Startups Why most “culture work” actually HURTS your company — and the simple way to ensure your culture eats strategy for lunch |
- Why most “culture work” actually HURTS your company — and the simple way to ensure your culture eats strategy for lunch
- I am creating a platform to share the startups stories. What went wrong and about the learning from them
- As the Mobile App Developer, What are Some Good Questions I can ask Beta Testers/Users to Improve my Product?
- Feedback Fridays - A Friendly Feedback Exchange For Ideas and Products
- Learn No-Code as a Developer to Build an MVP
- How do you carry on believing on what you do despite that things didn't turn out the way you expected?
- Fair Referral Programs for a Startup
- Hoping to Secure Equity in a Startup, but am Lost.
- What should be included in a business plan? Help
- Anyone that needs a tech co-founder / software development work / MVP?
- How to start?
- Operations Managers in SaaS start ups - what’s your experience
- How can you evaluate the willingness to pay of users & the price sensitivity?
- ☎️ Do YOU host sales or demo calls? What has your experience been like?
- How to get help to pay for my equity after leaving my company?
- How do you calculate your ER for stock options?
- Balancing between code quality and scientific objectives
- Prototyping services?
- Fair equity split when you're the original, technical founder?
- Market analysis in a field with only one competitor?
- How much depth for a landing page?
| Posted: 04 Dec 2020 03:24 AM PST About six years ago I scaled my company from 15-employees to 75-employees in about nine months, which was one of the most painful experiences of my business life. Our corporate culture, previously a strong suit of the business, was completely unprepared for the stresses of that type of rapid scale-up, and the growth almost killed my company. Then we did the incredibly challenging work of transforming our culture from the inside out, while still hitting milestones of a venture backed, high growth company. With the support of a ton of dedicated people, we did it, and the company is now back on track to (fingers crossed) win the market. All this to say that, having nearly ruined my company due to underinvesting in culture at a critical time, and having done the hard work of fixing and rebuilding our culture to become a strength once again, I have a unique appreciation for the importance, and delicacy, of corporate culture. Why most "culture work" actually hurts your company, and what to do about it"Culture eats strategy for lunch" — Peter Drucker This is one of the most popular quotes on corporate culture. And it's true. The best company cultures are the foundation on which successful strategy after successful strategy are built. So everyone should hire people to focus on culture, point them in the right direction, and get out of their way. Right? Wrong. According to Fred Kofman, author of Conscious Business and culture consultant to hundreds of organizations, the vast majority of culture work does more harm than good. As in, not only doesn't it improve the culture, most culture work actually harms the culture it's trying to help. America spends billions on corporate culture each year, and the sad reality is that, on average, companies would be better off simply crossing their fingers. But why? Why does most of the effort put toward the most powerful lever in business backfire? Perhaps even more importantly, how can you ensure that the work you put into building your culture intentionally is among the small percentage that eats strategy for lunch? Start with discovery, not GenerationAsk ten CEOs what makes a good company culture, and they'll all say something similar: Trust, freedom, autonomy, mastery, purpose, ping pong tables... For many leaders, when they set to work thinking about company culture their first instinct is to simply brainstorm (generate) the culture they want, usually some version of the above, and then figure out the quickest way to communicate those values to their team. This is the single most common way to disillusion your team and hurt your culture with the best of intentions. Because culture work must start with discovery, not generation. "There's no way to open the future without closing the past. Unless the company's leadership does a serious examination of their previous disengaging behaviors, and convinces the workforce that they are committed to change that behavior in a serious way, any engagement program is dead on arrival." — Fred Kofman The reality is that even if you've never thought about it, your company already has a well-engrained culture with very specific characteristics, all of which your employees know well even if you do not (and if you think you do, but you haven't asked employees to confirm, don't be so sure). As a result, any values or mission you put on the wall, if they don't match the actual, existing culture already present, they will communicate to your team you are clueless and, slowly or quickly, they'll begin to check out. It's as if your parents, after consistently missing your soccer games for partner calls (hi Peter Banning)), call a family meeting to say their core family value is "togetherness." Effective culture change work, the kind that changes an entire company rather than simply making an executive team feel progressive, begins with a deep discovery process. It asks the question: what is our existing culture now? What are our current values, whether or not we actually took the time to create them intentionally? Your parents first have to admit to their demonstrated value of "work>family" and convince you they're going to change, before you'll hear the word "togetherness" without dripping cynicism. Similarly, you have to first discover, cop to, and clean up any messes resulting from your existing culture before you have the ability to change it. So how do we do this? Where do we look?I know of two places to look. One is hard for one reason, and one is hard for another.
Anonymous surveys are a great tool to understand how your culture is viewed by your employees. Anonymity is key, lest you get a bunch of sunshine blown up your butt. We built our own survey based on specific questions we had at my previous company, but a quick Google search will give you many more options to choose from. There is risk to this approach, however. A survey like this communicates to your employees that you understand the importance of culture, and that you will presumably listen to what they say and attempt to address it. If you take this route and do nothing to address the feedback afterward, it can cause the kind of harm we discussed above. This is a genie that is difficult to put back into the bottle.
At some point in every entrepreneur's journey they realize that their company is simply a manifestation of their personality. The good and the bad. No matter what's on the walls, the behavior of the leader dictates the culture. This presents a shortcut, in that you can understand your corporate culture by understanding yourself. Are you late to meetings? That's your culture. Others are late, too. Do you hold yourself to the grindstone, sacrificing holidays to make more progress? That's your culture. Others do that, too. Do you pass the buck and blame others when things go wrong? You get the picture. While most entrepreneurs resist the hell out of this (it's scary considering your foundational role in creating the problem you see in everyone else), in my experience looking internally is the most reliable route to determine your culture. For those brave few, it's best done with either a 360-degree survey, allowing you to get feedback from all your colleagues, or a dedicated coach to help you see your blindspots. I've reconciled with my current culture. Now what?No matter which discovery route you take, how you get to an understanding of your current state of affairs, the process of changing a corporate culture without hurting the business is always the same: Step 1: Change yourself such that you live the values by which you want the company to live. Step 2: Write the values by which you live on the wall. And if you're wondering, yes that's what we did to transform our culture at speed, in 5 simple steps"
Simple, yes. But nobody said it was easy. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2020 09:38 AM PST Hi guys, There are lot of us who try our best in startup but sometimes it just doesn't work. I myself had 2 failed startups. I am creating a platform "ErrorBook" where we will show startups stories and what founders learnt from them. This is definitely help other founders when they are starting something. I am inviting all of you guys, to share stories about startup failures and learnings from them. Please if you want to have your story published Go to https://errorbook.substack.com/p/coming-soon Our URL will be "ErrorBook.com" Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2020 05:19 PM PST Just wanted get some advice/tips from this group about questions that I can ask beta testers/users. My friend and I just launched a beta version of our app to a handful of users through Testflight and we want to have a short but good list of questions to gather their feedback. I took the YCombinator online course and one of the sections was about Product Market Fit. These were the 4 Key Questions to ask users/testers:
Do you have any questions that were useful during the feedback stage? Any advice, links, articles, etc. would be very helpful. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Feedback Fridays - A Friendly Feedback Exchange For Ideas and Products Posted: 04 Dec 2020 05:07 AM PST Welcome to this week's Feedback Thread. This is the place to request feedback on your ideas and products. Be sure to give feedback if you are requesting feedback. Equivalent exchange goes a long way towards reaching your own goals and it makes for a stronger community. Please use the following format:URL: Purpose of Startup: Technologies Used: Feedback Requested: Additional Comments: Post your site along with your stack and technologies used and receive feedback from the community. Please refrain from just posting a link and instead give us a bit of a background about your creation. Feel free to request general feedback or specific feedback in a certain area like user experience, usability, design, or code review. You can also find more support using instant chat on the /r/startups discord. [link] [comments]  |
| Learn No-Code as a Developer to Build an MVP Posted: 04 Dec 2020 04:51 AM PST I was just curious if I should bother learning No-Code to build an MVP and if someone else with a technical background did this. I don't know if the time spent learning one of these tools is going to save me time in the long run - I could just build it using something I already know. In addition, I am also considering to pre-sell the idea without building a product at all and just faking it/creating mockups, in that case what would be a good tool to use that is easier than Figma, for example. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2020 08:51 AM PST First of all I must clarify that I do not have an entitled mindset which I totally acknowledge that things will not always turn out the way you expected but with all the pressure it is starting to set in. Recently with my start up of an Online Cigarette Store which I've invested nearly all my savings in has not generate any sales at all, it's just tough as I am at the edge of quitting but a part me of still try to believe in the very first reason i started as the amount of effort that I've put into this start up from going all over different states to find a manufacturer that would supply my cigarettes to sleepless nights trying to work out my SEO would all be for nothing if I quit. How do you carry on believing in the things you do despite the disappointments and family's pressure on my finance? [link] [comments]  |
| Fair Referral Programs for a Startup Posted: 04 Dec 2020 03:08 AM PST I was looking into some good marketing strategies for a brand new company with a new product launch, and I read about referral programs for customers. I hadn't considered that before and actually does sound like a good way to get word of my company to spread while on a small budget. But I have some concerns about them that I can't seem to find answers to with Google. What does a fair program look like? For the customer and my business? The money gained from the sale of products go first into paying off the debt and restocking the small inventory. Afterwards I need to shovel it into my other designs and product lines I want to start, which is expensive too ($1k for 2 prototypes per product line, over $5k for first 100 units). And that's just with the neighboring products (I develop and sell muzzle brakes), I have other ideas in both suppressor territory and ammunition that I want to work on. Long story short, money is going to be in very high demand to expand the company into many different lines that are proven but not currently met with an exceptional solution. In terms of product cost, it will cost ~$50 to make the product and the sale price will be $90, so decent margins. Factoring in a referral program is where this gets messy. Instead of making $40 per unit ($4k per 100 units), I will be taking a drop in revenue to increase sales volume (which I have no idea on the volume of it to begin with, my local SBDC could not dig up any information). How do you balance the drop of revenue per product with increased sales? Like, say it is $20 off for the buyer, that means between 2 sales I made $60 instead of $80, while at the same time this product is a lifelong one that people only need 1 of per gun. So effectively two customers are crossed off the potential sales list (overly simplified and excluding multiple guns owned, future gun purchases, etc). I was thinking about a $15 off your next purchase for a referral of a new customer that leads to a purchase and $15 off the order. But how fair is that deal? Would it be better to have $10 off the order while maintaining $15 off the next order? Or would the other way around help encourage the referral to buy it? Then what about the possibility of customers exploiting the system? Such as using alternative email addresses to keep getting discounts? Is there a counter to it, preferably that doesn't put a strain on an already tight budget? I know this is a lot of concerns and questions, but any insight you can offer to making this a success is greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Hoping to Secure Equity in a Startup, but am Lost. Posted: 03 Dec 2020 09:02 PM PST So a few weeks ago, I stumbled across an instagram page and was directed to a new startup/app that I truly believe is the future. I reached out to the owner of the instagram page, spoke with him and he introduced me to the founder and owner of the app. I spoke with the owner for about 30 minutes, and had a great conversation where I told him my intent to help grow is app because of the promise I see, and he expressed his desire to work with me. He is at a very early seed round stage, and I told him I wanted to setup some meetings with people i know in our industry that could help him raise the seed funding he is currently looking to secure to help his app grow. My ultimate goal is provide enough value to this company to secure equity for myself. I myself am young and haven't been a senior level executive or worked extensively in the VC space, so therefore, i have no leverage at the moment to secure equity based off my current industry/career experience. However, I do have confidence that I can introduce this founder to someone that can help secure funding, and have already generated interest amongst people I know who do have the money to invest in this app. I understand that intros are cheap, in the sense that I could provide 1,000 introductions and there's the possibility that none of them would materialize into actually securing this app funding. Because of this, I understand that I don't want to necessarily come to this founder and say that there needs to be something signed between us that ensures if i secure him x amount of funding than i would want x amount of equity in his company before anything materializes. Maybe the only proof of my worth to this founder is by actually getting the finalized commitment and signature of someone deciding they want to fund this next round of funding. Should I just wait for this to actualize before I ask for any equity? and then i could then ask for equity in later rounds of funding assuming i've put in the work, effort, and provided even more valuable connections and industry expertise up to that point? Of course my fear of reaching this point of helping secure this next round of funding without having something formalized that i will receive equity is the possibility of the founder cutting me off completely. He could theoretically go on with his business without me, and in this case i would miss out on any future promise with the app altogether. But is there no way to prevent this from happening? How do I not overstate my value too early and ask for equity without providing clear evidence of my value, and also avoid getting cut out if I do actually end up securing this founder this next round of funding? [link] [comments]  |
| What should be included in a business plan? Help Posted: 03 Dec 2020 05:09 PM PST I'm currently working on a business plan for an sialnd tour company with services such as snorkeling, fishing, trips to other near by island email. What should be included in the business plan? I know there's the executive summary, financial projection ...anything else ? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone that needs a tech co-founder / software development work / MVP? Posted: 04 Dec 2020 03:29 AM PST Hi, I'm currently trying to find more clients for my software agency https://dutyventures.com. We've successfully worked with some companies to build their MVPs, build software to automate daily tasks, or simply continue the work done by other agencies/freelancers. Since we hire offshore developers, we are able to provide competitive rates. If you're interested, please book a call with me at https://rusu.io/meet. If this is not for you, but maybe you're good at selling our services (B2B) - I'm happy to a profit-sharing collaboration. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:46 PM PST I have a few ideas for a mobile application (e-commerce like) - but that's just it. I have no background in designing or coding an app, little funds, don't know how to collaborate with the big brands. How do I start from here? My background is from finance and consulting, so the only skill I can put into this is the legalities of putting up a company. Any advice is highly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Operations Managers in SaaS start ups - what’s your experience Posted: 03 Dec 2020 10:09 PM PST Hi everyone, I am newer to the operation field though I've been dabbling in it with the start up I'm working with for a few months. I am looking for insight on how to best serve the company and grow in this career path. What have you found to be key success factors for you and your company? How do you know what to put your energy towards and how do you go about setting those expectations that are needed for each project? Any other words of wisdom is appreciated! I know I need to sharpen a lot of my "hard skills" but looking toward to it all! [link] [comments]  |
| How can you evaluate the willingness to pay of users & the price sensitivity? Posted: 04 Dec 2020 01:54 AM PST Hello all, We are now looking into monetizing our solution which for the moment is offered at no cost. The question we have to tackle is 2-folds: 1 - How do you evaluate the willingness to pay of your users ahead of launching the monetization? Is there a tool you can use or what would be a good way to go about it? 2 - How do you measure the price sensitivity? Of course, there is always looking at what the competition or similar services do. But is there a way to "test" the market? Thanks in advance for your inputs! PS: for context, our solution is for software developers. On this market, there is a well known business model, which is freemium: essentially, a 'free-forever' base option, andin addition paid plans for some "advanced" or "premium" features. [link] [comments]  |
| ☎️ Do YOU host sales or demo calls? What has your experience been like? Posted: 04 Dec 2020 02:07 AM PST Hi all, Do you provide your website visitors with the option to schedule sales (or software demo) calls with you? If yes, what's the most annoying thing about the whole process? I'm working on a B2B SaaS app and was wondering about everyone else's experiences and best practices. Thanks! :) [link] [comments]  |
| How to get help to pay for my equity after leaving my company? Posted: 03 Dec 2020 10:16 PM PST I've been with a company for 2.5 years and have 1.25% of the company. I need to buy my equity for $12,500 at a strike price of $0.20 with an FMV of $0.26. The company is in the wastewater reuse space and I have faith in them, even though it is a 10+ year play. Are there ways or websites or methods to help to get people to pay for part of my equity at a slightly higher rate so I will get some of the pie at no cost to me? I'm just low on cash and don't want to dump a bunch of money into this early stage company. But maybe a hundred or so people would like small pieces of the pie? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you calculate your ER for stock options? Posted: 03 Dec 2020 10:33 AM PST I make $150k for series A company now as a contract dev, they want to bring me on as a PM full time but said they can't pay me the same rate - they have to make up some cost w/ options. This aligns with my career goals - becoming a PM is an awesome next step for me, and this company is raising $ and growing, so I'll have a ton of responsibilities. I don't want to be short changed if it doesn't work out though. Say I elect a 75-25 split, w/ 25% in options. That's ~35k in options, BUT there is a high likelihood those options are worth 0. How do you go about figuring what the right amount to ask for is? I don't want to make a "gut" decision and wing it, I'm a PM now and I need to use data lol. [link] [comments]  |
| Balancing between code quality and scientific objectives Posted: 03 Dec 2020 03:29 PM PST Hi! We have a pre-revenue tech startup here developing a data acquisition + analysis platform (I'd rather not go into specifics for anonymity reasons). The physics-based proprietary analysis algorithms represent the added value of our potential solution, and so we're developed with pure scientists in their first job having little coding experience. There's been a push by the software guys to instill more stringent coding practices (e.g. Github PRs needing to pass unit, linting and type check tests, release systems) and it's been met with strong backlash from the scientific guys who find themselves having to conform to code standards they often don't quite understand. I'm the lead of the science team and see both sides here - the scientific team is overwhelmed as it is and the added overhead of having to learn better coding practices pronto is stressful (they're working quite hard at it already), but the (much more experienced) software guys are similarly overwhelmed and justifiably scared of allowing sub-standard code into the codebase. Getting someone to port the bring the scientific code to production level is not a hiring priority right now and we can more or less anticipate keeping the current team for the foreseeable future. I understand that this requires a very situation-specific approach and I feel I don't know what the right question is here, but I am wondering where the compromise sits - how would you judge where the line lies for overhead on the science guys to up their coding game? Should I push for more involvement of the software team into the mathy backend? I am very wary of creating an us vs them situation in my treatment of the situation too. (I'd like to add that this is not your typical pressure cooker environment - operating costs are low, R&D funding is good and deadlines aren't an immediate concern as far as tech startup standards usually go) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2020 09:06 AM PST Are there any companies out there that focus on building prototypes? A friend and I need an A3-sized plastic enclosure to house a Raspberry Pi, with a (rotating up and down) mount at the top for a camera. We also need a small back-lit panel at the bottom of the enclosure. As an example, see this: https://i.postimg.cc/h4xqRR4T/example.png We are based in the UK and do not know anything about 3D printing, plastic injection molding, or CAD. I think it would be good to speak with someone who can do the design and building of the casing. Any help would be fantastic - thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Fair equity split when you're the original, technical founder? Posted: 03 Dec 2020 10:12 AM PST I'm a solo, technical founder and have recently released my app to the Apple app store. I've gotten good traction, and I'm trying to grow my startup to be bigger but I'm running up against the limit of what I can get done by myself in my spare time after work. Because of that, I've decided to go after a co-founder. I recently interviewed a former coworker to be my co-founder/CTO which would free me up to focus on scaling up other aspects of the business, but I'm not sure how to go about splitting equity. Now for addtional context, I've been working on the startup on and off for about four years, and have spent the majority of that time releasing an MVP, getting user feedback, marketing the app, building a following, and releasing the "alpha" version. I had asked this former coworker to join me at a previous point when I had first started out building the business but he was unavailable due to other commitments. My potential co-founder is currently asking for a 50/50 split on account of all the technical value he'll be producing for the startup (he's a great software developer), but given the sweat equity and personal capital that I have put in to the startup (roughly $3,000), I'd prefer to have a controlling share of the equity, something like 60/40. Is this reasonable of me? Or is it egotistical? Is it generally best to ensure all co-founders share the same amount of equity or is it fine to have different amounts based on contributions like sweat equity, capital investment, etc? [link] [comments]  |
| Market analysis in a field with only one competitor? Posted: 03 Dec 2020 01:36 PM PST I want to do some market analysis for a new industry. There is one competitor. How can I do market analysis when there is only one competitor? I want to make sure the industry is big enough for both of us. How can I do market analysis for a new industry? Is there a market analysis blueprint tool that gives me an easy way to do market analysis? Thanks for your help. [link] [comments]  |
| How much depth for a landing page? Posted: 03 Dec 2020 09:15 AM PST I'm currently working on an idea I've had for the last few months and want to get a landing page out to collect emails. The dilemma I'm having is.. is a headline, sub-headline, and an email input enough? I've seen both simple pages like this, but also full-on descriptive pages that are essentially one-page websites. As an example, this is Robinhood's first landing page. This is the direction I've gone so far, but when is a catchy headline not enough? I've done some research on this, but was wondering if anyone has any personal experience they'd like to share. [link] [comments]  |
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