#startup wisdom

Of all of the indispensable essays penned by Paul Graham, the one we are feeling the most is the latest one, Do Things That Don't Scale. This is one of the things Y Combinator often tells their startups, and a piece of wisdom we have heard before:

In The First 1000 Days of Airbnb by Brian Chesky, Chesky tells the rollercoaster story of the company, from losing cofounders to sleeping on couches, to briefly becoming a cereal company around the time of the 2008 election. However, the most important part of the story is when Paul Graham asks the Airbnb founders where most of their customers are. They replied that they are mainly in New York and DC, and Paul Graham says, "Then what the hell are you still doing in Mountain View?!" and they booked a flight for the next morning. 

At that point, the founders went to New York and started selling their product literally door-to-door. They went to people's houses and asked, "Do you know how much you could be making off this extra room?" 

That level of hands-on attention is not possible when you are a big company, but the point of "Do Things That Don't Scale" is that as an early-stage startup, this is perhaps the best thing you could be doing, especially as a company building a marketplace product. 

This sometimes flies in the face of what engineers are naturally trained to do - they are often looking for some kind of technical solution for a human problem, and have a sort of built-in disdain for doing things like calling customers on the phone, or attentive hand-holding. However, these are possibly some of the most important things you could be doing as a young company, and it's important to break the habit of email-and-text-only communication that has come to define our generation.

Read below for awesome insight shared by Pam Slim.

I have learned a few things in these fifteen years, and most have nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of business plans.

Your biggest weakness can become your greatest asset. Let’s face it, I am a hippy. I like to do good in the world. I like to build meaningful relationships. I reduce, reuse and recycle. And I believe in reciprocity — giving at least as much as I get. At various stages in my career, mentors have chided me for not being more “hard,” caring less about impact and more about the bottom line. I have carefully weighed their advice and made significant shifts in my sales process and business strategy to make sure I am getting good value back for my investment in energy. I have also learned that focusing on more than the “hard” side of business has been a tremendous strategic advantage as I have built a large community of friendly, supportive blog readers and clients who care as much about making meaning in the world as they do about making money. My friend Dave Rendall calls this your Freak Factor in his excellent book of the same name.

Learn from your triggers. When you get clear on the kind of business you want to run and how you want to run it, chances are you will also get clear on who represents the polar opposite of your style. You may be a master craftsperson and get triggered by a flamboyant marketing person. You may pride yourself on being tuned in and sensitive to the needs of your customers and get triggered by people who use saucy and abrasive language. I have learned from many years experience that very often, people who trigger me have very important things to teach me. And if I shut out ALL of their advice just because I dislike their style, I can miss out on tremendous opportunities to grow. The mentors I mentioned in the above point are examples — if I had totally rejected their advice to be more strong and clear on the “hard” side of my business, I would not have achieved the success I have.