Monkeynotions

For the last several months I’ve been hunkering down on trying to create a compelling, empowering and engaging product. While I have much more to learn, here are some things I’ve learned in being apart of a Silicon Valley Startup.

1. Human beings are evolutionary, not revolutionary
I always thought to be truly innovative I needed to do something that fundamentally shifted the way a product was seen or used. Oftentimes when I try to be innovative, the adoption of it is quite low. I’ve come to realize that it’s because humans are evolutionary, and I’m trying to create revolutionary designs. Innovation happens with iteration and the tiny tweaks done in the product. Something small can really make the product innovative.

2. It’s not just a product, it’s a culture
In the midst of trying to create a product that sticks , a culture is being created within your organization. The decisions you decide within product affect the vision, approach, and way of thinking that is carried through the way people interact with each other at the startup.

3. Hire slowly, fire quickly
Since it takes a lot of time and resources hiring and finding the right person, once you find out it’s not a good fit you should quickly get rid of them. The longer you take to get rid of them, the more you eat away at finding the right person. Also, if the person has an abrasive/bitter attitude, it can spread quickly to the rest of the team. One of the highest priorities should be protecting your team. Without your team, your organization and product are nothing.

4. Do the things that only you can do, and outsource the rest
I’m guilty of wanting to do everything and feeling terrible asking people to do things. However, there are just so many things call for your attention that you really can’t spend your time wasting it on things that can easily be outsourced. While you can never see any task as beneath you, you are on the team for a certain skillset that no one on that team has. Make sure you are doing the thing you were brought on to do first and give up the rest.

5. Assign roles to people, but empower them not to stay in them
When we first started we didn’t have a product manager even though a lot of us had strong feelings about product. It was hard for us to come to decisions because while we all had opinions about the product, but there wasn’t one person responsible for the direction and vision of it. Once we hired a product manager, everyone recognized that he was the person to hold the direction and vision. Things ran more efficiently as he fit right into this role.

However, since the startup is small and aims to mature, that person will need to take a leadership role and grow out of the initial role he/she was hired to do. This means that roles need to be rigid enough so that flawless execution can happen, but loose enough so that the person can develop a visionary mindset.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:02 pm and is filed under startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.