The `C` Of Nothing
Starting a business with friends or family is an exciting experience as a youngster. The joy and feeling of being part of something big and promising, the heightened energy, zeal and dream of seeing your idea grow into something huge and truly amazing. These are all things I am well aware of being a Co-Founder of a vibrant startup as Orion. One of the most alluding myth is holding the title of a C. To be precise any position that starts with the letter C, be it CTO, CFO, CO-Founder, you get the gist.
I know right, it feels good when you wave that business card in front of peers and you got your name with a C title boldly written beside it. You probably also got that 4 or 5-year-old saloon car from your folks and you feel like a boss. You call for meetings at popular Café and have the delusion of being busy and working. Or you probably saw a C holder from one of those Fortune 500 companies on social media and you get that grin which screams am also a C holder.
The truth is, you are a C of Nothing. Today, most youngsters are deluded by the title of a C for a business that has no actual figures attached to its name. A business that is running purely on ideas and potential. The path to a C holder of a multi-million or billion dollar company goes beyond a 5-year saloon car, a fine suit or some few bucks. Forget about wearing that great suit, calling for long meetings, having a large number of employees working under you. Those are benefits that will flow in after the hard work has been done. What is most important is keeping the team small and focus driven, your goals clearly cut and listed out, creating the brand awareness and having a high cash in-flow to burn rate ratio. If nothing at all, my last few months as a leader of a 4 which grew to a 5 and now a 10 man team has proven this true.
Having long-term goals is great. But if you’re a startup, it’s best to keep your goals short term. Make quarterly goals rather than those 2, 3, 5-year goal plans. Keeping your goals short term allows for more flexibility, makes it easier to execute for a small team and will eventual build and contribute to the long-term goals. So what am saying is, have the long-term goals but make short-term goals which are adaptive and will contribute to the long-term goals. It’s nice when people ask so what’s your plan and you give them that masterpiece of a 3 or 5-year plan. They go like ‘wow’ and that is all it will be, ‘wow’. To make real and true progress keep your goals short, a maximum of 3 months especially if you’re launching into the tech industry.
Again, taking too long to launch a product into the market or launching too early can be devastating to any startup. Orion has been a victim of the former. As a leader, it can be truly frustrating. The way out is quite simple though. Find an alternate product with an equally promising potential that will take lesser time to build and is easily scalable in terms of acceptance for the masses. Another thing would be to cut down on some of the features of the current product, rather than trying to bring out a perfect ready to use product, keep it small and simple. Focus on the key aspects of the system, have it ready and working well, launch it into the market and use the feedback from the market to advise you on what to keep, add or take out. At the end of the day you are building for a market, ‘so give them what they need, not what you think they need’. That is what differentiates a product that survives and thrives from one that will ‘potentially survive’.
The great thing about having a small group is small. So don’t complicate processes with so much bureaucracy. Keep things simple and small. Where the decision needs to be discussed do, where you need to make the decision do! Don’t complicate things with always discussing and waiting for feedback from the other Co-founders or boards of directors. If you have been made the Leader then lead. You were trusted enough with the job so do it. Keep all the board members up to date on affairs but not every decision needs to be discussed. The strength that startups possess over the ‘big dogs’ is its adaptive nature and small chain of command so don’t lose that. Well, how would you know which to discuss and which not to? The fact is, no one truly knows. But one thing I have come to realize is once it’s something major or goal changing, will affect a process significantly or directly affects two or more members then discuss. As I like to say, ‘it’s better to have the job done and apologize for not informing them, than have the job undone and provide 100 excuses for why it remains undone'. So do what needs to be done, trust your instincts but most important have as much faith in your abilities as your team has in you.
Last, learn from your own failures. If you haven’t made those mistakes yet, then learn from those who have made them. You won’t live long enough to make them all so learn.