I have to meet this man. I could tell almost the identical story. From the rounds, the travel, the hiring, firing, the weight gain, the acid reflux to life changes. My god this is scary similar.
For the rest of you, especially my first time entrepreneur friends or my young “it will never happen to me” friends. It can and it will….my next post will say how NOT to have this happen to you.
This is a cathartic email for those in startup land. I just came out of a 3-hour product-brainstorming meeting that I thought was going to last 20 minutes. The topic, user registration for people part of an enterprise.
Why did I misjudge it so much? Well, because I just had to harness much of the last 5 years of my life. Nah, not harness, rather pour freezing cold water on all we tried to master…
As many of you know, I’m now back in enterprise land (transportation) after 5 years in consumer web and mobile.
Consumer web and mobile registration philosophy – get em in quick, make it simple
Enterprise registration philosophy (especially with cash) – tread carefully, checks and balances for fraud and organizational hierarchies. Especially when dealing with payments.
Oy vey! That sure kills the simple on boarding buzz. More like a WWE smackdown.
Anyway, were combining the best of both worlds here. Yet, if you love chatting about this stuff hit me at evanschumacher@gmail.com C’mon you know you love it.
Ok back to the battle, I feel better
I’m sure everyone in startup land has read the “CEO of something” piece by Zynga CEO. My thoughts:
· Of course everyone in a startup should have that mindset
· Of course every CEO of a startup should encourage that culture
· But like Ronald Regan said, “Trust but verify”
· Every good CEO needs to be on top of their and everyone else’s shit. It’s great if everyone is empowered, moving fast, feels great but you’ve got to manage. You have to have:
o The processes in place to understand what’s going on across the business
o The right amount of weekly meetings with your team leaders to cover things f2f
o Clear concise goals for everyone to make these decisions against
If you don’t….Well, your f#@#$! and your letting everyone be CEO approach will do nothing but create a cowboy environment and you’ll have no idea what’s going on or ability to string it all together.
Again, great concept. But wrangling everyone together is the real art of a startup CEO.
First time at Indy airport. Wow! World class. So big, clean, modern and easy. Love it. Top 5. Did not see that coming
Board Meeting 101 Slideshow (click above to link to it)
No list of “do’s and don’ts” rather a board meeting template that i more or less use. i get asked a lot by folks for tips on how to put together a board deck so i figured i’d share one
Why should you care?
- experience - 10 years of startups x 10 board meetings per year = 100 board meetings with 8 or so world class vc’s
p.s. it’s early stage friendly
p.p.s - i’m sure i forgot tons of stuff
oh yeah, and if anyone knows how to embed a slideshare show in tumblr i’m all ears…grrr
I think this is an awesome startup list by Dharmesh. Plus it’s fun which is waayyy rare vs the usual b.s.” here is key to startup lists.” nice work. my personal favs are the ones tied to the two things i think matter - great friggin people and laser friggin focus.
sorry been sick for a week. so this post makes me feel better. holy shit. love this. file under “not entrepreneurship tips”
I swore this would not become “another” startup blog but it’s the new thing in my life so here it is…
i saw a great post by trizle that i got me thinking and led to an email i sent the team today..
law 1 - any email, bullet point, statement should almost always have a number of some kind behind it. e.g. the project will be late….bad..project will be late by 10 days because of these 3 lesons
law 2 - always have dates associated with tasks. e.g. my goals are to finish x, y, z is bad vs. i’m going to finish x by wednesday, y by thursday and z by sunday.
as a manager/ceo enforcing date driven tasks and supporting data for most statements is a key lesson and clears up any ambiguity and will hopefully eliminate the dreaded “i assumed you were going to…blah blah blah”
original post by trizle http://www.trizle.com/topics/2016-how-parkinsons-law-makes-you-procrastinate
whoa - this is friggin cool if you are in the tech startup space. death to the napkin and my chicken scratch. also the best “get up and get using it” apporach since old geni.com well done
Maybe i’m getting old, but now i actually pay attention to tips like how to pack properly…You should too..read this! Startups are poor, so we don’t often stay at five star hotels with cleaning services. We also are busy, so spending an hour ironing or steaming clothes to look good is not gonna happen either. Thus avoid looking like a wrinkled shmo
Seriously…anything that goes back to 1986 i’ll watch. Plus i think my new fav actor is the dude who is the husband in cougar town who’s in this. Plus any movie with 80’s rock shirts (3/4 length sleeves only need apply) rocks…
Jason C. Nails it. Total bullshit move by Facebook. Simply put:
1. your site was for me and my friends - not the world - and you just by default changed everything to the world
2. shady shady shady - by default changed everything so all users have to spend 10 minutes changing setting “back” to why they joined the site.
3. plenty of sites resort to tricks all the time - hell at my last company we did it a bit too..of course we had 1,000,000 members not 300,000,000 there is no reason for that type of move
4. i’m a 4 time venture backed ceo. it took me 3 times to figure out what i had to change and i blew off the rather vauge roadblock message. these types of quantum changes should be blasted in users faces.
bottom line - fucking shady. cheesey move. you guys should be embarassed and without question have jumped the shark. how can “do no evil’ people from google running the place believe this is the right thing to do. nice move. i hope the kids revolt and kill the brand.
We will blend in some personal stuff soon but two more quick startup tips…i call this the shit that nobody tells you or EVER writes about…it’s about communication! doing it right, makes your life much easier.
1. Numbers, numbers and more numbers - Every sentence, claim, bullet in every conversation or presentation should be backed up by numbers.
x% likelihood, $y cost, Z weeks to complete, x% increase. I don’t care what it is take the time to apply some numbers. To justify, measure, back-up your position or to show you’ve thought through your position. Whether communicating to your board, your team or in coaching direct reports how to communicate with you. Numbers in every sentence
2. Pyramid communication - Most CEO’s are busy, probably have a-d-d and meetings/calls up the yazoo. They are usually pretty smart (or so i think) and have been around the block enough to get concepts quickly. In communicating with them (ahem, me) start with the highlight, then a bit more detail and then…wait for them to either say “got it” or “nod” and then go ahead and dive into more details. Most importantly, get RIGHT TO THE POINT. I don’t need any flowery stories or long justifications of how you got to your main point.
Yet, KNOW YOUR DETAILS.Board members, CEO’s they fly high, but the good ones bring their plane down from 30,000 feet to crop dusting level very quickly..and ya better be on point.
Look, i learned this lesson the hard way. Until my latest gig, i’d ramble. Well not rambling, but more “thinking out loud.” My board members, HATED IT! I had to learn to hit the highpoints, move on..when asked a question, I often (not always) pause to gather my thoughts as well. Anyway, keep it short, concise and think like a pyramid.
Was on the phone with the CEO of another local startup that i like a lot. We were talking about balancing all that you have to do in the early stages of the journey and how the hell to get it all done. My startup lessons are simple. There are lots of great lists out there but boiling it down to it’s essence.
Here’s my little secret management tip of the day:
1) every friday have all your direct reports submit a “weekly update” one page or less focusing on progress against metrics, key accomplishments for the past week and summary of what’s on deck for the next week.
2) then aggregate/consoidate/summarize those updates, add ceo level stuff and forward to your board on sunday night.
why this apporach?
a) every team member should spend 30 minutes reflecting on the week. the key is that these updates are shared with other executives who are expected to read them prior to the team monday morning management meeting (another management tip). that way the meeting is productive focusing on issues and not “status updates”
b) by sending to board member’s on sunday nights you have a chance that they read it as your on top of their inbox when they are catching up on their weekend emails. Further, they are up to speed on your business during their monday internal meetings which makes them look good (and thus, you as ceo look good)
that’s…my tip of the day.
