new edge

Product is important. It’s central to your business. But it’s not your business.

That App. That’s not your business.

That Website. That’s not your business.

That cool piece of kit. That’s not your business.

There’s a ton of other stuff you need around the product to have a business. One that has sales, customers, and some chance of making a profit.

The problem is that we all get distracted by the product. It’s the embodiment of our idea, it’s the actualisation of our vision and it’s, well, so cool! Mmmm, look at that nice interface. Oh, that design is so lovely I could eat it. And just look at how elegant this code is – you could take it to a ball at Buckingham Palace.

Ohhhh! Shiny, shiny !!

Whether you have a proper business or just a nice bauble, however, depends on putting all the other stuff in place. There’s loads more of it and it’s much less interesting. But it’s probably more important.

If you just want to play with the product, then find some people to do the other stuff for you. But don’t ignore because it’s not eye-catching and sexy. You can have the most fabulous diamond in the world but if you don’t put it in the proper mount, it will look cheap. And you might lose it altogether.

There is a general perception that you need to have a ‘Big Idea’ for your start-up, a compelling vision, a clear picture of what you are trying to create. The heroic entrepreneur, armed with this brilliant idea, this killer app, carries all before them and triumphs over the vicissitudes and setbacks to build a successful business and realise their vision.

Of course, this hardly ever happens. But still this myth persists.

One reason it doesn’t happen like this is that the entrepreneur is so full of conviction about their idea that they are unable to adapt it to the market. Their conviction colours their perception of the world around them, inhibits their critical faculties and prevents them from making the changes they need to, which may be to abandon the original idea completely, in order to achieve the essential  product-market fit.

Actually, you are better off NOT having a big idea. This puts you in a place of curiosity, without pre-conceptions, biases, blind-spots and ego. You can simply go and discover things, ask questions and evaluate the findings so you can decide what to do.

Brene Brown uses a similar approach in her work on vulnerability (see this fascinating interview with Jonathan Fields where Brene recognises the parallel with the work of an entrepreneur). Rather than the conventional scientific method of trying to prove or disprove your hypothesis, she uses Grounded Theory, where she does the research and analyses the data and then determines what it tells her. This does not always give the answers that are wanted, expected or even comfortable. But it gives a real, unbiased answer that can be a real breakthrough, as in her own case.

No idea? Perfect. Let’s get started.

The ‘pivot’ is a key idea for start-ups today. Rather than plough on regardless until you crash and burn as the money runs out, you assess the data, consider your options and elegantly pivot the business in a new direction. Simple, huh?

Eric Reis identifies 10 different types of pivot in his book, The Lean Startup. So, if the first one doesn’t work, then you can just pivot again. Flickr started as a multi-player online game. Wasn’t working, so a quick pivot and, hey presto, success! It’s so easy,  just be agile and open-minded and you will get there in the end.

Only there are some start-ups that pivot more often than the principals in Swan Lake.

So, are these pivots due to conscious and rational decision making? Or a mad wrench at the wheel to avoid the imminent car-crash?

Well, that very much depends on the startup. But having a clear understanding of why you are doing what you are doing and where you are trying to get to will help you make the pivot a positive course-correction to get you back on your path.

Rather than just another spin of the wheel as you go wander around like a drunk spider.

Occasionally desperation works. Who’s to say the pivot you make before the money really runs out won’t be successful? I just don’t recommend luck as a strategy for your business.

I often tell clients to work on defining the archetype or persona of their customers and make them as rich as possible, so they really come alive for everyone in the business. For start-ups, it’s a key part of getting to the Product-Market fit that they are seeking. But I’m not aware of anyone developing archetypes for their investors. And I am wondering, why not?

Investors are customers as well, aren’t they? You want them to buy into your vision, your team, your business. You sort-of get this, that’s why you work at your pitch, do your business plans and demo days. And when you talk to them, you quickly realise that some investors will fit better than others, depending on their specialisation in terms of markets and size and type of investment.

But it’s not just about the money, is it? You really want ‘smart money’, investors who can bring experience, contacts and support to help grow your business.

What’s more, once you have investors you have a whole new set of relationships to deal with. These guys have a lot of say over how you go about things, what your strategy and objectives are. Get these relationships wrong and you could lose the business, because they take it, or the money, away. Think of them like a new set of parents. Wouldn’t you like to take the time to choose the right ones?

So I suggest that you start developing archetypes for your investors. Then you will be able to work out where best to look for them, and quickly sift through the ones that you meet. And isn’t it remarkable how, once you have figured out precisely the ideal type of person, they appear before you?

All in all, it will save you a lot of time. And possibly a whole world of pain too.

This is the mantra of the Wayra Academies set up by Telefonica. They have set up 13 accelerators in 12 countries around the world in this unique initiative, seeking to realise new ideas and create a wave of new start-ups (180 and counting). (Declaration: I am a mentor at Wayra UK and board advisor for two of the businesses there. And I think it’s brilliant).

It’s a bold initiative and an innovative approach for a large corporate. “The rules are not yet written” is an articulation of this, demonstrating their belief that the players will decide where to play and so their role is to provide the space for them. Very different from the controlling mentality we normally associate with companies of such size and scope.

Only I don’t think it’s right.

As a demonstration of intent, it works perfectly. And I completely approve of the approach they are taking. But it infers that the rules are in the process of being created. The new rules. For the new world we find ourselves in.

Well, IMHO, there aren’t going to be any rules.

We’ve left the old world of certainty. Of predictability. Of ‘the way to do things’. From now on, everything will be changing, all the time. Agility, flexibility and adaptability are all that matters. Everything else is up for grabs.

We may have been deluding ourselves in the past and the control we thought we had was just illusory. There’s no doubt about the future though.

Perhaps Wayra’s mantra should be “The rules cannot be written”.

No, I don’t mean that they are all eco-warriors, climate activists, tree-huggers or sandal-wearers (although I suspect many are  of a greenish-hue, methodically sorting out the rubbish into the correct bins every week and buying their friends goats for Christmas). I am not referring to the general environment.

I mean the specific environment that is required to continually develop excellent products. For creating products is a truly collaborative, creative endeavour that simply won’t happen if the environment isn’t right. That’s why many large businesses struggle in this area.

What I mean by ‘environment’ in this situation is a lot more than just the physical environment, although that plays its part. It’s primarily about the people and how they interact, and it includes the following:

Shared purpose and vision: the Product Manager gets the team to create this and then communicates it across the whole organisation

Common values and behaviours: facilitating the development of these, codifying them where necessary and modelling them at all times

Supportive: encouraging members to help each other and being available to all members on any issue.

Open: ensuring an open mindset and encouraging challenge within the team

Tolerant (particularly of failure): learning is more important than achievement of arbitrary targets

Inclusive: ensuring all members, whatever their personal styles and preferences, feel they belong

Inspiring: an uplifting and creative environment

Dynamic: there has to be energy and challenge, change must be embraced

Committed: high levels of personal commitment to the shared goals is a norm, as demonstrated by the Product Manager

Communicative: there should be a natural tendency to speak and share, an easy openness

Cross-functional: the greatest breakthroughs come when disparate disciplines intersect. The strongest teams have multi-skilled players who can help and cover for each other.

Collaborative: it has to be understood we achieve more together than separately.

This doesn’t seem to have much to do with product requirements and roadmaps and release schedules, which are the normal fare of product management. That’s because they’re just the detail of the day job. The things that make the difference are to do with leadership, people and relationships. Schedules and processes are the rails that the train runs on but it’s the people who provide the fuel.

At the recent ProductTank meeting in London, Sam Gilbert of ‘Bought By Many’ put it like this: “The value of product management is creating the conditions where great work can be done”. Hear, hear!

I’ve been reading and studying around the new thinking on ‘Entrepreneurship’ (I don’t find that a useful  word. Let’s call it “starting companies”). I was pointed at The Lean Startup because “you talk about the same stuff as is in the book”; and I loved it.

I was already a big fan of Business Model Generation and the visual thinking approach around that. Then I came across Steve Blank’s stuff, which is great (I recommend his free course on Udacity, by the way). And the three of them, Reis, Osterwald and Blank, work with each other so this combines nicely into a new body of thinking. The latest, cutting edge, ‘hot from the Valley’ stuff on how to start and grow successful businesses. I mean, these guys teach at Stamford and Berkeley, so this is hot shit, right?

At the beginning of “The Startup Owner’s Manual” by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf, they contrast the new approach with the old way of doing things. They give examples of WebVan and Irridium as examples of how the old way was flawed. Here were two businesses that were massively ambitious, were headed up by stellar people, got huge investment and failed spectacularly. In the case of WebVan, a home shopping for groceries business, they spent billions building out a huge and complex infrastructure to collect orders, warehouse and deliver the goods before they actually put  the service in front of the customers. Then they were surprised to find that customers didn’t take to it as enthusiastically as they had imagined. Who’d have guessed?

Well, me. I could never fathom out why they did start-ups that way, it always seemed to me to be a stupid approach. I learnt the hard way that customers just don’t think and behave like you want them too. I know, it’s bloody annoying but there it is. They just won’t be talked to. So, you have to get the service in their hands as soon as possible to find out if they’ll  use it and how they’ll use it. It is insane to spend many months and even more billions of dollars building something you haven’t tried out with customers. Yet no-one spotted it.

Was this a case of groupthink in the valley? The internet equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes? (Oh no, that was probably Boo.com). How did all those smart people do something so stupid? Several times?

No, I don’t understand either.

So, to be a successful startup, you don’t need to be super-smart. You just have to avoid being super-stupid.

In discussions about Rebecca Adlington’s announcement to retire, it was pointed out that elite athletes like Rebecca often struggle with normal life once they retire from their sport.

Speaking on Radio 5Live, Gail Emms, herself a world-class badminton player and Olympic silver medalist, told of her own challenges with depression and said that Rebecca would miss the routine and structure of training and of belonging to something bigger.

It’s not just elite athletes that face these problems, however. People who have spent decades working in large organisations and being driven by drumbeat of corporate life also miss the routine and structure and the sense of belonging. Depression is common as well (especially if they have been made redundant, adding feelings of rejection and failure), as they often struggle to replace the rhthym of employment and the camaraderie of the workplace. Working as an independent consultant or freelancer, as many do, can get terribly lonely.

One solution is to go along to a Jelly, a regular gathering where people sit together but work separately. It sounds a bit mad but it really works! It provides structure to the week and the personal contact and engagement of an office. It’s just like working in a corporate but you get to do exactly what you want (for a change!).

I belong to Kindred, a group for freelancers that runs a number of Jellies each week, so I have a place to go and be part of something.  This gang of independent but friendly, supportive and encouraging professionals often have the very skills I need for a particular problem or project. We share our joys and pains, our gripes and our gossip,  along with the cakes and sweets (Jelly Babies, of course). We even go to the pub afterwards!

So, maybe Rebecca needs to find a Jelly to help her adjust to her new life.  After all, now she’s not in training, she can indulge herself.

Kindred jellies are currently in London only, for more information go to www.kindredhq.com

To find Jellies elsewhere in the country, go to the UK Jelly website

Whether you are building a startup, establishing your consultancy or developing your reputation as a freelancer, you probably think that your struggles are down to a lack of something. It’s our natural inclination to look for what’s missing, so conditioned are we by a focus on our faults.

Actually, lack is not the problem. You are suffering from an abundance. A surfeit of opportunities. You can take your career in any direction you choose. You can spend each hour doing whatever you want. Your startup can develop in a myriad of different ways.

This vast array of choice is often overwhelming. Because we are not very good at processing such a wide range of options, we are either paralysed by indecision or jump for the first thing we pay attention to. Much worse, we sometime try to do everything a little bit and fail miserably. This robs us of the focus we need to build up the momentum to break through to the next level.

So don’t worry about running out of things and being left high and dry.  Your biggest threat is having too many choices and drowning in opportunity.

I just saw a Wired article headed “Facebook could sink Skype with video call app update”. The style of the headline is pretty common, especially in tech, where the latest new thing is going to kill off whatever we all use now. Of course, we have seen massive changes and the rapid demise of once-dominant products and companies. And it makes good copy (well, I read it! And it makes a reasonable  point). But it encourages a dangerous mindset, that if you launch the right product you can take out the competition.

In reality, this rarely happens. In most cases, the incumbents fight back (it’s the ones that don’t that get taken down). They react to the new upstart (that will be you), marshall their forces and attack. Often, their superior fire power (size, resources, brand position, customer base) means they win, or at least defend their position effectively.

It’s called competitive reaction. Yet I speak to so many companies that are going to ‘disrupt the market’ that never give it a thought.

If you upset someone in person, they are likely to give you a black eye. It’s the same in business. Forget it at your cost.