Macro lessons on building
par 2 of things i learned over ~10 years of building and failing
Today at a glance:
Take care of your health
Set clear vision, missions, and values. Repeat them often
Set & enforce exceptionally high standards
Treat people with kindness
Give. Create more than you consume
Kindness vs niceness. Avoid death by niceness as you scale
Optimism + a plan will work
This is building on an earlier post with lessons from building Minecraft, Streamlabs, and 2 failed startups. I wish I learned these things sooner, which is one of the main reasons for why I am sharing these now.
Take care of your health
Think actively about managing our energy so you can serve your team better and make better decisions. You need a clear mind to move all P0 work fwd and to make max # of +EV decisions per day.
Whatever method works for you (working out, no processed food, sleep, spending time with loved ones, meditation, going on a walk) is what you should pursue. Your best version of self can support your team and your users. They shouldn’t have to settle for less.
Set clear vision, mission, and values. Repeat them often and imbue them into the fabric of your company
Repeat in public and in private. Build mechanisms and behaviors into the culture that repeat and reinforce mission/vision/values without you (i.e. all hands, gratitude practice, over-communicate reasoning for why we do X on problem Y rather then just sharing that we are doing Y). I believe that a large % of leadership is repetition from the heart. The goal is to build a self-reinforcing culture machine.
Do not peanut butter your culture. Same as with product. If you build for everyone - you build for nobody. The right culture attracts some and repels others. It is 100% by design that our culture is not a fit for some people. It is also 100% by design that our culture makes a few people fall in love with our company.
Set & enforce exceptionally high standards
And invest in people who mirror this principle. High standards are contagious. So is complacency. Over time 7s bring down the team (this deserves a separate post, but I’ve thought a lot about this). Do not let complacency/mediocrity metastasize. If it can - it will.
Leadership owns everything. There are no bad teams - only bad leaders. Everything trickles down from the top. A good analog is rowing. Each rower may pull with varying strength and efficiency on the oar, but the pace in the boat is set by the stroke seat (the first person). And if the stroke stops rowing or drops the cadence without a plan (leader checks out) - the people behind the stroke will crash and the boat (the company) will stop.
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Treat people with kindness
Teammates, partners, 3rd parties, everyone - default stance is kindness and empathy. Think it is correct to start from a position of kindness/warmth/understanding the other person and then adjust.
Give. Create more than you consume
Pour all of your energy into your team and into the users. Work really hard and do things that don’t scale. Treat every user as a VIP, especially early. Help people on the team and go out of your way to give. Do good for others, invest in people, and invest in customers. Be a shoulder to people outside of work.
Looking back, this attitude hurt me (an individual) a # of times. I took a few hits, but as a macro path - I believe it the maximum EV path for the teams (the collective). I also believe that this path and the hits taught me a few things and made me stronger.
I am not sure how the dots connect, but I continue to believe that the pain and the sacrifice were worth it. So give!
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness” - Seneca
Kindness vs niceness. Avoid death by niceness as you scale
As teams get larger things slow down. People start to feel like they are swimming in glue rather than building. This is especially true in today’s environment loaded with entitlement and a mix of ideals that I won’t name (but I assume you know) - ideals that started out as good, but got twisted. We are also wired to be liked, but leadership is often not about being popular in the moment. It is about doing the hard thing. Put all of that together and niceness takes over.
This is bad trajectory. And it is on leadership to set the right example.
Avoid conflating being empathic with being nice. You can still be kind and empathetic WHILE disagreeing and driving towards results. Task oriented conflict is great. Tough love and constructive feedback is great. It is important to strive for this environment.
It is important to do what is best for the company and the team long-term. Often (not always, but often) this is doing a hard thing in the short-term.
If you have spinach in your teeth a nice person will not tell you anything because they do not want to be uncomfortable. A kind person will let you know because they are truly looking out for you.
Optimism + a plan will work
Our world is built by optimists. You need to be a battery of optimism/positive energy when building. Optimism is 2x important when things are hard, which is 99% of the time when building a startup.
An optimistic mindset and thoughtful plan is the backbone of a leader. A large part of the job is to be a cheerleader (with a plan) and to manage the emotional energy of yourself and your team.
Have more written down and will share in future posts.
Take care & drink water!