Adding uncertainty in uncertain times

2020-06-30 / life / work / startups / gtd

So, when life turns uncertain you have two choices. Cling to things that seem to add stability and certainty, i.e. try to “stay safe”, or embrace the uncertainty, live now, carpe diem, and do things would seem to be fulfilling now.

I’m choosing the latter. At 58, in the middle of a pandemic and social unrest, I’m moving to a startup. The following are notes from a friend who has been playing the silicon valley startup game for a few decades. These are notes-to-self and anybody else who cares from that conversation:

• Map out the architecture of the org/org structure (official) vs. what is actually working
• Whats the (people) API: theory, practice?
• Find “they guy who built it, knows everything”
• What is the aspirational architecture vs. what’s really built?
• Find “the guy” who has it all in his head, maybe stuff that has not made it to paper. Whiteboard it, write it up.
• Most places don’t do that
• Look at reality vs. getting stuck in “my teams perspective”
• Use systems thinking to figure it all out
• Find the “old salts” who know where the bodies are buried, not “official channels”
• “First 90 Days”, book
• “An elegant puzzle”, book
• #1 lesson for all startups: “IT’S ALL ABOUT HOW MUCH CASH YOU HAVE IN THE BANK”
• If company is healthy, CFO knows burn rate, want’s whole company to be thinking about it
• Health check: how aware are people of cash position?
• Build vs. buy
• Bailing wire and duct tape?
• WATCH BURN RATE, WATCH REVENUE
• Valuable people: people who understand tech and that you have to be a functioning business, i.e. you need more $ revenue than you are spending
• People should be excited about growth
• Watch out for scaling company before projected/actual growth in revenue
• Biz/finance folks should be excited about you being interested in finances. Defensiveness is a warning sign. You WANT people who care about $. People share what they are interested in
• Working remote, COVID
  • open door policy?
  • Ask admin assistant “Can I get 1/2 hour on X’s calendar”?
  • Have/ask leading questions
  • Dig into current, next challenges
  • Demonstrate that you are thoughtful and someone who wants to make things work
• Most important: GET THINGS DONE
• reward/appreciated if you are seen as someone who wants to make things work, shape product
• not “staying in my lane”
• culture to pass things on, figure out where the holes are, fill them
• Each team should have onboarding guide
• Whoever was last onboarded updates it
• if not, as ?Mentor? to get it
• You should have a mentor
• there should be a doc that includes “what IT didn’t tell you
• “When I build systems, I try to build something with good [benefits?] but light filling” (e.g. don’t over-engineer)
• Two bad extremes:
  • Try to build something that works now, don’t “boil the ocean”
  • Pure agile people…constant refinement, incrementalism.
• e.g. you know you need a memory managers. Start with an interface.
• People. There are always “a few of ‘those’ people”, hard to work with, disrupt everything. Stay away.