How A Strong Culture Will Save Your Startup
So you’ve had a great idea for a new tech startup. It’s gonna have more users than Facebook, more reach than Google and make more money than Apple. Well done! Now what? Do you find a technical co-founder? Do you go raise money? Do you call up your cousin who makes web pages? No. Below are some insights I’ve learned as an entrepreneur and coach that will help establish a successful foundation for your startup.
Do your research!
First thing’s first, use Google to see if your idea already exists. I cannot tell you how many people work for months on a product idea and then come into rhubarb for help and one Google search shows that the idea may not be the best idea after all. Just because it exists, doesn’t mean you should not pursue it; it may validate the idea, but do the research. Create a list of competitors, get a sense of the marketplace, and read competitor’s reviews: research.
Does a real need exist?
Okay, now you have an idea identified, or at least a problem worth solving. What’s next? Get some perspective. A lot of different methods have emerged to help refine a business idea, or explore a problem rapidly. You can use Alexander Osterwalder’s business model canvas, or Ash Maurya’s Running Lean; you can use Stanford d.School design thinking or Eric Reiss’ Lean startup or even rhubarb studios’ Core. The method does not matter as much as the focus on refining the idea and proving that a real need exists for it in the market.
The culture of a group creates passion in the individual and passion drives us all through any barriers presented.
Gain perspective from others
The key to making these startup processes work lies in collaborating with other people. When you first do a business model canvas, for example, you cannot do it alone. If you do, your personal filters are bound to get in the way. You will be influenced by your own world view, the TV shows you watch, the way you were brought up and so on. These filters lack the objectivity necessary to really explore an idea in the market. In fact, most of the modern tools used by product owners, UX designers and researchers are designed to increase empathy, see things through the user’s eyes, as opposed to the creator’s.
Gather a group of friends or coworkers, get a few random people from the community, but make sure to run your explorations with other people so that they can ask questions, argue assumptions and help you gain a better perspective.
You’ll find that this process never ends, and as you evolve from a startup into a company you will need people around you that can challenge you. These people will have complimentary skills, opposing points of view and the willingness to share.
Form a strong culture
While no direct statistics exist, anecdotally, there seems to be one constant in all successful startups: a really strong culture. This culture does not always consist of flowers, fun and hippy love; it can be harsh, competitive and aggressive, however making it strong matters.
Establishing a culture begins with the first person in the company, not the 10th or the 100th. It grows and changes, but the pursuit of culture in an organisation works as an active process. You cannot sit back and hope a culture emerges, you have to create it and guide it with intent.
The types of people you bring on will dictate how your culture grows. Recently, I talked to one of the early employees of Mindbody, which recently IPO’d, and he described being hired as an intern when the company had only a dozen employees. He met with five people, including multiple managers, toured the place and met the CEO…for an intern position! After they hired him he noticed that this practice continued as the company grew. Don’t think of it as a belabored HR process, but rather how the company ensures that every person coming on board will buy into and contribute to the open, collaborative culture that Mindbody wants to maintain.
Create evangelists
How does culture lead to success? Many other factors contribute to success, however, culture increases the stickiness of employees; it charges everyone with the desire to triumph, to get through the hard times and increase the good ones. The culture of a group creates passion in the individual and passion drives us all through any barriers presented. This evangelism can seem scary and even a little cultish, but it drives a company forward to success; one need look no further than Apple.
Champion transparency
While one can create many different types of culture, I have found that one based on transparency and trust works best. For example, rhubarb’s culture comes from gathering a complimentary set of individuals. We form a balanced team that can self-organise, evangelise, be hyper-productive and solve any problem. We do not have a like-minded way of thinking. We have different approaches, different priorities and varied methods/tools we love, however, the connective glue of a common goal and suite of values creates a powerful, unstoppable group.
Cultivate a balanced team
What does balanced team mean? A balanced team for a tech product, for example, would have an entrepreneur, a product owner, a designer and a couple of engineers. This team can build almost anything. Each person owns their own domain and can make all decisions within that domain, but only if it affects no-one else’s domain. Think of it as your house and yard: you own it and can make any decisions within your household, however, if you want to change the fence between you and your neighbour, you need to talk to her as that boundary affects you both. So it goes for tech team-members and their domains.
Whatever kind of organisation or company you want to build, make sure you know what culture you want and gather people that will feed that vision. Consider the vision of your company as important as the vision for your product. In doing so, you’ll develop the structural tools to creating a space that is passionate, collaborative and open to challenging each other. The culture that emerges from these ideas will forge a strong foundation and could inevitably save your startup.
