​De-rusting - week 5

We're officially into the 2nd half of 2024. The first 6 months did zip pass although I can still vividly remember the first 6 months of this year, suffice to say, I won't forget, ever.
One of the reasons I believe this to be is that I started writing a lot more than usual, with veiled references to all that happened.
Since I posted most of my writings on social media, I'm also getting many comments and feedback, some public and some direct messages. I'd be remiss if I didn't at least think about them.
🧢 One of the comments to a post about ideating on my startup, a friend mentioned that I should wear the 'hat' of a mentor as if I was listening to someone else. I have to admit, it's both a brilliant suggestion and yet an extremely difficult thing to do. Nonetheless, I tried and it did help a lot as it took my mind off of my startup being about the product (common problem), but rather, about how my purported users were going to perceive it. Sometimes, it does help getting perspectives from non-tech people.
👨🏻‍💻 Another comment was about posting less and working more. It did give me pause and a little bit of reflection. In the end, I decided that I'd continue writing and posting, when necessary, not because the advice was wrong but it's because those moments of reflection made me find the actual meaning of why I'm doing this. Ultimately, those that care about you will offer unbridled opinions and the least you can do is to give it a good think. So why have I decided to continue writing and posting?
1️⃣ Mostly, it's committing to those thoughts and putting it out there, with upsides of getting great feedback, and maybe a couple of chuckles, and also to share my learnings with fellow entrepreneurs.
2️⃣ At a more personal level, it's to leave my words and thoughts for my kid to read, that perhaps she'll gain some insights into her old man's mind. I wished my dad had written more but it wasn't what his generation was used to.
3️⃣ I like that social media pops up reminders of posts and allowing me to see what I posted age well, or not.
🦦For everyone else, do know that your comments and feedback are well appreciated. When you have people around you that can make you laugh, you're blessed. I know I am.
Doing a startup is a lot like being a sculptor. You first lob off big chunks to get the intended size and shape, akin to your forming the fundamental hypothesis of your idea. Then you begin the work of chipping away at the intended design of your sculpture. This is where you put together the pieces as you execute on the idea, bringing to fruition. At this stage, nothing is scalable.
Finally, the design that you have in mind reveals itself. This is when your idea is validated, with real users finding your solution extremely helpful, enough to pay for it. But it's still a rather rough and unpolished design, both the sculpture and your product.
As the sculptor starts using other tools to refine the sculpture, it's not dissimilar to you starting to hire more smart people. So now you have people who want to buy your sculpture, much like more users coming on board.
What next? Well, it's not exactly one-off, so you start looking to manufacture your sculpture, similar to how you now begin to automate and improve your product's unit economics.
You start pushing to better branded stores and malls (either you go see them or they come to you) coz why not? After all, you do have a great design to start off with. As you would be scaling to more users who now are willing to pay, some you get through marketing, but mostly, you want to acquire them organically.
Once you're here, the rest hopefully becomes history.
No wonder people say startup founders are creative people. But they don't even know half of it; like how difficult it is to sculpt.

You know the saying, 'even a broken down clock tells the time correctly, twice a day'? It's the same with the England team at the Euro 2024. They weren't all bad, at least now I know if I have trouble falling asleep, I'll rewatch the game.
What other good that come out of watching England play?

• I have no issue scrolling social media. These days, lots of ads popped up, and many of these on teaching others how to use Chat-GPT, or any of the AI tools available. No doubt, it's the hottest thing to happen in the tech world. I'm just wondering, when the main products are available less than 3 years, yet we have self-professed gurus selling courses that promise 10x productivity, on using a product that's still iterating on its own. With all the money going into AI, it's likely the fastest to get commoditized. Granted, probably most of these are affiliate selling but how will these courses age? Not very well, perhaps. This is why watching the England games is good; it allows your mind to wander, with a lot more creativity than the game itself.
• Invariably, my mind turned to my startup. Every time I mentioned that I'm doing a startup, I'm asked if I'm the CEO. I cringed. Which is strange for me, coz, what am I executing chiefly? Am I even managing anything? Over the last dozen years, I've come across countless new startups, most with less than 3 team members, and they'd all be titled as CxO. Maybe I'm being too pedantic, but I feel that you shouldn't be saddled with a title that's a CxO, if you have less than 20 members in your team. I believe calling yourself a founder suffices. You are expected to found, not manage. There's no one there for you to manage other than continually iterating and founding, and discovery. In my conversations with many young founders with CEO title, they possess this complex that it's a step-down if they were to move to another position. Psychologically, it limits your potential. Everyone in the founding team should experiment and experience various roles. Be flexible, be self-challenging, be a janitor as well. This is why watching the England game is good; I'm allowed to freely wander my mind, without missing out on any action, unless a goal is scored, which is far and few in between, over 90 minutes.
• Back to Euro 2024. So far, the Spaniards are playing the best football. Free flowing, skillful, and highly entertaining. It's reminiscent of days of old, where you see passion on the field, and not Oscar-worthy performance when you get brought down. Alright, maybe not Oscar-worthy since Neymar is not playing but you get the drift. I know the simpler days of football will not return. It's money game these days. Seeing the fans on the stand, I wonder if the players share the same fervor, whether it's a win or loss. Maybe they do, I don't know, but I doubt it. This is why watching England play is good; I can be philosophical, in line with aging, where I lament on the loss of the good old days of football.

Ps: it's Sunday, just taking the mickey out of how bad the Euro 2024 has been, as well as sharing some quirky random thoughts.

Have a great week ahead…🤣 🤣 🤣

De-rusting - Week 4
​The momentum for my startup is gaining speed. Have since spoken to numerous people that have gone round the blocks a few times. You know who you are, and greatly appreciate your insights.

Invariably, the subject often discussed is about building a highly effective team. Getting your A-team is paramount, as proclaimed by many successful founders. But how do they get their A-team? It's fine and we'll if your financial war chest is brimming but what if it's as dry as the Gobi? What about those young first-time founders who lack the financial and network firepowers?

I believe the A-team construct starts with you, the founder; how you plan to constructively build your team. Founders need to recognize that the initial A-team is only temporary, since as your company grows, you'll need to revisit the team composition.

What's important is that the initial members need to understand that their positions/responsibilities are not etched in stone; they have to evolve, and sometimes making room for new inclusion of team members, and a willingness to move to other positions.

Ultimately, at any given stage of your growth, your team is comprised of A-level personnel, and what make them "A-lister talents" is the ability and willingness to evolve.

This is important from a company culture standpoint. Fundamentally, people follow you because they know there's a future for them at your organization.

As a culture, it start with the founder. I am also replaceable at some point. Better include a succession plan too.

What else did I miss?
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#hiring #talents #evolve #culture #lead

Over the last 3 weeks I've been on endless calls and visits with people far smarter and more experienced than me, yet kind enough to spare their time and share invaluable advice. For this, I feel blessed.
The hard part is in knowing what to ask. There are so many questions in my head. Where to even begin. The harder part is finding the right moment to pop the first question. So here's the learnings:

1. Warm the seat Be early. It's ok to wait a short while. This helps in giving me the time to collect my thoughts, go thru the possible questions to ask, especially the all-important first question.
2. Warm the conversation You don't really want to start the conversation peppering the person with questions, yet you don't want to waste too much of your audience's time with frivolous conversation. I find the best way to warm the dialogue is to genuinely greet the person, and if he/she has something to say, allow the person the space and time to reply.
3. Warm the session Keep the momentum of your ask. Best not to ask haphazardly. Keep the flow with relational questions, and if you're being asked a counter, give short but succinct answer.
4. Time awareness Since your meet up is scheduled, be mindful of your audience's time. You want to ask as many questions but time is always limited. Ask the most relevant questions, and always check on time of your audience.
5. Cool it on defense No need to be defensive of your idea's hypotheses, after all, you're on a fact-finding mission, a research. Best to absorb the salient points given, and if that go against the grain, clarify the pov given.
6. Buffering Always allow minimum of 15 minutes from one ending meet to the start of another. If the session ends early, you'll have time to collect your thoughts, if it doesn't, then you have extra 15 mins to wrap it up. Pro tip: the person you're meeting next should at least be on cordial term with your present meet.
7. Order humble pie Be attentive, be inquisitive, be positive, when you're getting comments. There's no right or wrong, just understanding. Never be shy to ask, even if you feel it may sound foolish.

At one of the meet ups, one of the feedbacks I got was that I might not have fully comprehend what it takes for the idea to work. The natural instinct was to reply and defend, but I didn't. I thought about why this was the comment. It came down to either I didn't articulate concisely enough to the person or I really didn't ready myself. Either way, it got me thinking, and that's all I could hope for; to be able to ponder new thoughts.
I'm grateful to have friends who were willing to help a no-longer young 'founder'. The journey in de-rusting continues on.

De-rusting Day 4

As I continue speaking to OGs of the industry, team is by far the most asked question amongst many others. This got me to recall a thought I had shared with some VC friends a while back.

Do we expect founders to last the journey? You know, the iconic figurehead of the company. Intrincsically, founders are dreamers, not builders. Of course, founders need the skillset to build, otherwise the dream wouldn't come to fruition. To what level would they be expected to continue building? Invariably, the operational aspects of the business may just dull the instinctual habits of a dreamer.

How then do we remain and become the best version of being founders? I believe that in the process of starting and building your company, succession plan has to be considered as part of the build. Only very few founders remain from start to finish. Often times, the 'succession' plan is due to unwanted situations. You don't want that. Founders shouldn't crave for titles or positions, as if a loss of that title diminishes the great work they're doing.

I recall having an in-depth conversation with my partner at Touchstone, Tu Ngo, where at Yola, they rotated the roles of the c-suite, even when it was a senior hire, it took the time to train and move this hire to the CEO position.

Why this is important? You build a moat by creating reliability of your leadership team, consistently having the best people at the point of the where the business is. There is actually a plan for it. This is what I admire about Yola.

We all have our limitations. We can possibly do the best in what we know to be our strengths, the rest you can only try by learning as much as you can. When you recognize your limitations, and work to removing that 'glass ceiling', the better you become. Your business at 10 people is different when it's 100, and it's different again when it's 1,000. If you're not the best person at any of this juncture, find the best. ​