Accelerating WorkHound: Week 11 — Windshield Time

4 min readAug 25, 2015

Windshield time and knowing when to meet face to face

Windshield time

Last week Andrew and I spent a lot of time in the car together — about 16 hours in total. We traveled from Des Moines to Little Rock, AR to meet with a trucking company we signed up down there. We know we need to do the things that don’t scale — like driving all the way to Arkansas to meet with a company, even though it can be a time drain.

We didn’t want to waste the time, so we tried to get smart about how to make the most of our trip.

So how do you maximize that time?

Here are a few of the ways we made the most of our time on the trip:

Take turns working in the passenger seat

While Andrew drove, I actually worked on last week’s post. We both have wi-fi hot spots, so having 2–3 hours at a time to crank out a few tasks can lead to a lighter workload upon arrival.

Learn together

Neither Andrew or I have listened to Venture Deals (which is a must listen / read for entrepreneurs), so we started listening to the audio book. It was content valuable to both of us and will help us both learn more about the intricacies of investment.

Talk through big topics

A lot of time in the car can lead to many journeys down rabbit holes. During our time in the car we talked through our product road map, pricing, social media strategy. These big picture conversations can get away from us in the day-to-day grind of an accelerator. But having dedicated hours to marinate on big topics leads to getting on the same page, creating a mutual vision and pushing forward with more certainty than when we hopped in the car.

Knowing when to do a face to face meeting

I looked for the cheesiest image when searching “face to face”. This worked well.

In the early days of launching a startup it’s essential to get as much face-to-face time as possible, especially with early prospects. However there’s a fine balance between getting in front of companies for feedback versus meeting for business development or making a sale.

We’ve secured many face-to-face meetings with trucking companies throughout the accelerator, but we’re getting better at filtering when to schedule phone calls, calls with screen share or video conferences. All of these are build-ups to move a meeting to the next stage, which should ultimately be a face-to-face meeting.

Seeing facial reactions over a product are huge, but the time it takes to get that face-to-face interaction may be time suck on the business.

Why do a face to face meeting?

•To get early stage feedback

•To set a deal up for success down the road

•To close a deal

Face to face interactions can give better insight on body language, can show more authenticity from the startup side, but face to face meetings take time, especially when traveling to them.

For a two person team like us, a face to face meeting can drain hours of a day, with no great progress made on the business or the product. The travel time (and costs) of face to face meetings drains precious company resources (time, money, not spending time on growth initiatives)

There are also instances where some people want to meet face to face outside of business (community members, curious minds, mentors, etc.), but these meetings can usually be handled via phone or video call.

Basically, if something doesn’t help progress growth, it’s worth evaluating whether a meeting is necessary right now (especially in an accelerator) or if it can be handled by email, phone or video call.

Quick Overview

(See Week 1 post for more details)

At WorkHound, we’re tackling a big issue in the trucking industry: the 97% driver turnover rate. We’re building a platform to allow drivers to share feedback with their companies. Companies then receive the aggregated feedback to improve the driver experience.

This is our weekly post highlighting our learnings and actions each week in the Straight Shot accelerator out of Omaha.

Other Updates:
Week 1 Update // Week 2 Update // Week 3 Update // Week 4 Update //
Week 5 Update // Week 6 Update // Week 7 Update// Week 8 Update//
Week 9 Update // Week 10 Update //