Little Summaries of Company Building: Part 4

Little Summaries of Company Building: Part 4

Previous Notes: 
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• Little Summaries of Company Building: Part 1​

• Little Summaries of Company Building: Part 2

• Little Summaries of Company Building: Part 3

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Observations from experiences on company building:

• One Product: Startups can take either of two passages when they get past the survival stage. Most end up adding products to build an offering. Very few keep the focus on one product. This is a massive open truth that very few founders notice. Building a large company around one product means going past geographic boundaries. New states. Different country. Far-away continent. Our primitive thinking stops us from looking past these hurdles. If you choose to do this, the world is yours to explore. There is no end. You can run the company for a long time.​ ​

 

• Useful Design: Design matters for whatever you are building. Be it a supersonic plane. Or software. Or a consumer product. Think like a user. Eat your dog food. Take your product to breaking point. Test for corner cases. I love useful design. Three areas in design keep customers glued to your products:
  • ​Easy Usage
  • Simple Maintenance
  • Long Life

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• Top-Down Interactions: Extreme-performance team members leave because they can't visualize future growth. I have seen way too many cases like these. You can't rely on the management layer below you to give you performance feedback. Go down. Yourself. All the way. Start with regular chit-chat. Make everyone feel comfortable. Fear will cloud their answers. This is time-consuming. But if you figure out your method, you will work less in the future. Your chosen ones will take off the load.​ 

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• Share Wealth: Put serious upfront thought into compensation. Team members hate frequent changes. Give every team member some form of company wealth. It is a simple and powerful tool to attract the best talent. Compensation design seems easy at first. Once your startup hits exponential growth, things change a lot. Try talking to companies outside of your industry. Pattern match using growth, culture, or user base. Design a compensation method to reward well. If you want to increase your bar, add elements that create a high barrier for direct competitors. That is why looking outside helps. 

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• Family Culture: This one is controversial. Do you build a culture that values only performance? Or you create your unique spice mix? Are you tolerant of big mistakes? Are you willing to fast-track a few select people? Does everyone feel at home? A relaxed and happy mind performs well in the long term. There is no perfect answer here. And I have seen divergent variants succeed. It comes down to what the founders are themselves comfortable with.​

 

• Individual Enrichment: Enrich every member of your team. Use a few different methods. But not too many. Try cross-functional movement. Move them across new locations. Put them in different customer segments. The human mind gets bored easy. Create variety. Companies in different industries have used these methods for ages. So do the Armed Forces. All these methods are super cheap from a company standpoint. Team members value them much higher. Enrichment is your premium secret.​

Let's Talk: If you have a true experience that resonates, please send me an email.

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