people

This is the time when you will be tested as a leader. This is a time when every single decision of yours will define the leadership for the future. This is the time when your decision can make or break someone’s life and belief. This is the time when you are going to be looked upon or down.

Act wisely, act rationally and act honestly. Time flies but relationship survives for eternity. Your virtues and mental models are up for a test.

At any decision put people in the center. People who were with you in tough times, those who believed in you when you were nothing.

People should get priority over profit.

Sales Cycle

I have been told that enterprise sales take months to years in closing. But if the ticket size is small, decisions are taken quickly. Some of my learning from my mistakes has been simple.  

  1. Do not take customers’ agreement on face value, get it in writing.
  2. Limit the trial period for a week or two.
  3. Nudge your customers, ask, call reach out and evaluate their usage in the trial period.
  4. Enure the final authority for cutting cheque is also bought in during the process. 
  5. Be very logical and rational. 
  6. Find a champion, incentivize him to help him with all it takes to get the buy-in.  

In the end, nobody likes to get their ass on fire. So you have to comfort your customers in whatever it takes. But do not delay in closing else your competitor will sell them.  

early adopters

As a founder, solving a problem one has to find early adopters. These are people who will use your product from day 0, even when your product is broken or half baked.

These early adopters come in two categories.

Those who like and care for you.

You will find many well-wishers who will come as early adopters out of courtesy or because they like you. You have to avoid such people, they care about you hence they are with you on this journey. They might not be having pain enough to use your product when it is ready. They will not pay for your product.

Those who have got pain and are looking for painkillers

Focus on people who have pain and are even willing to pay token money while you are developing the product. This will ensure you are building a product for paid customers.

The mom test

I wish someone had given a copy of this book: the mom test, when I was starting up. It would have saved 1000 odd hours which as a team we consumed in meetings and shipping features.

As an early-stage company and a first-time founder, I have gone through many cycles. Sometimes misread what customer is saying irrespective of buying or feature requests.

If you or your friend is starting his own, give them a copy of this book. The book is all about asking the right questions from potential customers, understanding pain before writing a line of code.

We get so blinded with a few sets of conversations that we end up assuming a pain worth solving when there is none.

This book is going to be complementary with Jobs To be done book: when coffee kale compete.

feature crap

As an early-stage startup building product from the ground up, please prioritize features early on. It is a feature creep that will kill you before the starvation of funds.

It is very easy to fall for users feedback, compliment as an ego boost. We rally behind every other request we get from our users. We spend months building it and then we realize it has not moved the needle.

Every feature request from a user has to be thought through deeply. It should be vetted, all scenarios should be measured. Do not run after your tech team in building features a user request.

Avoid falling for feature crap and burning, killing your company. Put priority, understand users’ pain and only if it is worth building think of building it.

Panic

Reading media gives a sense that we are in an apocalypse. Everything is getting hammered from health to economy to life.

People are not only predicting the death of millions but completely reshape of the economy.

Nobody has seen the future, yet everyone is predicting. This prediction is creating a panic.

We don’t have everything in our control. We can give the best to what we have in control: taking precautions with health and finance.

Corona Effect

Corona Virus is talk of the hour. Be it twitter, phone, WhatsApp, everywhere is surfaces. WHO has declared it a pandemic. It started in China and now traveled across the world. It will take at least 18 months to ship a vaccine. 

It is elderly who are worst affected by this virus. The dogs are safe. Our government is on high alert with the task force, precautions in place. Schools, colleges, malls, theaters are closed. 

We are yet to see the economic side of it. Will it move us into another recession, I have no clue. The market is reeling though it thought, it is in shock.

Experts on Twitter are claiming, worst is still to come. Some are saying it is going to be worst than the 2008 crisis.

I and my co-founder were out for breakfast today. The only thing came to our mind was: How will we survive thought this? 

Being a small team, we came up with 3 take-ups away:

  1. Keep delighting our customers. Iterate and ship improvements.
  2. Tough times are temporary, relationships are for permanent. Keep it in mind.
  3. Do a feature freeze, focus on our strength. 

I am sure many of you would be having your principles to stick by at this time.

Bill Gurley and Chetan Puttagunta – An Update on Consumer & Enterprise Venture Capital – [Invest Like the Best, EP.162]

UX Learning

When I started building my product, I had no clue about user experience. Sitting with customers, listening to their pain points and watching them use products is learning. I am still far from being perfect, but getting better every day. 

Some Takeaway:

  1. Similarity: We humans avoid cognitive overload. We are lazy and dislike doing things in a new way unless it is mission-critical. In building our product, we should keep this in mind. We use Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram et all every day. We are aware of how a calendar, close, forward other actions happen, we can use the same flow. 
  2. Don’t’ make me think: If the default is not obvious, I am not going to take action. The standard example: push and pull written on doors. Opening a Wine bottle.
  3. Least clicks: On the application, If I have to take many clicks to reach the desired page from where I am, it is painful. 
  4. Add helper texts: Do not assume your user knows it all. They are not using or glued to your product as you are. Add helper text, pointers at places where it will be helpful.
  5. Focus: Giving too many buttons, too many actions to take is frustration. We should restrict it to one or two actions on every page as a focus area.
  6. Incentive: Remind your users on about his achievement for his or her action on your app. They have to feel they are getting something valuable out of their invested time.
  7. Minimalism: Multitasking is a disease, it kills productivity. Giving too many options to do one thing will confuse and make the user run away from our product. It will become a distraction. 

Thanks to Yashvant for making me write this post. 🙂

money

It’s always about money.

People will lie to you.
People will leave you.
People will fight with you.
People will make you vulnerable.

You cannot blame them, the era of consumerism and hoarding has redefined the meaning of life and happiness. It is not their mistake, marketers are winning and our consciousness is continuously sedated.

Philosophy

One of the key learning from reading philosophy has been: There are only a few things in your control, be it life and work.

We are living in uncertainty, we have no idea about how our peers, customers, loved ones react.

We have to keep working, walking the path of virtue and enjoy the journey. The moment we go for a destination or expectation trap, we are finished.

One of my all-time favorites has been Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, I have shared a few dozen books of his to my peers.

We are surrounded by negativity and pain, people will pick on you. If you get affected by it, you have lost the beauty of this life.

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people but care more about their opinions than our own.

— Marcus Aurelius

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”

― Epictetus