Newsletter #3: On execution
5 minutes reading time.
Hey there,
I hope your 2020 is off to a great start!
Today I spent the day working on Greenhouse's culture deck where we emphasize the importance of high performance and execution. The deck starts with a quote from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits:
"A principle for writing, investing, and life in general:
It is much easier to notice when something is working than to predict ahead of time if it will work.
Take action, make many small bets, and run lots of quick (but thoughtful) experiments. Then, double-down on the winners."
My two cents on the topic are that the most valuable people are the ones that walk the talk. In the early days of any company, intelligence is secondary to one's ability to execute. I have met some incredibly smart people who would lock themselves in a vicious cycle of planning and debating and never take an action…
In contrast, people who quickly execute are celebrated throughout the entire organization. At Greenhouse, I have made a point of training teams working directly with me to have the following attitude to projects/tasks:
"Got it", "On it", "Done", "Noted", "Sure"
And it works incredibly well, boosting cooperation, confidence and accountability as long as everyone is sharing such attitude.
Let me dive a bit more into my approach to execution:
Break down the project into smaller, actionable chunks
Prioritize low effort but high impact activities
Take action immediately, simply announcing your plans to everyone else keeps you accountable
Execute as soon as possible, preferably take the first actions next morning
Learn from the feedback/outcome and iterate
Decide whether it makes sense to invest more resources or kill the project
Articles worth reading:
What do you look for an investment? How long should a founder be without salary? And other Q&A - Andrew Chen used to work on growth at Uber and nowadays is an investor at a16z, one of the world's best VC firms. In this interview, he looks at topics like how he assesses investment opportunities, how much the founders need to be making in the early days of their startup, some of his most popular investments, channels and unit economics for consumer tech, and general advice for CEOs.
This Is Quibi - the very opposite of the Lean Startup approach. Instead of experimenting and iterating their way to product-market fit Jeffrey Katzenberger (Disney, Dreamworks) is starting a business where he bets about $1B in 2020 on making an ad-supported short-form video for mobile with Holywood talent and standards. Curious how it would work out.
Mark Zuckerburg's annual post on where Facebook is going. A few old topics like their push in VR and AR, but also a few interesting considerations into supporting SMEs with tools, which would position the company very strongly as an e-commerce player.
What 15 Years of Y Combinator Investments Can Teach Us About Startups - did you know that it's harder to get into Y Combinator than at Harvard University? Well, now you do. The article summarizes major shifts in their investment strategy and how they have scaled their portfolio over the years.
A book recommendation:
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. As the title suggests, this book tells the fascinating story of why we sleep. It may sound boring at first glance but I find the book to be well written, supported by numerous scientific studies/experiments and having a great storytelling element. Ever since I started the book I am doing my best to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night, it definitely put me to sleep.
Onward and upward 🚀
Viktor