When building a multi-sided marketplace, consider that each persona in the marketplace has different needs.
Sometimes those differences are subtle, and sometimes they are dramatic. But in either case, the differences matter.
With this in mind, try to avoid making the home page a mishmash of different messages for all your personas. Instead, you typically need a landing page (along with value props, case studies, pricing, onboarding flows, etc) for each persona.
Typically (but not always) the primary home page should be focused on the demand side of the marketplace. This serves not only to tell the story to buyers but also helps potential supply-side partners to understand how they will be positioned if they join your marketplace.
A row towards the bottom of each persona-specific page can make a callout to the other personas and guide them to the right page.
Product & Startup Builder
Product-led failures are like Climate Change
Fixing a scaleup's failures in terms of product-led, efficient ways of working is much like dealing with Climate Change.
Things don't look too bad.
Symptoms are subtle and seemingly unconnected.
It always feels like compromises can be made "for now".
The costs are hidden.
The ultimate fate is unknown.
However, the reality is...
Things are very, very bad.
The various symptoms ARE related.
The costs are massive.
The compromises and indecision are destroying morale, momentum, and competitive advantage.
The ultimate outcome is that a better, smarter, more effective competitor will disrupt the business.
The only question is, how much pain are you willing to tolerate - and for how long?
Leaders add context and clarity
The best leaders (at every level of an org) take confusion and indecision and add context and clarity by asking good questions and using good judgement.
How to organize your squads
Organizing your squads is a puzzle game, not a pinball game.
Product changes/features shouldn't fall through the cracks until it lands on a squad.
Product changes/features should clearly and obviously fall within the mission of a squad with minimal room for debate.
The trick is designing the org with minimal gaps and minimal overlaps.
Sometimes, only the founder can get it done
There are some motions/tactics that only the founder can do.
Winning first customers
Closing early partnerships
Raising money
Hiring key employees/leaders into the business
Making key strategic decisions
Going from zero to one
These things simply can't be farmed out to the team.
I've seen founders who had an 80-90% conversion rate on sales calls while their best salespeople couldn't exceed 50%.
I've seen influencer outreach activities that went nowhere for months that instantly started gaining traction with founder attention.
I've seen big decisions go around and around in circles for weeks until the founder joined the conversation, elevated the thinking, and made a decisive decision after a 1-hour meeting.
Why?
Because - right or wrong - the best founders command a unique level of influence, salesmanship, operational latitude, and creativity that can't be matched by employees.
It might be harsh, but if those employees could do what the founder does (have a vision, start a company, raise money, bring a team together), they likely wouldn’t be employees.
As a founder, be careful about delegating these critical "founder-only" tasks too early. Lean in, and use your superpowers to fast-forward your company to the future.
#founders #fundraising #zerotoone #consultingconvos #startups #scaleups #growth
Is your team burned out?
Is your team burned out? Some ideas…
1. Do they have a vivid and powerful vision to motivate them? Or are they driven by a tactical business goal, by fear of competition - or worse, no goal at all
“Help 1 million people by doing X” is a vivid and powerful vision. This is ideal.
“Raise money” is a tactical business goal.
“Beat company X” is fear or competition.
No goal is when leadership is chasing shiny objects - whatever investors or customers say.
What is your vision? Is your team excited about it?
2. Are you making decisive decisions or letting them linger for too long? Are you allowing confusion to make day-to-day decision making by the team painful or impossible?
Worse than making a bad decision is not making any decisions at all.
Don’t wait for full conviction. That’s impossible. Instinct, passion, experimentation and informed iteration/pivots are essential parts of the startup journey.
3. Do you meet with the team on a regular basis to inject authentic enthusiasm and celebrate the wins?
A little genuine praise and celebration can to a long way to boost morale and help the team focus on what matters.
4. Can you add a new leader or advisor to inject clarity, enthusiasm, cadence and accountability into the team?
The right kind of fresh blood can change everything.
5. Is the team suffering from a lot of incompetence? Fire low performers! Show the team that quality work is valued and rewarded. Be careful about jumping to this conclusion though - bad perform is sometimes the result of bad leadership.
6. Have you tried giving everyone a vacation. Stop everything for a week and encourage everyone to refresh and come back with renewed enthusiasm!
The power of regular all-hands meetings
A well-run regular all-hands (every week or 2) can have a profound impact on a company. It can...
Set a cadence for the whole company
Hold departments accountable for delivering big wins on a regular basis
Force the leadership team to capture and summarize their thinking to the rest of the business on a regular basis
Build trust between all stakeholders
Help stakeholders across the company become aware of new developments and encourage people to jump in and help/align
And so much more!
You can’t outsource fundraising
VCs and smart money want to be pitched by the CEO.
Why? Because - as much as anything - they invest in the team running the company.
They need to feel comfortable that the leaders understand the operational details, have a clear and ambitious vision that is rooted in pragmatism and adaptability. They also need to like you.
Equally important - as the CEO/founder - you should want to meet any major investors in your round. It’s going to be one of the most important relationships in your life and the life of your company.
As a result, you can’t outsource the fundraising process.
Own it. Run it. Don’t stop until you drop.
How much money did you waste last month?
How much money did you waste last month?
How much did the gap cost you?
The gap between what’s in your mind and the quality of your team’s day-to-day execution. How much lost business and lost customer confidence did that shortfall create?
How much did the indecision cost you?
Endless conversations trying to reach consensus. Endless research and analysis trying to find conviction. Going around in circles with your team. How much did you spend on salaries during that time? How much productivity have you lost from diminishing team morale? How much progress did your competitors make in that time?
How much did your bad decisions cost you?
Remember those days, weeks or months going down the wrong path and building the wrong thing? What was the price of leaving a bad impression on investors, partners, customers, employees, and more?
How much did that ineffective execution cost you?
How much did your ugly, broken, buggy, hard to understand, hard to adopt, hard to use, hard to love product cost you? How many customers landed on your home page but didn't understand your value props? How many couldn't be bothered finishing your signup process? Do you even have a signup process that doesn't require sales and engineering support? How many tried your product for a few seconds or even for a few days but then never returned? How much time, effort, and money did you spend trying to acquire those users only to see them walk out the door?
How much did those missed opportunities cost you?
How many sales didn't close? Which partnerships failed?.Which investors passed on investing in your business because they "just didn't get it"? What profits did you miss by not investing your time and money in other, better investments?
This is just a taste of the size and shape of opportunity cost.
All because you…
a) Hired that less effective employee
b) Avoided hiring that expensive advisor
c) Balked at the price of that better tool
d) Avoided making that hard decision
e) Put off that difficult conversation
Or countless other “cost-saving” or face-saving activities.
How much money did you waste?
How much money are you willing to waste next month? Next quarter?
Join the conversation about this on linkedin
Should you quit your startup because it’s not working?
I know it’s much easier said than done - but to build a successful startup you need to…
1. Ship product that solves a problem
2. Sell product and/or raise money
3. Use the funds to focus on your startup and hire help
If you’re not able to do the above then ether…
1. The problem you’re solving isn’t painful enough or real
2. Your hypothesis for the solution isn’t right
3. Your implementation of the solution isn’t good enough (this might also be because you’re trying to boil the ocean or your business model isn’t right)
4. Your go-to-marker tactics aren’t good enough
Don’t keep banging your head against the wall. Don’t quit. Figure out what’s going on and fix it.
This might involve some hard introspection, hard choices and a hard pivot (potentially into a new startup all together).
A large part of Startup success is rooted in momentum.
A large part of Startup success is rooted in momentum.
Why?
Because part of the defining characteristics of startups is that they are high-growth. High growth requires speed and compounding effects.
But why?
Because...
a) Software is relatively easy to create.
b) Software economics, flywheel effects, and VC funding dynamics mean that they often exist in a winner-take-most market.
c) Momentum and success attract momentum and success.
d) You typically have a limited runway (capital to spend) and need to maximize your outcomes to succeed at closing your next funding round.
This means at least 3 important things.
a) Competition will come for you.
b) Opportunity cost is typically your largest cost.
c) Smart investors also know all of this and look for it.
You need a healthy level of paranoia and hustle (but not recklessness and thrash).
Don't put meetings off to next week that you could have this week.
Don't let decisions linger.
Don't start and stop.
Take effective/efficient action.
Don't forget you are typically competing globally - you need to meet or exceed the best in the world - not just in your local market.
Build momentum. Maintain momentum. Use momentum to win.
Performance Rubric for a Product Manager
Do you have a performance rubric for every function in your scaleup?
It should define what AWESOME looks like for every aspect of the role.
Here's a small taste example for a Senior Product Manager across "Fail", "Below Expectations", "Meets Expectations", "Exceeds Expectations" and "Total Rockstar" for the role aspect "Product Strategy Development"
Fail
Is unable to develop a solid narrative and roadmap for 1 squad despite help from manager. Does not work well with their team to refine the plan and or with leadership to get buy-in.un
Below Expectations
Is able to develop a narrative and roadmap for 1 squad with some supervision. Generally works well with their team and leadership to refine the plan but requires some assistance to get full buyin.
Meets expectations
Is able to develop a solid narrative and roadmap for 1 squad with no supervision. Works well with their team to refine the plan and works well with leadership to get buy-in.
Exceeds Expectations
Is able to develop a solid narrative and roadmap for 1 squad with no supervision. Assists/mentors others to do the same. Works well with their team and broader stakeholders to refine the plan and works well with leadership to get buy-in and push the status quo.
Total Rockstar
Is able to develop a solid narrative and roadmap for more than 1 squad with no supervision. Assists/mentors others to do the same. Leads/influences other teams and the org to refine their plans and and drive leadership decisions.
Misalignment is often the root cause
When things are misaligned across departments, product areas etc, the problem is not any particular decision/implementation but the misalignment itself.
You can spend all day trying to improve the specific implementations - but until you address the misalignment, things will continue to be broken.
There are no Sacred Cows
There are no sacred cows.
Find inefficiencies, bureaucracies, pain, and suffering in your org. Highlight it and fix it. Don't take no for an answer.
Who's job is it? YOURS.
Reducing complexity to create products
Most people don't understand how to identify common patterns to produce opinionated products.
They see the world as endless shades and believe that the complexity is not only inevitable and necessary, but also desirable and beneficial.
It's like looking at the rainbow and having the sense that there is infinite complexity and therefore infinite colors. Simplifying the spectrum seems impossible.
Great product managers look at a rainbow, draws bounding boxes and gives each part of the gradient a name. Yellow, red, green. blue etc.
They understand that by reducing the complexity into just a few well defined conditions, people will be able to more easily refer to parts of the color spectrum and accelerate everything from casual discussions, to artistic endeavors to even developing color science.
They also understand that rationalizing the complexity is not only possible, but highly desirable. Because they know that's exactly where value is created.
Do you know how to pivot successfully?
Thanks to cognitive inertia - it's so, so easy to make a pivot, change 1 or 2 of those things, and then accidentally forget to align the rest.
Essential things about your business can end up in an awkward, misaligned state. Part of your business has transitioned, and part of it has not.
A pivot can and should impact every aspect of your business. Brand, positioning, business model, pricing strategy, go-to-market tactics, product strategy, product UX metaphors, and more.
One way to make it easier is to create a migration strategy.
In 1 table, list every aspect of your business in each row.
In column 1, describe how you're currently handling that aspect of the business pre-pivot.
In column 2, described how you intend to adjust things as part of any kind of transitionary state.
In column 3, list how things will be done in the new post-pivot world.
You might be surprised how much can and will change.
For hints at what aspects of your business to list in each row, check out the business alignment stack I created last year.
Managing up can sometimes be impossible
Managing up (helping people above you in the org understand what they need to be doing and how they need to be interacting with you) is an essential part of being a great leader in any company.
However, it can often be quite difficult.
Why?
Sometimes, your leadership is simply and generally unreceptive to most new ideas or perspectives from anywhere (bad!)
Sometimes, the very thing you've noticed is a sore point (or a point of weakness) for your leaders - so they don't understand or appreciate the thing you are pointing out (blind spot!)
Sometimes, they might feel like the thing you're pointing out is simply "not your job," or you lack the context to make a coherent observation (who asked you??)
Sometimes, they might feel like you are selfishly advocating for your area/perspective/department at the expense of others - even if you might be objectively right (he's just biased!)
Sometimes, you simply don't have the authority to build consensus with your peers - so a decision never gets made.
Therefore, sometimes, the answer is that you need a 3rd party perspective (external contractor, advisor, mentor) to help.
Lean on them.
Don't be distracted by great-sounding partnerships!
Distribution/go-to-market partners almost never work out the way you want. Incentives misalign, operationalization fails, days and months are spent figuring out the details.
Technology partnerships where you outsource large parts of your core experience to a 3rd party (particularly a b2c company!) introduce problems around roadmap, business model, IP ownership, and more
Instead, focus on...
a) Selling your own sh*t
b) Building your own sh*t
c) Customer/vendor relationships with proper b2b companies with discrete components
d) Affiliate partnerships with 3rd parties that can send you leads to your branded product and YOU own the customer
Everything else is likely to end up in a giant mess
For this reason, make sure your BizDev team is serving your product team's roadmap - not the other way around.
What do you do when people won’t do what you need them to do?
There are often situations where coworkers seem to refuse to do what you need them to do.
Often times this is simply because they don’t know HOW but are afraid to admit it.
You can pressure them, berate them, resent them all you like but - like getting water out of a stone - it’s simply impossible for them to do what you need them to do.
They can’t conceive of how to do it and/or they don’t have the skills or mindset to get it done.
In these situations you only have a few options
1. If they’re your boss and they have no self-awareness to take your lead or compensate with another hire: quit
2. If they’re your peer: Work around them or get them fired
3. If they report to you: Stop banging your head against the wall and do 1 or 2 of the following…
a) Get them a coach/help
b) Recognize their strengths and get them to focus them on those tasks while you hire someone else to do the other thing you need
c) Fire and replace them
Do NOT spend days, weeks and months thinking something will change if only you apply more pressure.
All you’re doing is frustrating everyone and wasting time.
Founder emotions
Startups are rollercoaster rides of high highs and low lows. Sometimes in the same day!
There’s a lot of good ways for founders and operators to deal with these emotions.
A terrible way is to lash out at your team and become flaky and inconsistent with your engagement levels.
Show up, keep a level head, focus on the big picture, keep everyone moving forward.