My first startup experience was at KISSmetrics. I had the honor of working closely with Hiten Shah, building the product, team, and company. As CEO and Co-founder, Hiten carried the vision for the company and product. The path to achieving the vision evolved as we learned about the market, competitors, and formed our perspectives.
With a team of less than 15, Hiten would take his ideas directly to whomever he thought was best to execute. Often, those ideas seemed like they were coming out of left field. The team started calling these Hiten Bombs.
We’ve all been there, whether it was the CEO, Founder, or Senior Leader of the company asking you to work on a project that feels like a change in direction.
Frequently, we do whatever a Founder requests without question. Let’s face it, if you don’t understand the purpose or context of a project, you may not do your best work. At the same time, a Founder may not explain how it fits into the big picture. Maybe because they think you already know or haven’t figured it out for themselves. Founders like Hiten have great instinct that cannot always be explained.
Where do founder bombs come from?
Every company has many forces pulling in opposite directions, which creates continuous tension in the company. The challenge of a Founder is to balance all of the forces. To make what is an already difficult job more complex, that balance needs to happen tactically, strategically, short-term, and long-term. So what are those forces?
- Customers: What do they need to be successful with the product? If they are not paying yet, what do they need to demonstrate value? Better yet, how do you convert them from paying customers to advocates who rave how awesome the product is?
- Sales: What does the company need to acquire more paying customers? The Sales team needs a continuous stream of leads, especially qualified leads. What if the sales team struggles to sell your product because customers are asking for new capabilities in the product that does not align with the product vision?
- Board of Directors: The typical startup board is made up of the founders, CEO, and investors. Investors are interested in getting their investment back. They have ideas on the direction of the company that they think will give the largest return on their investment.
- Future Investors: Startups often need multiple rounds of funding to grow. Future investors want to see compounding growth. Strong growth is a major factor in their decision to invest. They need to know how their investment will accelerate growth to some day give them a handsome return on their money.
- Competition: Competitors are never resting on their laurels. Whether competitors are copying your innovations or creating their own, they are are trying to win customers just like you are. If competitors build a superior product and gain a large market share, it is tough to recover.
- Vision: Founders have a vision for the company and product. With that vision comes a desire to innovate, iterate, and make a great product and company to be proud of.
As you can see, all of these forces are in constant conflict. Will the new innovative feature create qualified leads that makes the board, future investors, and existing customers happy? What about that free product the board insists you need to accelerate growth… will that cannibalize the customers paying $29/month? Will the infrastructure cost too much?
How do you handle founder bombs?
Now that you understand the forces your Founder is trying to keep in balance, you can have a productive conversation when a Founder Bomb comes your way. Ask what forces are demanding this now and how it balances short and long term. Better yet, challenge those beliefs and the result will always be a better path by putting your great minds together.
Dear Founders: Your bombs don’t scale
There is a time and a place for Founder bombs. In the early stages of a startup, you are learning about your customers, market, and competitors. Founder bombs at this stage can be effective towards achieving product market fit quickly.
As your team grows and you acquire more customers, be aware that your bombs can cause more disruption than progress. Even if your ask is small, it takes time for engineers, designers, marketers (anybody creating/building in your team) to context switch from one project to another, then back again.
Conclusion
As a team member, understand Founder bombs are part of the startup experience. With a better understanding of where these come from, you can have productive conversations and execute effectively.
Founders, now that you know that you can impact the productivity of your team, be thoughtful if/when you decide to drop a bomb on your team.
