#advice

Your software product today is a tool, and it might already be possible for you or a competitor to build an AI-first product that does the work for your customers without any ongoing effort on their part. If not, it’ll probably be possible soon. Either way, a level of disruption that was not possible a few years ago is now possible in almost every software category.

If you are the CEO or product leader currently stuck in a failing all-in-one strategy: pivot. The good thing about having a broad product is that you should have plenty of insights into what areas have the most opportunity for disruption and innovation. Find an area to double down, and a pathway towards deprecating some of the bloat. You’ll create a much more successful product that way.

Great startup leadership is about saying no to the bad ideas, sure. But mostly, great startup leadership is about saying no to most of the good ideas too. The decisions that make a mediocre startup a generational company are the decisions to not pursue legitimately huge ideas in favour of even better ones.

Working in an early-stage startup is different to working for a larger company: while many people fail to get anywhere in startups, others skip years or decades of career milestones. Granted, every startup is different. However, I have noticed a few common patterns across many startups that describe the most successful talent.

Sufficiently down-to-earth founders will, by default, convince themselves that they won’t succeed. This is partly because down-to-earth people are rarely successful in anything grand. It’s partly because everything looks simultaneously harder and easier before you try it. And it’s partly because all good ideas sound like bad ideas until they come to fruition.

Many founders burn out because they’re always praying for the problems to finally ease. And, sure, you will occasionally experience short periods where things seem to be going well. But it’s always only a matter of time before your success leads to more challenges.

When an early stage employee can satisfy their own needs by simply succeeding in their role, you’ll achieve better results with less management overhead. When an employee needs more than you can give them, they will distract you from focusing on the most important things.

It can be difficult to convince a customer to adopt your product when they already have a solution they’re happy with. This is why disruptive products typically need to be radically better, radically cheaper, or both. However, thanks to platform envelopment, it’s actually possible for a notably worse app to disrupt superior incumbents.

Most managers in early-stage startups think that chaos is inversely correlated with results. That is, they think that chaos breeds bad results and an unhealthy environment, while order breeds good results and a more harmonious environment. This perception is wrong.

The best salespeople have great intuitions for which prospects are most decisive, and how to get access to better contacts. Everyone else wastes their time talking to people who will never buy, no matter how appealing they make it sound.

To win, startups need to lean into their advantages because they’re a decade away from the kinds of moats enjoyed by established corporations. This means they need to work smart (i.e., mostly do the right things) and work hard (i.e., execute at a pace and with intense risk tolerance).

Startups should try to hire salespeople in pairs. This is particularly important when spinning up a new channel (e.g., launching in a new market, opening up a partner channel, or kicking off outbound sales).

As great as it would be to solve all problems with clearly defined processes and documented knowledge, the reality is that most organisational knowledge tends to be tacit. So, companies should factor this into their ways of working.

The Australian Government is about to make it nearly impossible for successful startup workers to reinvest their earnings into new startups. Let’s explore the upcoming changes and how they will affect startups, workers, and the Australian economy.

How much should competent people, confidently managing their responsibilities, meddle in the affairs of other teams they perceive to be dropping the ball?

People hate process, but process is crucial to scaling a businesses. Today, we explore the difference between good and bad processes, and ways to ensure startups can benefit from standardisation, rather than suffer.

Many startup leaders shy away from the most painful problems. Whether it’s too hard to build, too hard to sell, or requires massive scale to achieve viable economics, there are many reasons to put opportunities in the too-hard basket. But tackling difficult problems is how we build differentiation in startups.

Every day, a great strategy fails in a startup because a leader underinvested in trust and relationship building or unnecessarily took autonomy away from individuals or a team. This week, we explore how Joseph Nye’s framework for soft and hard power can help startup leaders to motivate their teams and enact change in their organisation.

Many product managers don’t know how to prioritise technical work against new features. This is because they don’t have a deep enough understanding of the value of certain technical work. This week, we explore the ways to unify these often separate work streams.

We’re entering an exhilarating period of technological development, but most of us haven’t noticed. Grim expectations for the future pervade despite our progress towards solving many of our most worrying problems and overwhelming improvements to quality of life.

As startups grow, leaders must decide how to structure their engineering teams. This week, we explore some principles for how to divide product development efforts across multiple engineering teams.

Most startups let their organisational structure organically develop as they scale, but organisational design can surprisingly greatly impact outcomes. This week, we explore how org design influences the way leaders and teams solve problems.

Leaders should create a fulfilling, enjoyable, and ergonomic workplace. But over optimising for comfort could lead to mediocre outcomes for your startup.

Ambitious projects need ambitious goals, but bad KPIs can do more harm than good. This week, we look at some principles for defining measurable goals within a startup.

When I talk to founders, I often hear complaints about the pace of product development. “We used to move so quickly, but now we’ve barely delivered anything all year.” This week, we look at some of the most common causes of reduced software delivery.