6 Million Dollars Later...

When I was at AvantGo some 8 years ago I worked for a VP of Services that always thought big. His mantra was "go big or go home."

I was struck by the boldness of the approach and seduced by its grandiosity. What promises of success and wealth were contained in the claim! Typically, as with this VP, the claim is laced with additional baggage that results in an organization trying to do too much at once in too little time.

There at AvantGo I think the the "too much" was the attempt to build out an application suite AND create an enterprise platform AND create a profitable consumer service as disconnected businesses--each with their own P&L.

The key lesson I have learned from the series of 5 or so start-ups that I have been involved with is that you can "go big" (in fact it is a requirement of the vision of any investor backed effort) but you must focus on a core proposition. If you have more than one core proposition when you are a Seed or Series A stage start-up then you have too many propositions and you are unfocused. I have actually found that it is impossible for a start-up to be too focused. Often people see two risks--being unfocused or being too focused. Yet 95% of the time the problem is being not focused enough. So are there really two equal risks?

At TailWind, a small company I founded, my engineering group thought it was a joke to refine the thinking of the business down to one value proposition. They dismissed the idea of the business having a culture of accountability and aligning around a core principle.

This is not uncommon. Most engineering groups get through the day on a steady diet of sarcasm and irony. The nature of most software engineers is to be skeptical, uncommitted and critical because these are easy attitudes to stay safe behind. When engineers feel a greater need to stay safe and cynical behind their critical eye this is a sure sign they are reluctant to commit to success. This is a sure sign the start-up is getting off on the wrong foot.

This attitude is often the result of bad experiences. So its manifestation is often not the individual engineer's dysfunction as too many leaders have insisted to them the business must "go big or go home" resulting in thrash of engineers, their teams, and their efforts. This especially happens when go big translates into a lack of focus that seems more like a call to action to "boil the ocean."

When I have been successful with the start-ups I have been involved with is when we have aligned the culture of our start-up team around some basic ideas.

The first is that all involved, everyone, no one excepted has to buy in to the shared vision of the business and the product that will start the business toward that vision.

The second is that all involved, no one excepted, has to buy into a way of going about the business with explicitly agreed to principles of how we treat each other and how we keep communication flowing through and organization. Some simple examples of this are a) the one up one down method of sending email (there are no 1 to 1 communications in a business of three or more people) b) ask don't tell (inquire rather than dictate).

Thirdly, is that all involved have to desire to make meaningful commitments, on a daily basis, to the vision of the business. That is to say ambiguity, noncommittal attitudes, ambivalence are attitudes that hurt a business as much or even worse than attitudes of spite or disdain. At least with spite and disdain everyone is aware of the position of the person who holds the attitude. With ambiguity, ambivalence and non-committal attitudes they appear to not do any harm and they whitewash the energy of the business.

Theses gray attitudes substitute wishy-washiness in place of clarity, insouciance in place of progress, ignorance in place of accountability. I am surprised at how high a % of my experiences at both start-ups and established businesses are populated with people that prefer lack of clarity and unrequested commitment. From my observations this preference happens unwittingly. Leaders and teams alike seem to agree they won't uncover what they really need to do. I always look to create or be part of a group that can make a commitment to a vision then commit to what they will do that day, that week, that month, that quarter--and then they make every effort to to get it done.