Listening to the Dave Ramsey podcast today when I heard this gem:
“In business about 90% of your ideas suck and about 10% of them actually work. And we never know which is which. So you have to survive your bad ideas and when you borrow money to do them you magnify the size of the mistake.
Version 1.0 seldom even makes it to market and version 2.0 doesn’t make you money it loses money. 3.0 starts to work. About 7.0 is the sweet spot by the time you polish this rock a little bit it will shine but the first time your throw it out there it’s a piece of coal.
…Business is a process, you cannot analyze it. – Dave Ramsey
I was reading Jeff Ready’s McStartup blog today and his explanation of “Product Development” jumped out at me.
At Compete and now Lookery, Product Development was the key difference between good products and mediocre ones. The greater the distance between clients and developers the worse the product became. At Lookery, Elias, our head of engineering, is putting the rest of us to shame, juggling sales calls, support, and coding simultaneously.
I’ve never taken Product Development as far as Jeff has (elimnating “engineering”) but the next time I start a company I plan to do so. Jeff’s definition of Product Development below (emphasis mine):
In my companies, we go so far as to merge two functions that are often separated in other organizations: engineering and product marketing. It is my opinion that these should be one in the same. The folks that are building the product are the folks that need to be out in front of customers, finding out what that product should be. They are also the same folks that should be telling those customers how they can use the products they’ve built better or in different ways. We call the combined entity “product development” and it is their job to build products people will buy. They get full responsibility, so there is no blame game between product marketing (“the engineers built a product that sucks!”) and engineering (“marketing got the requirements all wrong!”). This one department is responsible for the whole enchilada, no questions asked.
A lot of technology companies delegate the responsibility for coming up with product requirements to “marketing” who then talks to customers (maybe) and analysts (probably) and copies what the competition does (unfortunately and almost certainly), and then hands a list of requirements to engineering, who inevitably further misinterprets the requirements on their way to creating a product that at best is marginally passable and at worst is so far of the mark that no one will buy it. What an unnecessary chain of misinformation and complexity. The people who design the product should be out there talking to people who want to buy it, and should build what they will buy.
via Market research for startups – McStartup Blog – McStartup – tasty advice for startup companies.
My partner Scott Rafer dropping some startup science during an interview at e27 in Singapore, worth reading the entire post.
Lookery looks really great, maintaining steadfastly on permission marketing and not taking users for granted, very similar to Google’s Don’t be Evil mantra. I like that! Would you like to share how’s the culture like at Lookery?
Company cultures reflect the founders. David Cancel and I have each been working on startups for a long time and have learned some painful lessons that we try not to repeat. Generally, our mistakes have come from excess complexity and unrealistic expectations. Oren Michels of Mashery is the same way. We all think alike. Oren and I met David because he was Mashery’s first customer.
- We’re big fans of simplicity and volume. Do one small thing — and do it a huge number of times. This leads directly to… If it can’t be done with cloud computing, don’t do it.
- We don’t have secrets or tell lies, because both too expensive to keep track of. We can’t justify the time, effort, or capital.
- Small companies should be virtual. We’re six people in three cities who have only all been in a room together once. When the economy improves, we’ll have twice-yearly get togethers. Otherwise, each of us tends to see one or two other employees one day a week or less.
- Ideas are free; execution provides the only value.
- Automate only after you know the automation is justified. Manual processes are fine until then.
- Only raise money if you know EXACTLY how it will improve the business to the benefit of the current shareholders.
- Etc.
Also, for smart, productive people, family life is critically important and stress is a terrible motivator. Half the company are work-at-home parents. We make schedule accommodations for childcare all the time and are very used to screaming three year olds “participating” in our staff calls.
via Sniffing out Great Ideas, Company Culture and Demographics! – Interview with Lookery CEO Scott Rafer » e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia.
