Over the weekend, I analyzed my Twitter performance over the past 4 weeks. I wanted to determine what if any best practices I could tease from the data. Below are my four conclusions:
On average, tweets at 9am generate 2.3 times the number of clicks as those in the 8am hour and 3.3 times those of the 12pm (lunch) hour. Below is a chart of number of clicks per tweet by hour of the day:
The flurry of media activity in entrepreneurship including the spate of new TV shows like X-Factor for tech and Shark Tank, the refocus of the NYTimes and WSJ on technology, and the number of entrepreneurs on mainstream magazine covers gave me the impression that entrepreneurship is on the rise.
While this may be true in pockets like New York or California, entrepreneurship in the US is shrinking - at least according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a report from the NYTimes: When Job Creation Engines Stop at Just One
Everyone is learning statistics because making sense of data is the difference between success and failure. R, the open source statistics language, is about a third as popular as Ruby and growing fast.
Statistics are essential because data is ubiquitous and volumes are growing exponentially, even in startups. CEOs measure key company metrics. Engineers measure application performance and build machine learning models. Marketers measure campaign performance and reach. PMs measure engagement. And so on.
Over the last few months, I’ve been helping a few companies build hiring pipelines to recruit at nearly every experience level and for technical, sales and business development roles. Below are the lessons I’ve learned.
Identify your ideal candidate
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Narrow your search focus to find the right candidate. The easiest way to start is by building look-alike candidate lists. I start with either a particular person or a list of companies that would provide someone with the right experience for the role.
Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world. Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You
In his book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, Cal Newport, a college classmate, champions the idea that passion lags work, instead of passion inspiring work. It’s the same philosophy embraced by sushi master Jiro, in the documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” Jiro should focusses on mastering a practice, making sushi.
Any number of challenges can arise during a startup’s initial years. Some of these changes could be major and may require rethinking strategy. Competitors enter your target market. New products are released into your market which undercut yours. Customer acquisition costs rise dramatically.
If faced with these questions, it’s hard to know where to begin or how to structure an analysis to reach an answer.
McKinsey uses a 6 step process to frame the process of answering these strategic questions which is profiled in this month’s Harvard Business Review. This framework has helped me many times simplify strategic questions and shift from questioning to analysis to action.
Yesterday, I spoke at Columbia Business School. We had a conversation about the role of incubators and accelerators (or the moniker of your choice) within the startup ecosystem.
Given the volume of first time entrepreneurs and the broad growth of interest in entrepreneurship, I think these programs are invaluable. To entrepreneurs, these programs offer up to seven value propositions, listed in order of importance, as I see it.
These incubators/accelerators are the graduate schools for entrepreneurship and have a very important role in the ecosystem. They may not be right for every company, but these incubators build the hubs of successful entrepreneurship communities. And I hope they continue to thrive.
Every investment requires a leap of faith, an emotional act that’s not pure reason, and that’s got to carry you through in the inevitable many months, sometimes years, of horrific bad stuff that comes with the company. And you’ve got to have that energy, that sustaining belief to carry you through, because if you don’t, then you regret having done it. So when I have regret, it’s when I didn’t have that, and I’d logically talked myself into [the investment] and checked the boxes. So it was really helpful [to have a failed investment] that taught me, ‘don’t invest like that.’ You have to have the love affair, and if you don’t, then you shouldn’t do it.
The excitement was palpable and indicative of the enormous wave SaaS has become.
At a recent meeting, David Barrett, one of the founders of Expensify, drew this diagram when explaining his company’s structure. He has overlaid the core teams of a company with a conversion funnel. It’s brilliantly simple.
As every SaaS startup transitions from development to growth, the company must supplement the engineering and product capability with sales, marketing and account management. This diagram is the simplest way to show how they work together harmoniously at a strategic level.
