One of the major realizations that I came to was, as the company got bigger, I remained too execution oriented. I’m very good at working on big rocks vs small rocks, but I found that the rocks I was tackling were still not big enough. This was backed up by my advisors, investors, team leads, and coach. I was ready and willing to make the change, but didn’t know where to begin. My...
We made some great announcements at 11 AM yesterday morning. I wasn’t tweeting or posting about it because I was in a meeting. At the same time the internet and our team was celebrating our milestones, I was helping a founder I had been advising for months shut down his company. He’s an incredibly smart guy. He had a big vision – one of those “better the world and make...
It’s inevitable – and vital – that, as a company scales, a founder has to remove roles from themselves. At first it’s building a team underneath you – specialists, demand fulfillment, etc. Less time is spend on day-to-day execution, and more time is spent planning, overseeing, and managing. But there still may be some bastions of your original role remaining as part...
I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, as it’s something I’ve often stewed about (when in truth I shouldn’t). There are a lot of charlatans in the startup journey. Charlatans that claim to be angel investors, but haven’t written a check in years, if ever. Charlatans that claim to be working on their startup. Charlatans that will happily advise your...
A little over a year ago, we were overhauling our metrics, and were looking for a practice for measuring overall happiness, primarily with our product. There are straightforward quantitative metrics you can leverage and track, which we do, such as conversion rates, churn, and ACV. But we wanted a signal that would give us a leading indicator as to how successful we were overall. We happened on...
I never valued company culture. Culture, mission statement, values – that was all stuff that I never saw anyone pay any attention to other than lip service. Any conversations about values seemed so far removed from the day-to-day of what I was doing. Fast forward to today – Contactually is passing 40 people. Values, mission, culture – that’s what I think about the most...
I’ve been involved in numerous ventures and surrounded in a world of startups and founders doling out advice, blog posts, and anecdotes. I read this stuff voraciously, and tried to take it to heart when it was finally time for my at-bat. To no-one’s surprise, the knowledge that “stuck” was the information I was either looking for, or made sense. Other lessons were skipped...
There’s been a little bit written about technical debt in an early stage software product. Technical debt is something we think a lot about at Contactually. Technical debt is a balance of problems that are generated through rapid product development, normally in an early stage product. “Move fast and break things” Given how key it is for a startup to test product in front of...
2011 we started
2012 we validated
2013 we executed
2014 we win
As a startup iterates itself past the short-term uncertainty – where there is no clarity about what you might even be working on that afternoon – systems need to come into place. These systems serve multiple purposes: Introduce medium/long term planning and goals Distribute work amongst a growing team Communicate and get everyone on the same page. Provide a reporting and...