as WRONG.

The fact is that YOU (your judgment or mental model) about that given issue are likely WRONG.

Allow for this possibility.

Attempt to have a learner's mindset.

Reminders about speed and value delivery:

1. Focus on your Goals/OKRs - unless if OKRs no longer reflect what’s best for the company

2. Remember that time slicing slows everything down - Delay work that isn’t the #1 priority and focus on getting value delivered to market (not just getting busy work done).

3. Don’t put off to next week what you can do THIS week. Meetings, decisions, deliverables. Do it fast and well.

4. Avoid leaning into research, bureaucracy, or dogma that doesn’t matter to immediate commercial goals. Except when it comes to sensitive topics like health/scientific evidence, making progress in roughly in the right direction is better than days, weeks or months of “research” or “debate”.

5. If it’s not a) shipped to the public b) discoverable by everyone that needs it c) evergreen, repeatable, scalable - then it basically does. not. exist.

6. Do NOT trade money for time. If you can spend a little more money to save a lot of time (hiring someone better, buying a better piece of software, buying a report etc) then DO it.

#startups #scaleups #startupsnippets #consultingconvos #scale #speed #hustle #culture

Keep grinding

Very few product iterations unlock massive new value and growth "all of a sudden". No matter what sales, marketing, and research might suggest.

Product is about small incremental improvements that ladder up to massive value over time.

Have a plan, keep grinding, and consistently add incremental value over time.

#startups #scaleups #sales #marketing #startupsnippets #consultingconvos