Building the base before you make decisions
Hi from Boston. I’m currently on a trip to US to meet personal friends and some people who are involved in the tech startup/VC scene here. Therefore, this week I’d like to make my post a simple memo that I can look back on as I proceed.
The main objective of this trip is to find out how I’d like to be involved in the internet world. Starting my career at Yahoo Japan, I dedicated my first few years knowing how business works and actually executing some of the strategies that I built. Since it is a large company, business development is always aligned with the exiting business domains and the goal for all the projects that I was involved was how I can contribute to the GMV growth (since I was in the e-commerce division). Although some were innovated, I’m afraid to say that projects hardly stepped out of the comfort zone.
Being transferred to the venture capital arm was one of the biggest career change that I had so far. Seeing companies build businesses from zero and meeting entrepreneurs with great enthusiasm just impressed me. I have to confess how much I’m in love with this startup/VC sector and ready to dedicate my rest of my career to this field.
That said, after working as an associate for almost 2 and a half years I now have this question in my mind.
How can I contribute more to this industry?
There are small and big actions and delivering some information through this blog is one of the small ones that I was able to start from day 1. When thinking more about the bigger ones, I came to a point where I questioned myself whether I actually know where internet is heading to. Since startup/VC are the ones who will bring the next generation internet, having the proper knowledge of the current status is essential and knowing at least the direction is what comes up next.
I read news everyday and do research for industries that I need information of on a deal basis. For new technologies, I hear from people who are actually utilizing those technologies and hear what they’re thinking about so I thought I generally knew what’s occurring. But from the talks I had recently, realizing the below three points just embarrassed me and helped me revise my actions; the importance of building the base before you make decisions
- Never think you know everything
- Learn from the right person/team without any bias to get access to primary information
- Keep adding your ideas on top of the base
Even a CEO doesn’t know everything about the company. This is one of the phrased mentioned in Google’s Sprint book. I was reading the book on my flight so had a fresh memory of what this means. But it turned out to be that I didn’t understand this on a personal level.
Yesterday, I met a person who used to work for Google and is currently learning about AI technologies. It seemed odd to me because Google has a lot of internal technologies and resources opened to its employees. However, this person mentioned that acquiring a authentic learning without any bias and being close to the people with primary information will help you, you as an individual person, see the industry correctly. So being in one of the world’s top internet company will let you see a certain cut of the industry but that is just one piece of the pie.
This seems obvious but considering the effort and time, I believe most rely a lot on secondary information and tend to forget the importance of the original source. If you have any chance to access to the information or have any ways to interview the source, take the action and don’t hesitate to ask because they may have some perspectives different from yours. Maybe interviewing your users or your clients be the case. Or even a member of you CS team know the break through of your business. I won’t say it is efficient to ask everyone but once you set a goal (for me this time, it is ‘how I can contribute to this industry’), identify the right person and ask questions just like you’re a journalist.
After you know the current situation, you can structure your ideas on top of it. Your ideas may change every day or every few hours but as long as the base is stable, approaches can vary so keep trying.
Although I’m not running my own business nor dedicating my time to acquire knowledge of new technologies, the learnings that I had will help me with my decision makings. So I’ll keep in his mind and keep attempting once I have the concrete image of the base.
In conclusion, I’ll share the hot buttered lobster roll with new England clam chowder that I had at Boston Chowda! Yummy!
