Business

A 34-post collection

An interview on the Misfit Founders podcast

The incredibly generous and supportive Biro Florin recently invited me on his show Misfit Founders.

The show was filmed in his beautiful house in Brighton, UK, and we chatted about building a SaaS business, and a whole lot more.

It's the first time I've spoken at length about our work on EcoSend and how GoSquared fits into a bigger picture more than ever.

It's a very long show (the best part of two hours!) so if you have the time, I hope you enjoy it.

Thank you Biro, for inviting me on, and helping to set my life goals for a podcasting setup like yours!

Where do you find inspiration to write?

Every so often, I feel at a loss when trying to figure out what to write about.

I frequently feel uninspired and lacking in ideas, so I will go weeks, possibly months without writing.

But there’s a great source of material I haven’t turned to enough: questions.

Whenever I speak at an event, or meet another founder, or really, anyone, I’m usually thrown a question of some sort.

I’ve started to note these questions down, as they’re the perfect starting point for topics to write about.

I’ve found that writing answers to questions I’ve been asked has three valuable advantages:

1. Writing addresses my frustration

If I had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter. — Blaise Pascal

When I’m asked a question, typically I must think on my feet.

Occasionally, that works OK. But sometimes, about 2 minutes after I’ve answered the question, I’ll realise I had something better to say on the topic.

There’s no rewind, or “edit” button for live conversation.

It can be incredibly frustrating!

By retrospectively writing an answer to questions I’m asked, I can address my frustration by giving a better answer.

2. Writing helps form better answers

I find writing to be a fantastic way to clarify my thoughts.

It forces me to consider something on a deeper level. The act of writing can crystallise a topic for me.

It’s correlated to the way I like to learn: if I must teach someone about something, it will absolutely force me to learn more about that thing.

I’ve often found that teaching others is the best way to teach myself, but it always feels like cheating!

3. Writing multiplies my impact

I’d like to think another benefit of turning these questions into written articles shared here, is that I can be more helpful to you, the reader of this blog.

When I have a chat with a friend, or when I am fortunate enough to speak at an event, I often think “gosh I wish that was recorded, the conversation could have been very helpful for more people.”

A wonderful thing about writing is it tends to last a lot longer than audio or video. It’s easier to find via search, and can more easily be edited to bring it up to date.

Some questions I have written answers to

Some questions I need to write answers to

  • Why are you building an email marketing tool, when it’s one of the most crowded markets you could possibly enter?
  • What’s driving you after so many years to keep doing GoSquared?
  • How have your values influenced your decisions and lifestyle recently?
  • What advice do you have for someone starting out on their own startup journey?

Do you have a question for me? Please

Measurement, goals, and instinct

“Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.” — Albert Einstein

A friend shared a fantastic podcast episode with me today: Brian Chesky of Airbnb on Steven Bartlett’s show, “Diary of a CEO.”

Brian shares his journey building Airbnb and covers many of the low points and personal challenges of being a founder, grappling with balancing work and friendships, and a lot more. I highly recommend giving the episode a listen.

Something Brian also talked about creativity, instinct, and measuring success.

He highlighted that Airbnb is one of the few companies in the Fortune 500 with a designer and creative talent in the boardroom.

The world of business has come to praise measurement and financials more than creativity. Yet, the world is changing faster than ever, requiring ever more creative thinking to adapt and change.

I’ve always struggled with balancing instinct, creative ideas, and doing bold but immeasurable work against the “proper” way to do things: small, measurable experiments, data-driven decision-making, and focusing on ROI.

It reminded me of a quote I read a while ago from David Ogilvy:

“I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”

Why put craft into anything if you can’t prove it makes a difference?

Why go the extra mile to make things “just right” if no one seems to care?

Brian’s suggestion is to not try to measure it.

As soon as someone passionate about their craft has to justify making their work as good as it can possibly be, they should probably move on.

Craft and creativity must be baked into your company’s culture. As a leader, you are the one that sets and reinforces that culture in every action you take.

The whole conversation inspired me. Speak up for what you believe in a little more.

Thready or not, here I come

As you’ve probably seen, Meta launched their newest app today, Threads.

It’s like Twitter, only considerably slimmed down.

For day one, it seems it couldn’t have gone better for the makers of Instagram.

As someone who geeks out on tech products all the time, I find the Threads launch fascinating, so I jotted a few notes and observations down about it.

Timing is everything

It’s no coincidence that Threads is launching in the same week that sentiment towards Twitter is at an all-time low.

Elon Musk decided to enforce aggressive rate limiting for all users, made Tweeetdeck redundant for many, and obliterated the value of public URLs by preventing tweet embeds for non-logged-in users.

It’s clear Threads could be better.

It could have more features.

It’s not quite ready when you compare the feature checklist.

But launching this week while Twitter is in the dumps (more than usual) may just give it the strong gust of goodwill that helps this spark of a product turn into a full-blown, roaring fire of a platform.

Ship early, iterate

Many “critical” features aren’t in at launch, but is the app and experience solid? Is it easy for new users to onboard? Is the experience reaching a threshold that the majority of users will enjoy and trust? Yes.

You want the ability to filter your feed, you want better search, you want to have more clarity on who’s following you. You want an API. You want the app if you’re in the EU!

But all of those are trade-offs between shipping now or shipping later.

Someone had to make that call. The easy option is always to wait. Waiting always feels safer.

Shipping this week looks like it was the right call. The rest can come later.

Aside: If you’re interested, a while ago I wrote about the importance of shipping early, and often.

Nothing to lose

What I’ve enjoyed most so far as an observer of the Threads launch today has been seeing Meta operate like they have nothing to lose.

Launch today. Move fast. Share the numbers. Integrate with the open standards (eventually).

It seems unlike many of Meta’s most significant big launches: Instagram Stories was a bolt-on to not lose out to Snapchat, Reels is another tab to avoid losing out to TikTok, and Instagram itself was an acquisition.

Threads, though, is a joy to see: Zuck and the team building something that doesn’t just compete, but that could genuinely be better than Twitter. Making something people want. With a beautiful blank slate.

Maybe I am just relieved to not have another tab, view, or swipe in the Instagram app. Or perhaps it’s that my trust in Twitter has dwindled.

Whatever the reason, I’m rooting for Threads. If you’re on it, join me!

Why would Apple make a VR headset?

A quick sketch of my dream Apple headset

The silence is deafening — Apple is going to announce a VR headset imminently.

The very fact Apple hasn’t denied any rumours, and the increasing nods towards a big launch, are evidence enough. If they weren’t, then we’d know by now.

The feeling is very reminiscent of the run-up to the launch of both the original iPhone and Apple Watch — both products were widely expected to be unveiled, but the knowledge of exactly what they would entail was almost entirely unknown.

We’ve been here before

My sketches of the proposed Apple Watch ahead of its announcement.

While I never wrote about that feeling before the iPhone launch, I wrote a piece just before the Apple Watch was announced: “Why would Apple make a Watch?” in which I tried to get into the mind of the decision makers at Apple and understand why they would enter the watch market and what the device might enable.

Looking back at that piece, I feel quite proud. While I was not the only person pondering such concepts, I proposed the Apple Watch (or iWatch as I believed it’d be called at the time!) would:

  • Enable you to pay on the Subway, and allow for contactless payments — before Apple Pay came along.
  • Have easily detachable / swappable straps.
  • Become a key health companion, continuously monitoring your activity and heart rate.
  • Enable you to sleep better and wake up at the optimum time.
  • It’d prioritise telling the time at all costs, despite its smart features.

I got many things wrong too — I thought the Watch would:

  • Have incredible, unbelievable battery technology.
  • Rethink the concept of a display: “I will eat my metaphorical hat if we see a full colour backlit Retina display on the device”.
  • Be the “magic wand” remote to your Apple TV.
  • As you can see from my sketches — the physical appearance of the Watch I believed Apple would make was more akin to a Fitbit activity band.

I love reflecting on that post because it’s what makes following a secretive company like Apple so fun — you can dream and imagine, and you get to find out eventually if you were right. You get to decide if you felt Apple lived up to, exceeded, or missed your expectations.

So with an entirely new device and category just around the corner, what do we hope to see from the Californian giant?

Let’s dig in…

What will it be called?

I don’t believe Apple will call this a “headset” at all. Apple has never referred to the iPhone as a “handset” even though it’s how carriers and many consumers referred to phones before the iPhone.

Normal people don’t buy “headsets”. Headsets are for gamers and geeks.

Apple makes products for people who want the best, and they, of course, charge prices aligned with that approach.

There are numerous rumours and trademark filings, and even supposed confirmations in various code

16 lessons from 16 years of GoSquared

Today marks the 16th (yes, you read that right — sixteenth) birthday of GoSquared.

We were just kids when we started building this thing.

We were meant to be doing homework and getting into trouble, but we were obviously far too cool for that.

To celebrate this milestone, we put together a timeline of our journey from February 2006 to today.

We also took the opportunity to reflect on some of the lessons we've learnt along the way. 16 lessons to be precise. Maybe you've come across many of these before, but it never hurts to reflect...

1. Build something people want.
2. Share early, share often.
3. Constraints breed creativity — embrace them.
4. The details are not the details, they make the product.
5. Use your own product. Be your own customer.
6. Charge the trust battery.
7. Your customers are smart — treat them accordingly.
8. Treat each customer as unique, but scale your process.
9. Never underestimate what a small group of focused, aligned, motivated people can do.
10. Celebrate the small wins. Have fun along the way.
11. Most meetings don’t need to happen.
12. Knowing yourself is a superpower.
13. Simplicity is a war.
14. If you think you’re repeating yourself too much, repeat some more.
15. Focus is impossibly hard, but without it you’re doomed.
16. Just do it.

If you want to dive into any of these lessons further (and have a cup of tea in hand), then please take a look at the complete post over on the GoSquared Blog.

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey so far. Friends, family, colleagues, customers, investors, and all the amazing people we've met along the way.

Episode 13 of Lost and Founder — The Great Resignation

It's been a fair few weeks since the last episode of Lost and Founder, but I'm pleased to return with a topic I've been doing a lot of thinking on lately: the Great Resignation.

I hope you find this episode helpful, and as always, if you want to talk about anything in the show, please reach out.

After a year and a half, it seems that more people than ever are looking for a change in their lives.

In what some have dubbed "The Great Resignation", in this episode I look at how to handle team changes in the wider context of managing a team through a period of significant change.

This year, the term "the Great Resignation" has been increasingly used to describe the explosion in people wanting to change their careers.

As a planet, we're in unprecedented times – and it's no wonder that many teams are going through a tumultuous time with changes never seen before.

If you're anything like me, handling team changes is one of the most challenging aspects of being a manager and leader. I find it hard to even know where to begin on this topic, but I thought I'd share my latest thinking in this episode with the hope it will be valuable to others out there going through similar challenges.

Actions / take aways

  • Every change is an opportunity to look at the business – what is going well, what isn't?
  • Understand people’s goals and desires and ensure they’re on the right path.
  • When someone leaves there can be tremendous opportunity for others on the team to grow into new roles.
  • Be clear with yourself on the goals and needs of the company.
  • Remember: everyone is on their own journey. You can’t control that! Focus on what you can control – organisation design, encouraging the culture and performance you want to see, leading by example, and making people the hero on their own journey.
  • You’re not alone. This stuff is hard. Talk to others and you’ll realise that many others are in the same boat and going through similar challenges.

Links and further reading

Thanks, and see you on the next show!

Music: Jakarta by Bonsaye. Podcast hosting: Transistor.

Building a long lasting startup – interview with Biro Florin and yours truly

Building a Long Lasting Startup

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by prolific podcaster, entrepreneur, and all-round lovely guy Biro Florin this week on the The Startup Corner.

We spoke about how GoSquared got started, why a healthy dose of naivety can be an asset, and how raising money ideally needs to start with asking yourself a big, deep question. Plus a whole lot more.

If you have a spare moment in your day I'd encourage you to check out the show – Biro is a fantastic host and presenter, and a real pro when it comes to producing a quality podcast in record time.

View the show on YouTube

Episode 8 of Lost and Founder — How soon should you launch?

Lead Forms by GoSquared

This week we just launched a new product at GoSquared: Lead Forms.

Launches are always exciting, and every time we do a launch we learn from it, so I decided to focus this episode of Lost and Founder on the topic of launching.

As I’ve written in the past, I feel launching is a bit like inviting your friends or relatives over to your house. Inviting someone over forces you to get your house in order — to tidy, to prepare for a deadline, and to prioritise unfinished tasks.

When launching a product or a feature, or even launching a whole new business, it’s often difficult to know when to do it. You’re pretty much always going to launch too early or too late — from my experience, it’s almost impossible to launch “perfectly on time”.

If you’re getting ready to launch something, I hope this episode is helpful for you.

Actions / take aways

I’ve outlined some key actions and take-aways for those too busy to listen to the full thing:

  • Set a deadline for your launch — every time you do this you learn how to get better at setting deadlines.
  • Assign an owner if you're in a team — if more than one person “owns” a project, then no one actually owns it.
  • Be clear on your priorities — ensure everyone is aware of what is most important to the launch and the company.
  • If in doubt, optimise for speed — moving faster tends to solve more problems than it creates. Speed means you learn faster.

Subscribe for future episodes

If you haven't already, it'd mean the world to me if you subscribe to Lost and Founder wherever you get your podcasts — find all the links to subscribe here.

Thanks and see you next time!

Episode 7 of Lost and Founder – Ask Me Anything (AMA) Special

In this special episode of the Lost and Founder podcast I share my answers to three questions I received when doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Software as a Service community on Reddit this week.

It's hard to scale down an hour long conversation, followed by an evening of written Q&A on Reddit into a 20 minute show, but I tried.

In this episode I have experimented with a different format – with three questions from the AMA, and a summary of my answers. I hope you enjoy the episode!

I share my answers to these three questions:

  • How has working with the team changed over the years?
  • How have we managed to get publicity for GoSquared over the years?
  • What advice would I give to my 20 year old self?

Actions / take aways

As I have been doing for a few weeks, I want this podcast to be increasingly valuable for listeners, so I tried to boil down the show into a few actionable takeaways:

  • As a CEO, a lot of your job is to: give direction, unblock, and communicate with your team.
  • Don't purely focus on the marketing that is measurable – take risks, experiment, be bold. Do things that are impossible to measure.
  • With your marketing – make time for responding and reacting to news-worthy events in your industry. Newsjacking is a thing!
  • Be clear with what you want from life, from your business, from your team. It will make a lot of things easier.
  • Find a coach to help you make time for yourself and clarify your thoughts. You'll be glad you did.

A few links to what I mentioned in this episode of Lost and Founder:

Thanks, and see you next time!

The 2x Preparation Rule: How to turn Good Meetings into Great Meetings

A general rule of meetings I’ve found to hold true through the years: however long your proposed meeting is, you need to prepare for at least twice that amount of time in order for the meeting to run optimally.

That may sound like overkill, but I hope you can hear me out...

As with any rule, there are always exceptions. I have always found if I prepare for twice the duration time of the meeting then the outcome of the meeting itself is dramatically better. For example, if I have a 30 minute meeting to discuss a topic with three other team members, with the goal of getting to an outcome, I know that I should ideally prepare for at least an hour for it.

The seemingly excessive time I spend is recouped by saving even more from the attendees of the meeting.

This likely doesn’t need to apply for every one-on-one or regular meetings you’ve really got into a groove with, but for new meetings, and especially for meetings with 5+ people, the time one person spends preparing is often recouped several times over by being more efficient with the time of the attendees.

A while ago I wrote about how we do silent meetings – these are a great example of how the preparation beforehand is so critical, and can lead to a far better outcome for a meeting.

The expense and value of meetings

Meetings are expensive – the more people and the more time given, the more expensive they become. But they're also valuable moments where team members get to collaborate, bond, and integrate with each other.

Through lockdown and working remotely, I sense that many people enjoy a meeting to get together with their colleagues. It’s not surprising we all crave social contact and want to hear how each other is doing.

Trying to find the balance between social and “work” focus in a meeting will vary by team and culture, but it’s possible to find a sweet spot, and preparation before a meeting will help get clearer on what is needed from a meeting, and help you ascertain just how much time to spend on catching up on your weekend plans at the start of a Zoom call!

Try this out and let me know how it goes

For the next meeting you’re in charge of, book out twice the time of the meeting beforehand to prepare for it. And then assess:

  • Did the meeting run better?
  • Did you get better or clearer outcomes?
  • Did the attendees feel more energised at the end of the meeting?
  • Was the meeting shorter thanks to the preparation?
  • Did the meeting even need to happen once you did the prep?

Good luck!

Episode 6 of Lost and Founder – Planning and Habits

Another week, another episode of Lost and Founder. Really trying to keep this habit up!

Speaking of habits...

In episode six, I share my distaste for planning and how I have been reframing planning in my head to encourage me to do more of it. Setting a deadline, and making myself accountable for what I am planning has been useful for showing an outcome to my thinking and planning in the last week.

I've also been reading a helpful and practical book called Atomic Habits, by James Clear. It's all about improving your life by adopting positive, healthy habits, and trying to eliminate your bad habits.

I'm still reading it, but a rule I've already been finding helpful is the two minute rule – try adopting a new habit by breaking it down into the smallest possible task, something that can be done in just two minutes. If you can master that then you're laying the ground work for bigger things. We'll check in next week to see how we're doing – if you try it out, be sure to let me know!

Actions and take aways

  • Set a deadline, a format, and find someone to hold you accountable to your planning.
  • Try the 2 minute rule with habits – let me know what you can achieve and I’ll give a shout out next week to anyone who successfully starts adopting a new habit.

Thanks, and see you next time!

Lost and Founder episodes 3, 4, and 5

I was a little forgetful in posting about each of these episodes, so here's a batch update of my Lost and Founder podcast and a little update.

Episode 3: Anxiety vs Exercise, Bad Decisions vs No Decisions, and Goals

In episode three I talk (very) openly about how I'm working through some business challenges, discuss the value of transparency, the importance of goals, and why I benefit so much from a healthy routine.

Episode 4: Vision vs Profit, Realism vs Optimism, and How to be More Helpful

A few things on my mind in this episode: is it OK to be unclear on the vision of your business? Why are startups so hard?(!) How do you balance realism vs optimism? And how can you be more helpful with your team?

Episode 5: Working On vs In the Business

In the week before recording this episode I spent too much time "in" the business – actioning urgent tasks, contributing on design, writing, and making small, quick decisions.

Instead, I should have been spending it "on" the business. So what am I doing about it? Listen in to find out!

I hope you're enjoying the show!

Thanks to everyone who's subscribed, downloaded, listened, and given me feedback on Lost and Founder so far. I'm so thrilled to hear from listeners who are finding these stories helpful.

A key reason for starting the podcast was to help myself – to voice what was on my mind, with the hope that it would be useful to others. Having heard stories and feedback from so many people, I'm so glad I started.

Remember: no matter where you are on your journey, you are not alone!

If you haven't already, please subscribe, and tell me what you think of the show – if you have feedback, or suggestions for future topics, I want to hear from you.

Episode two of Lost and Founder – strategy, tactics, and habits

Another tough week, and episode two of my new podcast, Lost and Founder.

My goal with each episode is to be open and honest, and give a side to the founder journey that often isn’t shared enough – the unglamorous, stressful, uncertain side.

Hope you enjoy the show, and thanks to everyone who tuned in for episode one and gave me feedback and support. I owe you!

Launching is like inviting your friends over

For the last year, very few of us have had the chance to have anyone over to our homes, but I was recently casting my mind back to those happier times, and I made a connection in my mind.

I am not sure about you, but in our house, whenever we invite someone over, it’s always a deadline – a fixed point in time to get our house presentable.

I am not saying my house is a mess, but when people come over I want to present the best version of myself and my house to my guests. And when we don’t have guests, sometimes those standards can slip a little. The handful of cups on the kitchen counter. The stack of 5 letters on the kitchen table. The extra pair of shoes left out in the hall.

Having people over pushes me to tidy all these little things up – to wash the cups, to sort the letters, to hide the shoes.

In my mind, that’s exactly what launching / shipping does: you may not be ready, but you have to get your product or feature presentable – ready for others to experience it. It focuses you.

Who care where the shoes go, or whether the cups are in the dishwasher or hidden in the sink. What matters is the place looks good and feels warm and welcoming.

When shipping – who cares if the extra settings option can’t make the cut, or the secondary heading on that alert modal isn’t precisely following the style guide. What matters more than anything is you hit the launch date and ship.

Having a deadline (like knowing a friend is coming to visit) forces you to tidy, focuses you, and restricts you from tackling anything too ambitious. External judgement and validation can be a powerful motivator to prioritise.

Amazon Basics vs Peak Design

A tale of two Slings

I love this response from Peak Design.

When a huge megacorp such as Amazon blatantly rips off your work, you can respond by complaining, by writing angry tweets, by reducing your prices, by panicking, or... by putting together a hugely entertaining ad.

Always a good reminder that every day we get a chance to influence the world around us: vote with your wallet.

(Via Gruber)

15 years of GoSquared

February 3rd 2021 marked the 15th birthday of GoSquared.

It’s crazy to look back at those 15 years – it’s more than half my life!

Of course, what we’re doing now is slightly different to what we started out doing all that time ago.

We’ve learnt a lot, and I wrote about just three of my biggest lessons in a blog post on the GoSquared Blog:

  1. Build it and they will not come
  2. You make your own luck
  3. People are more difficult, and more powerful, than code

I hope you enjoy the full post: 15 years and counting running GoSquared

You might also be interested in the visual timeline of GoSquared – there’s something in there for everyone!

How to run a remote meeting

Do you and your team enjoy remote meetings?

tumbleweed...

If you're anything like us at GoSquared, during lockdown you've been having too many meetings, most of them have been ending without a clear conclusion, and often waste a lot of attendee's time.

Don't worry, you're not alone.

Having run hundreds of meetings over the years, many of them during lockdown and fully remote, we've picked up a bunch of key techniques and simple methods for ensuring meetings run well every time.

I just shared a new video on YouTube (it's part of my goal for this year to get better at video as a medium!) – it's all about how to run a remote meeting.

My goal with this video is to give you the best chance of upping your game with remote meetings and a framework for running meetings on time, with a clear agenda, and with solid outcomes.

In this video you'll (hopefully) learn:

  • How to prepare ahead of time to set your team up for success.
  • What makes a good meeting agenda.
  • Why you need a meeting owner.
  • How to follow up after a meeting to ensure everyone's on the same page.

I truly hope this helps you out, and if you have other suggestions for running good remote meetings, I want to hear them!

If you find this post and video helpful, you might also want to read about how we do silent meetings – they're not for everyone, but I highly recommend giving them a go as an experiment!

Creating OKRs in Notion

Set up OKRs in 5 mins with Notion

It’s the end of 2020 (finally), and I wanted to post one last time before we head into a hopefully bright new year.

My most recent YouTube video covers the basics of creating an OKR (Objective and Key Result) system in Notion.

Hopefully you find this helpful as we head into the new year.

You can find more about how we use Notion at GoSquared, along with a bunch of free templates you can use in your own Notion setup – these are the templates we use every day to help the company run smoothly.

In this video, we’ll cover:

  • What are OKRs?
  • Why do OKRs help?
  • Why use Notion for OKRs?
  • How do you set up OKRs in Notion?

Hope this helps you kick off 2021 with your team in a neat and organised way. Heck, you can even use this system for your personal goals too.

If you give it a try, let me know how you get on – I’d love to follow up with answers to any questions.

See you on the other side!

Move fast

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin

I shared the above quote in my last piece on Silent Meetings, but it continues to be at the forefront of my mind.

I’m in the last year of my twenties, and I’ve been thinking a lot about time – it’s a rather limited resource.

The longer I’m on this planet, the more I realise that the time it takes to achieve things is very often an attitude or a viewpoint, rather than an immovable fact.

Somewhat proving this point is this list of “examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together” from Patrick Collison of Stripe.

Patrick’s list includes the first version of Amazon Prime (six weeks), the first iPod (approximately 290 days), and Disneyland (366 days).

This weekend I also read a profile on Elon Musk in Rolling Stone – this quote stood out to me (emphasis mine):

Beyond all this, most maddening or exciting for Musk’s employees, depending on which one you ask, is the time scale on which he often expects work to be done.
For example, one Friday when I was visiting, a few SpaceX staff members were frantically rushing back and forth from the office to the parking lot across the street. It turns out that during a meeting, he asked them how long it would take to remove staff cars from the lot and start digging the first hole for the Boring Company tunnel. The answer: two weeks.
Musk asked why, and when he gathered the necessary information, he concluded: “Let’s get started today and see what’s the biggest hole we can dig between now and Sunday afternoon, running 24 hours a day.”
Within three hours, the cars were gone and there was a hole in the ground.

Not everyone is comfortable moving fast, but I don’t think there’s any option when running an internet business: you have to move fast or you die.

When someone says something will take two weeks, you can either take them at their word, or you can challenge them to think: what would it take to achieve this in two days? What needs to change?

The folks at Basecamp made this point better than I ever could in this short chapter of their original book Getting Real – keep time and budget fixed, be flexible on scope.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time. —Fred Brooks, software engineer and computer scientist

Speed isn’t the only thing that matters when running a business, but it’s often treated as optional, and it’s easily lost one hour at a time.

Hours add up to days. Days cause weeks to slip. Weeks drag out into quarters. Quarters impact entire years. And we don’t have many years to waste.

Silent Meetings

Since remote working became default, we've all been trying different ways of working – from those adopting Slack or Teams for the first time, to doing one-on-ones over Zoom.

There's never been a better excuse to try radical changes to team collaboration.

The weekly kickoff

Every Monday morning we start the week with a kickoff.

We have a Notion doc that everyone has access to, with a clear agenda and structure.

The person who owns each “department” of the business outlines how they're doing against their objective for the quarter, and their action plan for the week to get closer to achieving it.

We used to do these kickoffs in person in our office. And then one of the team moved to Scotland (who can blame them!), so we started do do our kickoffs with one person on a video call and the rest of us in the office.

And then 2020 hit and we were forced to all join our Scottish colleague and communicate via Zoom in these Monday morning meetings.

Lack of engagement and no lack of chaos

We started to notice a few trends in these meetings:

  • Some people would speak for more than they needed, while others would speak less.
  • We saved questions to the end and found many of the team would not have the opportunity to ask what they needed.
  • Regardless of Zoom it was often hard to digest numbers and explanations on the spot when spoken aloud.

Most of all, we started to question the very purpose of these meetings – what's the point of us all getting together at the same time on a call if we aren't going to interact? If we are just going to speak at each other?

Meetings are expensive.

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin

Take an hour for the meeting (assuming it starts on time and finishes on time), plus the hour before to prepare, plus the 30 mins after to fully get back into your flow, multiplied by the number of people in the meeting.

Add all this up and you quickly realise you're taking 15+ hours of the team’s time.

Every member of the team is incredibly skilled, ambitious, and driven. One resource that is impossible to replace is their time – once it’s spent they’re not getting it back. So I try to be extremely cautious of any time we take from anyone on the team. In that time, does every member of the team feel like it was valuable to help them grow, perform better, and achieve their goals? Or do they feel like that meeting just robbed them of an hour of their life?

15 hours is a lot of collective team time, and when you also consider that everyone is being paid to be there, a lot of money being spent too.

Efficient, well run meetings not only matter morally but they make financial sense too for

Speaking on the Scaleup podcast

The Scaleup podcast is led by Charlotte, CEO of Equalture, as she chats with other founders and CEOs from all over the world about their journey of building a team and the impact that their teams have on their businesses. Milestones, failures and lessons learned.

I was honoured to speak with Charlotte earlier in July, and we had a fun discussion about some of the highs and lows of running GoSquared, about mistakes we've made along the way, and we dug into the back story of starting GoSquared in the first place.

Be sure to check out the full series for many other honest and open discussions with founders.

Thanks to Charlotte for inviting me on the show!

General Magic

A few weeks ago I was fortunate to see one of the first screenings of General Magic in London.

Since seeing the movie, I've been telling everyone I meet about it.

It’s a story of one of the greatest teams of product, engineering, marketing, and leadership people coming together to build a device eerily similar to the iPhone, but in the early 90s.

Sketches of the original Genral Magic device

The movie pieces together with original footage how this incredible team came together, worked their socks off, and ultimately failed to deliver what they set out to achieve. It’s a story that makes you question the definition of failure – a ridiculous number of people from General Magic went on to practically define the world we live in now, and the ideas behind the device were spot on – they just took longer to get here than orignally thought.

Just a few of the people who were involved with General Magic:

  • Tony Fadell – joined General Magic as an intern, co-inventor of iPod and iPhone, founder of Nest.
  • Marc Porat – the CEO of General Magic, and visionary of the original device.
  • Megan Smith – became CTO of US, and VP at Google.
  • Andy Hertzfeld – member of original Macintosh team, also co-created Google Circles.
  • Joanna Hoffman – another member of original Macintosh team.
  • John Sculley – former Apple CEO, also launched the Newton to compete with Genral Magic.
  • Kevin Lynch – former CTO of Adobe, creator of Dreamweaver, VP of technology at Apple.

Huge thanks to Emma Sinclair for arranging a screening of this movie, and to Sarah Kerruish and Steve Jarrett for the fascinating Q&A after the movie.

If you're interested in the history of computing, you want to see a wealth of on-the-ground footage from one of the most influencial teams of people in technology, or you just want to be inspired by the willpower and hard work of an incredibly smart group of people, you have to watch this movie.

Learn more about General Magic the movie

Give praise

It’s so easy to take the hard work of others in your team for granted – to just expect people to do great work day in day out.

It’s also so easy for good deeds to go unnoticed, and to simply say “thanks” and move on with your day.

But think about the last time someone specifically spoke to you to tell you how much they appreciated something you did. It felt good, didn't it?

Being aware of what you think and what you actually express to others will likely cause you to realise that others around you aren’t aware of how much you appreciate them.

At GoSquared, for a long time we’ve put specific time aside each week to share thanks and praise within the team.

Every Friday it’s the best way to start the weekend – knowing others on the team appreciated something you did.

Next time you’re wondering whether or not to call someone out to thank them in front of the team, don’t wait, don’t hesitate, just do it.

Be your own customer

It’s so easy to think you know what your customer experience is like.

Whether you sell a piece of software, you run a government department, or you’re putting on an event, it’s all too easy to think you’ve catered to your customer’s needs.

But we are all customers. And we know how many businesses don’t cater to our needs.

Today I had to go to the passport office in London.

I had an email to the head to the apartment office – it told me I had an appointment to collect my passport at a specific time, and to get there no earlier than 10 minutes before my appointment, and obviously no later.

But upon arrival, I found there were two entrances – one for “appointments” and one for “collections”. Where does one go for an appointment to collect their passport? For those waiting in suspense, the answer, apparently, is collections.

The whole situation made me realise – it’s so obvious in my shoes how this could be improved. But within the organisation – especially one as complex as the UK passport office – I assume nothing is obvious or easy.

I would imagine very few people speak to each other between departments, and I would imagine it’s a rarity that anyone who can impact the situation ever experiences the flow from a customer’s perspective.

The same concept applies to almost every business – at your event, is the agenda clear upon arrival? In your cafe, is it clear where the restroom is? In your restaurant, do you sit at a table or wait to be seated? When you sign up for your software product, is it clear what you should do first to get value?

It’s not hard to know what your customer experience is like, but it’s very easy to think you know it.

Try being your own customer today and see what you find – you’ll be glad you did!