Tag: startups
Traffic Directors
There is nothing less valuable in startup world than people telling you what to do, while they are doing very little themselves.
Traffic Directors I call them.
These days information and ideas are cheap. The thing of great value is when people start and finish projects. It’s so valuable simply because it’s so rare. In fact that’s true leadership.
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Marc Andreessen – The story of the snakes
Here’s a great entrepreneurial story from the great Marc Andreessen:
Marc Andreessen co-founded Web browser company Netscape, whose IPO launched the 1990s dot-com stock boom. Now he and business partner Ben Horowitz–who worked together at Opsware, a company sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.65 billion–have started their own venture capital shop, Andreessen Horowitz. They’ve raised an initial, $300 million fund.
I’ll tell you about the first executive staff meeting that we had, when Jim Barksdale became the CEO of a new company called Netscape.
So, Netscape was founded in April 1994. Jim Barksdale, who had been the head of McCaw Cellular and Federal Express before that, became the CEO in early 1995. At that point, Netscape had just released its first products.
The revenue was already growing extremely fast. We were hiring people left and right, and it was just generally chaos. It was one of these companies where people were running around, doing all kinds of stuff, and it was hard to tell what was happening. And there was generally a huge amount of confusion.
Jim showed up at the first executive staff meeting and said, “OK, I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say.” He said, “We have three rules here at this company now. Rule No. 1 is when you see a snake, kill the snake.” In other words, when you see a problem, and there’s something that needs to be fixed, just go ahead and fix it. Don’t screw around. Don’t delay. Don’t overanalyze it. Just fix the problem. And we said, “OK, Jim. We got that.”
And then he said, “Rule No. 2 is, don’t play with dead snakes.” He said, “When a problem has been solved, or you have taken an approach on something, do not revisit it. Simply move on down the road.” And that one was very helpful, because I think as a company at that point, we had a pattern of touching dead snakes.
And then the third thing he said was, “Often, the biggest opportunities start out looking like snakes … look for the points of disruption.” Look for the things where something is going wrong, because that may indicate a major opportunity. And that was essentially the operating manual for the company for several years.
You know, it lodged in our brains.
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Incentives
One of my favourite business phrases is this:
Incentives shape behaviour.
Incentives shape the behaviour of all the people involved in our business value chain. And these incentives we create are also holistic in the sense that they go well beyond money. But before we go designing some kind of incentive program, we are better off thinking about what’s in it for all the people involved. People including but not limited to:
Our Employees
Our Shareholders
Our Suppliers
Our Retailers
Our Customers
Our Community
Our Government
Let’s focus for a few moments on our suppliers. Our usual predisposition here with suppliers is to get the best deal possible. The cheapest supply price. To negotiate hard. And if we do this we’ll make more profit. The flip side of course is that our supplier makes less profit. Maybe we’ll be one of their least profitable customers? In this case what kind of service are we going to get? How will they help us if things are urgent? Will they be as reliable as we need them to be? What will they tell the industry about us as a customer of theirs? In fact negotiating the best deal may just give us a disadvantage which is greater than the price benefits. It’s not such a great incentive for our suppliers and may lead to breakages in our business value chain. It’s smart to leave something in it for the other guy.
As Startups we should ask ourselves the following question….
Are we creating a system in which the people above will have an incentive to help us succeed, or will they simply be indifferent?
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Brain exercise
As we have our brains constantly in the depths of our daily business issues, it’s easy to get stale. Just like our bodies, our brains need frequent and varied exercise to stay fit. There is only so many forecasts, sales calls, design iterations, cash flow statements, customer queries, deliveries, blog entries, product development meetings, WIP’s, administrative tasks… (insert daily business activity here) any sane person can handle…
Too much of this and we get a little stale. Sometimes we need to get into a new mind space. Today’s solution is simple. It involves the body and the mind.Take 5 to do this:
Learn how to and build the worlds best paper airplane. Then go outside the office and fly it.
Even better do it off a balcony. The pic is below & and instructional video link is under it.
I also found this video of how to make the airplane above with simple easy to follow instructions.
Free your mind…. then get back to work!
Startup Blog Live – episode 3
I’ll be doing another Startup Blog Live session at 8pm this Thursday night. It will be via www.twitcam.com under my twitter sign up which is www.twitter.com/sammartino or @sammartino for current members.
Thursday 13th August at 8pm – Live.
The topics of discussion will be Tactics vs Strategy – which was the topic of a blog post below and a very important issue for startups and entrepreneurs. If you can make it – ask a question in teh comments and I’ll answer it live for everyones benefit. Last time we had over 70 people tune in. So join us.
Steve.
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Tactics vs strategy
In startup land the tactics we employ are far more important than our total business strategy. They are more important for one simple reason:
Tactics are short term. Strategy is long term.
Our goal as entrepreneurs in the short term is to get to the long term. To think, to invent, to create to build and ultimately to survive. If we survive long enough our we’ll be able to test our strategy in market.
Strategy is the domain of large companies who have revenue and time. In the world of the startup we must be tactically superior to get a chance to play in market. Often the tactics are not as the strategy intends. But unless we progress and gain momentum. The ultimate strategy will never see it’s place in market.
The lesson for startups is simple. Our tactics give us a chance at being straetgic in the long run.