Peeling off the layers: humanising building a tech business

Everyone in the online sphere is screaming it from the rooftops: Building a successful company for the long-term has never been harder. Competition is fierce, playing in a digital world where the pace changes constantly. At the same time, resources are much more transparent and accessible. That’s why everyone seems to be building a startup. Let me tell you: there’s only a short window in which to stand out from the crowd these days. Acceleration is not the most important thing, but timing does play a big role. If you’re not fast enough, your chances are minimised in the tech startup world. Besides that, the business opportunities are numerous. How do you get your A-team together? How do you reach investors? What effect does remote work have on your business?

Do these questions scare you? The range of factors in the entrepreneurial world can be a bit overwhelming to comprehend. But luckily, where change is constant, much of doing business remains the same, too. This is why I’ve become an advocate on the topic of operational excellence strategies behind company building. To help others lean on the methods that I’ve tested over time. By translating decades of experience into repeatable processes, Builders startup studio speeds up the company building journey.

People always look for shortcuts
When people see what we build and how we operate companies, they’re impressed by our methods and ask us thousands of questions. How do we ensure that we get the right entrepreneurs on board? And how do we enter into that cooperation? How do we then divide shares? Who is responsible for what? What kind of meetings do you organise? And what is discussed around that table?

As humans, we all want to know the nitty-gritty of what to do next. Because people always look for shortcuts for better and faster solutions. Our specialty lies in investigating a subject through and through — and then following up on it. We set a goal and make sure to reach the finish line as efficiently as possible, whether the result comes out positive or negative. We want to get the details all the way to the end. That’s how we experience all the different operational scenarios, so our co-founders don’t have to.

For me, improving operations is the fun part. There is no need to be scared off by big terms or complex situations. If you peel away all the layers, only the simple structure remains. Let me give you a behind-the-scenes look at some of the methods we developed.

18 months of building
We are into product-led growth. When doing major research into a specific vertical, like e-commerce, we need to add that specific value-add to that market and really see the potential in an idea. So we do complete market research in advance, speaking to the people active in that particular field. What are the problems they face? How are they currently dealing with those struggles? And what have they already tried before to fix these challenges? Only after that, we come up with a solution. We then constantly perfect this idea and validate it within the market. Experimenting, analysing, mapping out the responses. Does the idea prove successful? Only then do we start looking for co-founders. And believe me, those business and tech co-founders will fit into that picture specifically.

Daunting? It’s more of a step-by-step process. We have written entire playbooks that list all the steps you need to complete in order to build a thriving company. An example of a first step could be to sign ten launching customers who actually want to buy your product. On that basis, you complete your business plan. If we don’t get those hand-signed signatures, we go back to the drawing board. In another example, we might be addressing co-living companies in the residential real estate market. We might think the operators there need a CRM system to manage the community. But is that idea really of value to them? We validate it without the expected positive response, and afterwards, we regroup and look at our learnings.

It’s a constant cycle of questioning, experimenting and processing results until incorporating the company. This process takes 18 weeks on average, of which:

• 2 weeks of ideation and desk research;
• 4 weeks of validation, setting up experiments online and running ads to see if these work;
• 12 weeks of shaping. We partner with entrepreneurs, and they spend three months making a business plan. See what they need — establishing a name, team, and branding strategy — putting it all into place pre-launch strategy. Then, if all the steps have been taken and the outcome is positive, we provide funding. This way, they don’t have to look for external investors yet and use that saved time to focus on building out the company. We take those kinds of complexities off the entrepreneurs’ plate.

This is our Future Founder model, with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Also, we have studio and venture playbooks, a stage-gate building checklist, standard legal templates, a founder community called House of Founders, and our internal Launchpad academy, which trains aspiring young professionals into rockstar professionals.

Methods & playbooks optimise people’s lives
I have been working on our operational excellence for three years now. Every playbook, process and model is based on data and repeated experiences. I want to create a framework that can be applied to any business building situation and fully optimise this process. In the end, I want to show people what they can add to the world. The tech companies we build are focused on adding value to people’s lives. Tech is becoming more and more important, and lots of you are afraid that your jobs will diminish and still believe machines will take over the world. I believe in humanising tech — putting people’s added value to the tech centre stage. How cool would it be to set up playbooks that create a worldwide network of great people who really want to build together? Instead of falling into the same traps six hundred times, you’d be part of an approachable community wishing to share information. No miscommunication needed.

At Builders, we’re constantly creating new positive opportunities for people. We work together to adapt to future developments and focus on the many things we can do as humans. Your specialism adds value, and automation can help you give yourself more freedom and enjoy life more! Trust me — doing business is far less complex than it looks from the outside. When it comes down to it, it’s about trading two things for each other — whether that’s services or money. And with our methods, the process becomes approachable. You’ve just gotta be willing to get your hands dirty.