Why Execution Is More Important Than Planning
Wise man Benjamin Franklin once said: “Failing to plan is planning to fail”.
And while I tend to agree with many things that uncle Ben said in the past, I’d like to consider the dark side of planning in this article: overplanning
In my previous startup, we made planning our top priority early on. Our first exercise in planning was to figure out our go-to-market strategy as thoroughly as possible.
Our product was a SaaS tool for the startup ecosystem, so we started off by making a list of potential customers — customers that had both money and desire — to try out our software. We’ve mapped our existing network of connections in search for individuals who could make helpful introductions to one of the potential clients.
In fact, we’ve made several lists — one for each category of users: venture capitalists, event organizers, angel networks, corporate venture funds.
We’ve had a CRM set up and proper incentives put in place for adding contacts to the list. We learned in depth about different CRM features, created best practices for documenting ideas and feedback, and watched endless tutorial videos to…
