Tag Archives: founders

Jun 19 2013
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Dude, Take 5…

I love my co-founders… well ok, I usually like at least one of them each day 😉 and we have 4 so there’s enough to go around!

Of course, like every startup, we go through a barrage of difficult decision making, often about things we don’t know enough of (the bliss of trying to carve out a new market!). Which means it’s not always fully logical but guided by gut feelings and ego fueled wars often take over our discussions. We all know how detrimental it is for us and we try to put in fixes (different people have veto for different things, vote for things we deem need majority etc.) but alas, sometime we don’t let go of our “honour”!

Friendly_Fight

 

And then, on the same day, I came across these two amazing blogs, “Give it Five Minutes” and “I Get It”. Woahhh – the first thing I thought was… who has five minutes.. we need it finalized NOW so we can begin building and shipping it. But wait.. is that a push back the moment I read something new? Irony.

We want more creativity, support, understanding, faith. We’ve gotto take 5. Or, 10. Send out an outline of the ideas or agenda before any meeting so everyone has time to marinate them, and if new ideas come up and unless there is an absolute obvious reason to junk it, we’ll take an hour before we decide to go for it or against. It’s OK if we don’t take the decision RIGHT NOW. It’s better if we take a decision a day late if it happens to be the right one, the next best thing, the silver bullet instead of us having missed it because we were undercover douches or egomaniacs.

Tl,Dr; Remember to be nice, respectful. Remember, our hearts beat for the same thing!

I am going to try and implement this strategy in our meetings moving forward – unless of course, I receive pushback 😉

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Jun 16 2013
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Ownership

Ever been to a house where stairs creek, a tap stops leaking only if turned off a certain way and the corner window has a little crack which lets cold air in but the people living there put this fantastic decorative showpiece that blocks the stream and they’re proud of the genius behind it?

Yes, that is ownership.

It’s not always glorious, it’s a lot of hard work (shovel snow or pay for a overflowing toilet anyone?), it’s a lot of commitment and understanding. Yet, the best owners are the ones that thrive the challenges and come out proud and loving!

In a company, your team will always consist of very different kinds of people, (for tech companies, different = weird!) – someone’s wife had a bad day, someone started a new strict diet, someone had a fight with their parents, someone with loved one who’s very sick, or is in financial crisis! Your business will go through different kinds of challenges ranging from “no sales in a while” to “we ran out of water in the office”. You yourself will go through crisis and wonder, is this a real business, will this work, what if we don’t make more sales, what if my key person leaves, how long do I wait? It’s a LOT to deal with. If this a startup, there is a whole different level of instability as the icing.

Good ownership if when you can look forward to solving these problems everyday, you may not know the answers but you know your people, your team feels the same ownership as you do, you understand the subtleties, you love the high of doing something meaningful, you feel empowered,  you own the mistakes, you share the victories! You treat your company like a child, your child, which has some bad habits, some defects but you’ll do anything to fix it. And you’ll work as hard as needed. And you look forward to it. It’s not a challenge, it’s your life.

 

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