Lessons from a Startup Pt. III

The final round of lessons collected from my experience at an early-stage startup

In Part II of this series, I shared even more of the “hardest hitting” lessons I learned as the first technical hire at EQ Community. If you missed out here is a quick recap:

• Build Out Workflow Playbooks — Do stuff, then think about the stuff, then document how to systematically do it again.
• Red Tape is Inevitable — As the company matures, you’ll lose freedom.
• Building is Easy, Maintenance is Hard — Getting something up and running is easier than keeping it running.
• Scaling is a Different Beast — As the company grows, you’ll face problems you haven’t even heard of.
• Picking the Right Tools — Good luck trying to change a tool, try to get it right the first time.
• Documentation is King — Write s**t down, trust me.

Lessons from a Startup Pt. II

In this final article, I want to wrap up my encyclopedia of lessons learned.

Keep Things Short & Sweet

Business users are not engineers and they don’t have the technical expertise that an engineer has. To effectively communicate with them, it’s crucial to use the MTE (Minimal Technical Explanation) approach, simplifying technical language as much as possible. Above that, highlighting how your work will impact their business is key. As an engineer, you may grasp the necessity of making some obscure change, but business users might not. By emphasizing the impact, it’s easier to gain their support and cooperation.

Journal from the Job — Looking back on the early stages of our AWS infrastructure, I recall spending countless hours manually zipping python packages and code before uploading them to Lambda console. It was a frustrating and time-consuming process. Doing it over and over triggered one of my core life philosophies:

“If it feels like you are doing more work than you have to… you are doing more work than you have to.”

Thankfully, after some research, I discovered the serverless framework. Although I knew it would take time to implement, I explained to the business how it would allow me to update our code with ease, at the push of a button. They understood the value and trusted my judgment. As a result, I was able to focus on this improvement rather than developing new features, and it paid off tremendously. Minor tweaks could be done within seconds, rather than hours, leading to greater efficiency and satisfaction for all involved — especially me.

Take Ownership in your Work, it has Impact

An organization really is a biological system, every role interconnected and having an impact on the company’s success. Even seemingly small tasks, like wiping down cafeteria tables, can have a significant effect on the company as a whole. For example, if the tables are not cleaned properly, employees may choose to eat at their desks instead of bonding over a meal, leading to a less cohesive team. Therefore, it’s crucial to approach every task with a sense of ownership and pride, no matter how insignificant it may seem.

Taking ownership of your work is about more than just being responsible for the quality and results of your tasks. It’s also about taking the initiative to make improvements and resolve issues, as well as constantly seeking opportunities to improve your skills, knowledge, and performance.

At the company there may be a hierarchy of praise, salary, responsibility, status, etc, but there is no hierarchy of value. In the end, every role is valuable and essential for the company to function at its full potential.

Listen for Problems to Solve

In order for a business to make money, they need to solve problems, that much is certain. Successful products are often those that provide solutions to common problems that people might not realize they have. Similarly, businesses themselves have “status quo problems” that you can help to solve. By keeping your ears open and identifying areas where you can improve processes, you can make a significant impact on the company’s bottom line while simultaneously increasing your value as an employee.

Journal from the Job — One day, the Head of Operations was walking us through how he was putting generated data from one platform into another and immediately my life philosophy was triggered. The process he went through was a manual and tedious process and it felt like he was doing more work than he had to.

Having been recently immersed in API documentation, I saw an opportunity to build a solution that could significantly speed up the process. I worked on building a system that not only reduced the processing time from 20 minutes to just 3 minutes, but also provided dynamic data processing options and standardized values into more useful groupings.

Who You Hire Matters…A LOT

If everyone’s work has a huge impact, then who you hire matters a lot. The hiring team at EQ was fantastic and they brought in a lot of good talent. Thinking back on my coworkers I ask myself what traits made them fantastic, here’s what I think they are:

1. Passion & Genuine Interest — When someone really cares about the work of their field combined with an interest in the problems that you are solving / solving the problems that you have it leads to out-of-the-box thinking and an unreal attention to detail.
2. Self Starter & Curiosity — “Just do it”, is arguably the most powerful brand tagline in all of history. The tagline embodies exactly what you want in an employee, someone that is going to go out get things done.
3. Ownership — When you take ownership of you work you have a sense of pride and commitment to what you do, and are willing to go the extra mile to achieve success.

Journal from the Job — The CEO wanted something built out a specific way with a specific set of features and came to the conclusion that the only way to get that was to “go in” and code it himself. Prior to this, I doubt he’s written a single line of code, but he put on his coding glasses and figured it out. Earning himself the nickname “Web Dev Sawyerr”.

Show Yourself, Share Yourself

In today’s world of remote work, having faces visible during meetings is essential. It’s not just about being a company, but also about building personal connections with colleagues. Looking at someone’s initials feels distant and impersonal. Seeing someone’s face every day adds a human touch, even in a virtual environment.

Additionally, find some time to talk about topics beyond work when you can. Yes, discussing work is crucial, but those personal connections and relationships are equally crucial. Establishing a connection beyond work, creates a pleasant work environment and makes the job enjoyable for everyone involved.

Journal from the Job — After about 9 months of working together, we all met at a conference for the first time and it felt like we knew each other for years. I believe this is the natural effect of seeing each other everyday on Zoom plus having conversations about a full spectrum of topics from first dates and wine gifting to haircuts and travel stories.

The Neuron View

Although the lessons in this three-part series were presented linearly, they are not connected that way in my mind. Their relationships looks more like this:

The Top 3 Lessons I think about in my Professional Career

There are some lessons in this series that I don’t think about as much as others. For example, I don’t actively think about the “Who You Hire Matters” lesson because I’m not making any hiring decisions. However, as a consultant at EON Collective there are some lessons that I think about every, single, day:

1. Take Ownership in your Work, It has Impact — Unlike my work at EQ, when working on assignments at EON I am one part (dbt specialist) of a greater development team and it is important that my part be executed well.
2. Documentation is King — When the assignment is done, my work gets handed off to the client’s core team. It is a top priority for me to document my work, findings, and knowledge so that they can seamlessly pick up where I left off.
3. Writing Code is Overpowered — People pay us to do what they can’t (or don’t want to). I think that is proof enough.

The Top 3 Lessons I think about in my Personal Projects.

All of the lessons that I think about when working on my personal projects are remedies to symptoms of the same “disease”: When it comes to theory vs practice I am a chronic overthinker/dreamer always focusing on the perfect state of some idea. So much so that things don’t get done.

1. Build Out Workflow Playbooks — The workflow lesson always brings me back to reality. Just do something, do it a couple more times, then figure out how to make it efficient.
2. Completion vs Correctness — This lesson is the balancer between my dream and the reality of the work I “just did”. I’m always thinking about whether or not going back to clean up my work is a high impact task or if it’s ok to leave as is.
3. Excitement can be Dangerous, Use a Fundamental Compass — There are so many cool ideas on the road to reaching that perfect state and they are not all equal. I always have to differentiate what is a cool feature and what is a core feature.

One More: Failure is the Only Guarantee — Accept it, relax.

A3I Written (Accelerated & Augmented w/ Artificial Intelligence)