Its just not cool being a paperweight in a startup. You can’t just be a worker or a follower.
You stroll into the office full of Strartpreneur’s (we will explain later). A small team who refuse to be a paper weight (evevn one of those really fancy ones made of gold). Everyone buzzing around their desk. Your headphones on, heads down and tapping on the keyboard. Moments where open discussions fill the room. Problem solving and problem creating. A start up is a fast moving and economical vehicle. Think of Tesla as an analogy. Elon Musk has delivered a vehicle which is capable of moving at significant speeds using the ‘LUDICROUS MODE’ but is super efficient with electricity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZRZIHLE-wo
The Tesla doesn’t carry anything it doesn’t need to. A start up abides by these rules. Fast paced and efficient team of dedicated professionals who are self-developers and driven to succeed. There are no needless passengers in a start up. No one can be a yes man and nor can they be someone who needs constant direction. Everyone needs to be a ‘Startpreneur’.
Everyone needs to have the tendencies of an entrepreneur. What are tendencies of an entrepreneur I hear you shout? Ok, fine we can’t hear anything you say. But let’s second guess what we hope you are thinking right now. The tendencies of an entrepreneur will vary depending on what sector you are in, the type of product/service you are offering and your go to market strategy. But there are always going to be some core aspects and core skills a Startpreneur has in their locker. There are key traits which are required within a startup. You can look towards any startup and see most, if not all, of these traits within every member of the team. But we are going to directly relate this to Drum and how each member of the team demonstrates their side of being an entrepreneur.
Ready and waiting for anything. Expecting the worst and celebrating the best.
Complacency is the death of any startup. The acceptance of what has been achieved is sufficient and we can all ride that wave for the foreseeable future.
Everyone within the team must be on their toes. That could be for a technical issue our users are experiencing or a rapid technology development we can benefit from. On those toes ready to pounce is what makes your role within the organisation demanding yet rewarding.
There are times when meeting attendees simply see a ‘connecting’ bar at the top of their meeting. We, as a team, need to work quickly and instantly. This is how it looks when an issue occurs (something we usually can’t anticipate and is something our users are directly affected by).- A user gets in touch with support
– The support team (aka the marketing team) understand and test the issue
– The support team then identifies the use case and replicates the issue
– The technical team discovers the cause
– Technical team resolves the issue
– The technical team launches the fix
– The marketing team tests the fix
– The support team then informs the user the issue has been resolved
All of this has to happen instantly. There is no raising of the hand or creating a ticket. Of which you can see our thoughts on ticket raising right here. A live issue within a living organism can’t go unnoticed and needs team members to be prepared. When everything is back up and running as expected, we celebrate with the casual office high five (some prefer a solid fist pump).
Innovating Strartpreneur — following is no way to get ahead
Sure, it’s a little like being on your toes. But it’s the burning desire from within to continue to innovate. Lets not get this confused with feature creeping. Feature creeping is action to continuously change the landscape of your offering. Before the latest update has launched, a feature creep is already bombarding the team with 20 different features which are ‘crucial’. A feature creep instantly prevents a start up from getting anywhere.
Innovating is different, very different. Being an innovator within a start-up is being a logical thinker. Someone who is always looking at the bigger picture. Taking into consideration of the latest ‘cool’ technology and filtering through each one and understanding what will bring benefit to the end user and what is just a cool feature. Cool features are great. But if no one uses them? Then what? It simply gets pushed to one side and forgotten. Maybe that one user that one time said it might be a good idea?
The theory of meeting every user’s needs is great. But it is not feasible. We need to stay ahead of what we feel is going to be the cutting edge. The next fancy vital piece of functionality. To do so, we need everyone to put their input. To utilise their passion for the solution.
Strartpreneur willing to learn to take responsibility when duty calls
Everyone gets their time away from work, and rightfully so. A small team means there is significant overlap of everyone’s skills and capabilities. Just how we spoke about before and those office hats. But each person is a specialist in their designated field. We have specialist: Developers (front end and back end), sys admin, software engineer, Marketing, sales and so forth. When one person goes away on their vacation (sometimes there 2 or 3 away at the same time) the people remaining in the office need to fill the gaps. Not just temporarily fill the hole, but replicate the same standard.
Whether that means our front end developer deploying Drum or Marketing assistant completing product demonstrations.
For the benefit of Drum, no one can afford to shirk away from the task in hand. In fact, the complete opposite has to happen. The team has to jump to the chance of taking responsibility. Gripping it like a rodeo in Texas and not letting go until the task is complete. The consequences of letting go leads to almost instant failure. No entrepreneur wants to fail. And if they do? Then they get back on the bull and go again!
Consistency
Look to anyone who is successful, whether they be a sports star or your local barista (we all love good coffee down at small batch), and they are consistent. Day in day out they provide a similar output. They are reliable and get the job done. A start up needs the consistency to remain stable. Understanding our exact output helps shapes the progress of any small team
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Fluctuations in one member can cause significant ripples throughout a startup. Before you know it, deadlines are missed. Stress levels rise and everyone’s workload increased just that little bit. A much larger enterprise has the resources in hand to cope with any expected or unexpected fluctuation. A startup doesn’t. The Strartpreneur is adaptable.
To be a part of a startup and what it is trying to achieve, all members of the team need to find that level of consistency. The consistency which can be relied upon within everyone inside the organisation. A true entrepreneur finds their most efficient level of output. Once established and comfortable they begin to increase their output over time. Remaining consistent and reliable, a ‘startpreneur’ becomes an even more integral part of operations. As the demands have grown since our launch (read it again right here) we have witnessed a level of consistency most companies aspire to achieve. Whilst each member’s output has increased to meet the growing need.
