The 3-1-4: The Secret To Speed
3 links, 1 thought, and 4 tweets. I hope they give you the most value for the least time every week.
3 Links To Make You Think
The Rebirth of Software as a Service
Putting the “service” back in SAAS! I really like the framework of expanding the customer acquisition funnel into a bowtie. At Kahani, we think about this all the time but hadn’t framed it in these words.
“Make it easier” is not a product strategy
The art of identifying true user needs is critical whether you are building digital or physical, products or services. Simply “making it easier” is not a sufficient strategy.
I’ve coached 35 heads of growth over the past 2 years. These 5 challenges keep popping up.
This is good advice for all leaders, not just marketing leaders. If I had to pick one of the 5 I would focus on alignment of all stakeholders.
1 Thought
The Secret to Speed
I connected with a friend who was part of Rocket Internet, the famous venture studio where the Samwer brothers make "copycats" of successful American companies and then usually beat the original companies. Some examples include HelloFresh (who crushed BlueApron) and CityDeal (which Groupon acquired.)
I asked him: What was the most surprising learning you had from them?
His answer: Redundancy.
Me: "hmmm say more?"
Him: Every company and every position always has a succession plan in mind. If someone steps away, another person is ready to step in their place. It's like a religion. Everyone knows it and is expected to both train/work closely with someone else and also be willing to step up when it's required.
This sounds hard for small companies but I'd argue it's more of a mindset than a resourcing issue. The biggest risk to any company (especially a startup) missing their plan: One of your best people leave and you have no way to quickly backfill them. The reason it's a secret to speed is because this one issue slows you down more than anything!
So what can you do about it? There were a few big ways we managed it at Ampush:
ALWAYS be recruiting. No position is ever "closed" - conversations are always happening. Every business is a talent business. The deeper pipeline you have, the more you get to choosing your current people.
Build trust with the team to manage transitions - we had a lot of conversations and benefits to "leaving the right way" - with months of notice, helping the person in their job search and even celebrating them on the way out. At first there was a ton of fear around this but once it became clear there were huge benefits to leaving the right way, it became the norm.
Developing all people, all the time. Every meeting, every conversation, every assignment is an opportunity to teach or challenge someone to grow. If you want people to step up, you have to spend time mentoring so that they can take over when you're gone (either promoted or you leave.)
This is something super top of mind for me as I build out Gateway X. I think its critical for a venture studio and holdco.
What are your ideas for succession and redundancy?
4 Tweets
The first step is often the hardest step. Have confidence in yourself!
So true! Just remember that putting out fires is part of the journey…
Hardwork leads to accomplishment leads to humility.
It took me a long time to learn this. Not caring what others will think is a massive unlock to personal growth.
While I have your attention:
About 60% of Unbloat’s monthly revenue comes from subscriptions. When choosing a subscription software, there were a lot of options to choose from.
We loved Smartrr because of their flexibility. In just a few clicks, we could edit pricing and subscription bundles to constantly optimize for AOV, discounts, and opt-in rates. Without this, our team couldn’t move as fast to learn and scale. In fact, in the last 6 months our AOV has increased by over 30%!
Click here or the image above to check out the case study!