“It’s the Finals. It’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard.” After Game 2 of the NBA Finals Steve Kerr said this to Steph Curry as they walked through the tunnel to the locker room after a loss.
What’s true for basketball is also true for startups - at least in this case.
With all the news of unicorns and IPOs and acquisitions driven by the broader market, teams can fall into a trap to think building a startup into a success is easier for others.
For many years, I wrote notes on paper using the bullet journal method. It’s a method I still highly recommend.
Now that my days are spent exclusively behind a computer, I’ve been searching for the right note-taking strategy. I recognize that note-taking is like pricing strategy: you never get it entirely right, so you’re always inclined to tinker.
Niklas Luhmann invented an idea that’s taking off in many academic circles and beyond called Zettlekasten. The son of a German brewer, he published 58 books in 30 years and is heralded as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century.
The rumor mill churns with whispers Salesforce will acquire Slack. This combination would be strategic for both involved for three reasons.
First, Salesforce and Slack share Microsoft as their most significant competitor. Microsoft Teams’ rapid assault and consequent market power into the corporate instant messaging market transformed the market dynamics in less than 12 months.
Microsoft has amassed the most extensive channel for SaaS companies, and each of these vendors pushes teams to current customers, many of whom are moving to the cloud and relying on Microsoft for guidance.
Despite the economic backdrop, startups continue to plow ahead. One of the biggest changes in the last year in the US is the Fed’s stated low interest rate policy for the next three years. What impact are we seeing in the market?
Theory says lower interest rates means investors should shift from less risky to more risky assets to find the same level of return. If the government lends at a low rate, then the cost of capital is less, so companies should be able to invest more at the same cost, and grow faster.
On Thursday, December 3rd at 11 AM PT, Redpoint Office Hours will welcome Linda Tong. Linda has lived an incredible path through startupland from Google, to startups, to the NFL, to AppDynamics. In some of our recent conversations, Linda has taught me about the differences in managing companies at radically different scales.
Let me tell you a bit more about Linda’s history. Linda and I worked at Google at the same time, which is when I first met her. From there, she worked for TapJoy, the predominant mobile marketing company as their Chief Product Officer. From there, she became COO at Nextbit, a startup founded by an ex-Android team working working on mobile devices. Then, she joined the NFL as VP of Product where she managed the product vision for the digital properties of all 32 clubs and the league. Today she’s general manager of AppDynamics.
“More activity means more business. Don’t overthink it, just act…The target is dozens of net new interactions per week, building many shallow relationships. They aren’t fake, just shallow.”
I have found this to be true. I like to think about it like Brownian motion: jiggle more atoms by talking to more people and there’ll be more activity all around you. Since sales is a funnel, the greater the activity at the top, the more sales.
On the surface, B2B and B2C marketing may seem to be worlds apart. As open-source and developer-led companies become increasingly visible, important, and massive, we should draw the parallel between developer marketing and consumer marketing. They are much closer than it might seem.
First, developer marketing is influencer and brand-driven. In the consumer World, consumer companies use luminaries to support a product. Michael Jordan and Air Jordans. Oprah Winfrey and Weight Watchers. Matthew McConaughey and the Lincoln ads that SNL spoofed.
I remember reading the Netflix culture deck published in 2009 and feeling inspired. The words on the page resonated with me because they conveyed a logic and thoughtfulness not often underpinning cultural decisions broadly. They are brave because they don’t appeal to everyone.
Reed Hastings’ No Rules Rules delves one level deeper into the stories behind the deck. As I read the book, I was struck with the parallel Bridgewater’s values that founder Ray Dalio expounded in his book, Principles, and his memo to employees
An IT executive recently asked me this question. How many technologies can a company adopt at once, successfully? It’s a question I hadn’t paused to contemplate before that moment. And if you are a vendor, it’s not one that you think about very often either. But if you are a member of the IT team, it’s top of mind every day.
There are two answers to this question. The first is my initial response to the asker: change management limits the pace. How quickly an IT team can train people, onboard them, and make them successful with all the different technologies procured by a central unit. How fast the company can change behavior.
I used to think of a startup as a series of funnels. There’s the customer conversion funnel, the recruiting funnel, the customer success funnel. Funnels simplify metrics. Examine the yield from each stage to gauge success. Start to finish.
I’ve been preparing my session for the NY Enterprise Tech Meetup later this week on the Essential Guide to SaaS Metrics. Thinking through that presentation and reflecting on some recent conversations, I’ve changed my belief. The superior mental model is a cycle.