How to move from a startup founder to a scale up founder.
Get out of the Whirlwind
The idea for Float was hatched almost ten years ago in 2009. I’d had the privilege being over at a Y-combinator event in Berkeley, California. It was there I knew that I wanted to bring this idea to life, and returned to Scotland inspired and determined to make my vision a reality. My co-founder Phil and I began working on Float at the end of 2010. It was just a concept of how we could take what we’d build in a spreadsheet and roll it out to businesses everywhere that needed help with making sense of their numbers.
It’s easy to romanticise that time. Like any new relationship, the unknown and uncertainty makes it exciting and all-consuming. Once you launch a product to customers, you’re not only focusing on feedback and user testing, but bug-fixing, marketing, raising money, business planning, hiring and product development — all at the same time! Living constantly in this whirlwind of activity eventually becomes unsustainable. It can be an emotionally challenging time, where you’re forced to make some big decisions about your future. Founder fall-outs and burn-outs happen in this stage, but even if you avoid those pitfalls, there is another one that is just as deadly: lack of focus. Essentially constant fire-fighting and working on things that aren’t the best use of your time, or your team’s.
Steve Blank defines a startup as “The search for a business model”. The startup phase is about survival and building something of value. However, the whole team are often so operationally focused with so many things to deliver, that strategic thinking in this period is very difficult to find time for.
Find a system that can help
At Float we’ve chosen a system to identify, discuss and report on priorities (a bit like OKRs) called EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). It’s been really helpful in building a cadence and structure to our weekly leadership team meetings, and I highly recommend it if you’re at this stage in the journey.
How should the CEO spend their time.
I attended an event by Deloitte recently where they identified 5 key roles leaders need to consider where, and at what percentage, they invest their time.
These roles were:
Strategist
Ambassador
Orchestrator
Captain
Operator
The exercise here is to think about where you’re spending your time currently and what you’d like it to move towards over the next year. As you move from the startup phase to the scale up phase most CEO’s will need to move from being the operator or the captain to spending more time in the orchestrator, strategist, and ambassadorial roles. This transition is especially true as you begin to make more senior hires or when you’re helping team members transition into senior leadership roles.
I have loved the captain role, but realise that we’ve grown and split into different departments, operationally it’s more likely I’ll just get in the way. Letting go of some of the operational aspects of a business you’ve started can be really difficult. But it’s necessary. I don’t want to be choosing the coffee when we’re a team of 50 people. (Ok, maybe I do).
Scheduling the strategic role.
A key element for me in becoming more strategic has been taking time out of the office to get some headspace. It’s very difficult to take time to reflect or think creatively when your mind is preoccupied and you’re watching your inbox fill up by the minute. It’s common to hear business leaders talk about their best ideas coming to them in the bath or shower, or even on a flight, when they were away from a screen and able to relax.
Bill Gates famously schedules “Think Weeks” (here is a great article about how to go about planning your own). While I’m not quite there yet on taking a whole week out just to think, I have begun to block out time in my calendar where I can disconnect from email and give myself time to reflect and my mind to wander.
Putting in scheduled repeating events in your calendar acts as a reminder to just do it, but also help to keep that time from being booked by other meetings or calendar invites.
It will feel awkward.
Even though I’ve been doing this for over six months, I still find it strange when I’m trying to let my mind wander, or take time out to do a meditation. Even this morning, which I’d blocked off to write this post, I planned to start with a meditation (using the great app Insight Timer), but instead jumped straight into writing and didn’t come back to it. Like forming any new habit, it’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
The practice of journalling.
To give an example of this in practice: I’ve had a big strategic piece of work that I’ve promised to do for one of my quarterly objectives. When I did take time to sit down and work on it, I found I wasn’t getting very far. Knowing that it was a huge piece of work I’d been finding it difficult to start working on it. Then, in one of my scheduled sessions to work from home I was sitting outside, drinking a cup of coffee, and journalling about work, which is something I’ve practiced for years. I found myself scribbling down some notes that came so naturally, and made so much sense, and that one piece of writing has been the source of so many internal conversations ever since.
Just schedule it
So I know life is crazy right now, and there is so much to do, but open your calendar, and schedule a repeating event in your diary. Call it thinking time. Plan where you’re going to be, and commit to making it happen. Start with a blank page, and write down all the things that are in your head. Get it all out, then give yourself time to see what comes to you. What feels important? What could you delegate? What could you scrap completely? Where do you need to apply more focus? What relationships in the business need work? Whatever the questions are, writing it down gets it out of your head, and allows you to move beyond the whirlwind.
The journey from start-up to scale-up, and everything in between, can often feel like a relentless cycle of pressure, stress, and tasks to complete. But as unnatural as it feels, it’s more vital than ever during this time to allow yourself to reflect and get strategic. In doing so, you’ll have the chance to appreciate what you’ve created, plan strategically for the next steps and make a conscious choice of where you want to spend your time.
In a startup — it’s difficult to be both operational and strategic, but as you scale up, making the transition will be exactly what your business needs.
Colin Hewitt is fascinated by startups, leadership, and the future of banking and finance. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Float. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Thanks
Thanks to Catriona Bane for reading and editing drafts of this article.
