The Cardinal Sins of Small Tech Newbies - Part 2
Welcome back folks. This is Part 2 of a series covering common mistakes small tech/startup newbies make. If you haven’t had a chance to check out #1 I recommend you check it out here.
If you are new to building something yourself from scratch there is a very good chance you will unconsciously fall into at least one of these traps. BowTiedLaunch is giving you fair warning so you can end the cycle of pain and get to your goals much faster.
To recap the theme: most Small Tech Newbies have a tendency to carry with them bad habits from the Corporate Clown World.
That is a problem because your advantages, disadvantages, cost structures and incentives are vastly different than a big company.
You are not Shawshank Corp. Do not do business like Shawshank Corp. Embrace being small and doing things differently.
In Part 1: we broke down the tendency to prematurely optimize or automate. Now let’s continue on to Cardinal Sins #2 and #3.
Cardinal Sin #2: Misplaced Focus - Tech & Sales > Everything.
When you’re working at a corporation, you’re probably used to working with a multitude of departments:
HR
Sales
Marketing
Accounts Receivable
Operations
Legal
Customer Support
Engineering Team A
Engineering Team B
It makes your head spin. These big companies can afford the bureaucracy.
But you can’t. And it’s not just the money. It’s the lost focus.
I repeat: you simply cannot afford the bureaucracy and complexity.
Embrace it. It is liberating.
The only things that really matter in a new tech venture are: the product and your ability to sell it.
Why sales and product? If you can adequately perform in each of these two areas, most of your problems will autocorrect. If you can ship quickly and at a reasonable budget then show a positive growth trajectory with a good sales team, you will be able to find investors if you really need it.
Think about it. Nobody ever went out of business because their sales team was crushing it, because they had too many investors, or because their product was revolutionary. They go out of business because they either:
Underinvest in product that doesn’t actually solve their customer’s problems adequately.
Have a sales team that is lackluster and can’t make the aggressive growth numbers.
Spend too much money on other functions that don’t actually move the needle in either of these categories
Everything else is overhead. Minimize focus in every other function. Skip the function if you can and outsource it if you absolutely have to have it.
Zero Focus: A Cautionary Tale
I once worked for a startup who had secured its funding from a centimillionaire that Made It™ from a seed round investment in a $10B+ unicorn. There is a 100% chance you’ve used this unicorn’s product.
The founding team really wanted to hire me during the huge labor crunch of late 2020 so they pulled him out as the big gun. They asked him to call me. One hour later that had sealed the deal for me. I was in. I thought for sure someone with so many resources and successful track record would give the founding team sound guidance.
I was wrong.
The product we were building was B2B aiming to simplify paperwork rich processes that abound between small businesses in the target industry. Given this background it seems obvious. Surely the sales team and the product team were the focus.
Wrong again.
Despite securing a healthy seed round that would arouse most of you, the founders did some finding indeed. They found a way to fumble the bag.
With no product built and $0 in sales, they hired: a marketing team, an accounting team, an operations team, and yes worst of all, an HR team.
General purpose focus was no where to be found. Let alone focus on the all important product and sales categories.
I recently received word that this company finally kicked the bucket. RIP. I crei evertim.
Autopsy on My Former Employer
The bottom line is: these guys wanted to invest in everything *but* the product and sales. The excessive expenditures on head count says it all: no focus.
The company slowly went into a death knell. The product wasn’t quite good enough. No traction.
No investors. Dead. Years of people’s lives wasted.
If you think you’re going to get anywhere without a solid product and the ability to sell you’re in for a rude awakening.
You will waste years of your life.
Do not listen to anyone that tells you any differently. Until you are cash flow positive or have millions in the bank do not take your primary focus off of the tech & your ability to sell it.
Cardinal Sin #3: Meeting Just to Meet
When you’re in a big company you’re surrounded by Lumbergs. Most of these Lumbergs are superfluous and parasitic. These Lumbergs need to fill their day with *something*
Enter Meeting Culture™ . Most companies even smaller ones pick up this habit. Meeting just to meet. Humans love connecting so its natural on some level.
But meeting is not actual work.
Meeting by itself doesn’t make your product better.
Meeting doesn’t improve your sales numbers.
It just distracts your people from what they should be doing.
Putting the brakes on Meeting Culture™ is probably the single biggest positive to come out of Covid Lockdowns.
A Counterargument: Value Added Meetings
I am not recommending you end all meetings. I am just recommending you look at the number of meetings Shawshank Corp has and cut them by probably 75%. Some meetings add value.
Where Meetings Add Value
When you need to communicate the WHY behind an initiative
When you need to clarify the steps behind execution.
When something is not going according to plan and you need to adapt
Infrequenut updates so people understand what’s going on
When NOT To Use Meetings
Team Building
“Weekly or Daily Syncs”
Micromanaging problematic people - if they’re a problem and can’t perform, talk to them once and if they don’t perform, show them the door.
Meeting is not actual work. It can enhance work when used sparingly.
Do not confuse meeting with actual work.
In Conclusion
There are a lot of landmines when trying to cut over your thinking from the corporate world into small tech/startup land.
You will make mistakes.
Just don’t let it be these ones.
Focus on sales & tech over all the other ancillary functions.
Do not let Meeting Culture be your way of life.
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