The deadline for TechStars Boston applications for Spring 2010 is quickly approaching (January 11th). If you’re considering applying I’d definitely encourage you to do so. TechStars is a great program to help start ups get off the ground and get to the next level. It provides a little cash to keep the lights on, an amazing set of peers to work with, and an impressive network that will make all the difference. I was part of the 2007 class (Boulder) with IntenseDebate and I could not recommend it more. The program is an amazing accelerator that will help you get done in 3 months what takes most companies a year or more.
So head on over and apply. It might just change your life (it definitely did for me).
It’s easy to get distracted by your competitors. When you’re in an emerging space in particular, you constantly feel the strain of every success that your competitors have. Your instinct is to prevent this by knowing what your competitors are up to and then beat or match them on all fronts so that they no longer have an advantage over you.
Unfortunately, this never works.
If you’re chasing the competition you’ll never pass them – by definition really. How can you ever beat the competition if you’re always just trying to match or beat them at their own game? In the end this will stress the team and you’ll always be #2 (or worse) in your space. Not a good solution…
So what should you do about competition? Ignore them. Ignore them as much as possible. Ultimately you should listen to your user base to determine the direction you should take, not your competition. In some cases your users will tell you that they want a feature your competitor has…great! Give it to them. The key thing though is that you only provide them with the features they ask for. In a weird way this actually makes you more efficient because if your competitors come up with a really great feature you’re still aware of it and can integrate some version of it into your own product(s). On the other hand though, if they waste their time on a feature that turns out to be a flop, you never need to worry about it (since presumably your users won’t push for this) and you don’t have to waste the resources to develop the stuff that didn’t work out.
The average guy at your startup should not be worrying about what the competition is up to. Instead it is important to foster an environment of internal competition and support – encouraging your team to excel by a little friendly competition between the ranks. Also, competition against yourself is important. Tracking performance, making goals, and following progress over time all help to push people a little bit futher and keep people performing at their peek.
Ultimately, this is not so black and white though. It’s important for the people at the planning/strategy level to have some idea where the market is going and what the competition is doing in order to best take advantage of your opportunities. The key thing here is to not get boxed in to competing at your competitors game, but instead to change the rules and compete in the game that you have the advantage in. For instance, if your competitors have considerably more development resources at their disposal than you do then you shouldn’t compete on a feature level. You’ll never be able to keep up and beat them to the punch line on key features – and on the off chance you do, they’ll be able to “catch up” quickly, and the advantage will end up being trivial. A better solution would be to find the area that you have the advantage in and make that the playing field. For example, if you have strong business development skills and connections, then make the game all about distribution. Play up the deals you make and make a point throughout your site/blog/company culture that you’re all about distribution and playing with the big guys. On sales calls really key into the distribution you have and (if it comes up) downplay trivial or meaningless features the competition has built. You have to change the game so that it plays to your strengths instead of your competitors…after all, it’s really tough to win a game that the opponent can define the rules for.
So don’t let yourself fall into the trap of getting distracted by competitors. Leverage the work they do by drawing on your community and put your primary focus on your users instead. At the strategic level, define your own set of rules to compete on that play to your advantages and highlight this throughout your communications. Competition can be crippling or it can bring enormous energy to a company. Ensure that it makes your team thrive.
In a small startup or any small team it’s very important for all members to challenge one another and keep people from getting comfortable. The tough thing is to find the delicate balance that forces people to push themselves just enough that they’re performing at their best without going to far to cause serious stress or a mindset of impossibility. The challenge should keep someone from getting comfortable, keeping things just out of reach so that one is always trying to reach just a little bit further.
So what are you doing to challenge the rest of your team? Are you actively trying to push your coworkers to perform just a little better? If you manage anyone, what are you doing to help them grow and keep them performing at their best?
Challenge is one of the great things that come out of working in a small team. Don’t cut your team mates short by skimping on this. Push them, and yourself, further.
I’m often surprised what other people come up with when given a bit of freedom. If you’re managing anyone be sure to give them a little room for creativity. What they come up with will surprise you and can generate a lot of new ideas. These ideas can then be built on by the rest of the team (if they also have a bit of freedom for creativity). What you end up with might be something totally new and different that you never would’ve come up with on your own and it’s even better because the entire team can “own” it.
Give your team a little room for creativity, and encourage it when it happens…you might be surprised what shakes out of it.
It’s tough to improve things you can’t measure (or know when they are improved). If something is worth improving it’s worth trying to find a way to measure it. In a startup you need to be conscious of how you allocate resources. My suggestion is that you determine a few goals for your team, determine what stats measure progress toward those goals, then build the tools to monitor your progress. Get the whole team involved to create a common sense of progress and get everyone thinking about this common goal.
Measure what matters – then improve it.
How do you react when the going gets tough?
I find most people fall into one of two categories. The first (and far more common) is a reaction of great distress. When your competitor comes out with something amazing and new, when you have a bad month for growth and stats are down, or when you have trouble raising money and things start to get tight, many people respond by getting depressed, giving up, and/or stressing out. “How are we ever going to compete with this, we might as well close up shop”, “With a month like this, and numbers like these, we’re never going to get the distribution/revenue we need to survive.”, and “How can we make any progress when we don’t even have the money to pay our current bills? If we can’t get some more money together now it’s all over.” are typical responses to these types of situations.
The other category of people respond in the exact opposite way. When times are tough they become more motivated and see the adverse situation as a challenge to overcome, as opposed to a death sentence. These people respond more along the lines of “Our competition might have the leg up now, but we’re going to destroy them when we do….”, “The numbers might be down now, but it just means we need to push a little harder next month and take things to the next level”, and “Money is tight, but that just means we need to trim the fat and figure out what we can do to make a better case to potential investors…we know there’s a business here, we just need to figure out how to convey that to them.”
The truth is every startup is full of ups and downs…it’s unavoidable. The question is, how will you, and the rest of your company, react? When the chips are down, the last thing your company needs is someone reinforcing the bad situation with depressing attitudes and loss of passion. A team full of these people will create a downward spiral of dreadfulness as each member reinforces the rest of the team’s “loss of hope” attitude. Trying to recover from a bad situation and simultaneously rebuild company moral is a daunting task that many don’t overcome.
Instead, the company needs people who will see the current adversity as a challenge to do better. This not only eliminates the need for a team cheerleader to boost company moral, but actually creates a deeper drive to push the envelope. A team full of this type of person actually has a positive feedback loop, as members feed off the energy and ambition of the others to ensure that you beat the competition, have better numbers next month, or close the resource gap. This category of team rises to surmount a challenging situation instead of letting it destroy them.
Admittedly this trait can be tough to spot in an interview. Many people might not even know themselves which type of reaction they’ll have to a situation until they’re actually in it. That being said though, this has become clear to me to be a key determining factor in the performance of a team and can’t be underestimated. The difficult times are what really determine a company’s fate, and having the right personality type on the team is a factor completely within our control that will have a huge impact on this outcome.
So which type of person are you? How would you classify your company’s culture in this respect? It could very well mean the difference between the success or failure of your company.