Doing the right thing — a team member’s perspective

There are a million ways to run a company, and there is no right way to do it. It’s only the belief in a set of values and principles that define what is RIGHT for you.

There has been a significant shift in attitude from the time we started. Back then, we just wanted to focus on building the most kickass/cool product. But today, we are trying to focus on three essential tasks: Creating The Right Work Environment, Building The Right Product and Giving The Right Support to our Clients.

This is the thing with growth. As you grow, you realise, it’s not just about building the best piece of technology, there are a lot of other aspects which deserve equal degree of attention, lest they remain neglected and take on an ugly form.

In this post, we discuss the three dimensions of UrbanPiper, which are symbolic of our journey, and our learnings, thus far:

• First, The right work environment: This in our opinion- is created by passion, risk-taking, and fun. In any startup- The CTO or CEO of that startup determines the quality of the work environment. A Yiddish saying sums it up pretty well: “When the fish gets rotten, the head stinks first.” Assuming your head isn’t rotten, the next steps are to hire the right people and give them the freedom to do their job. Because people are the most important assets of a company. Unlike most of the startups, we don’t believe in hiring a lot of people. We kept the process slow. And, it turns out to be great for us — as we can be involved to a greater degree in making the new guys comprehend and appreciate our philosophy.
• Second, Building the right product: This can be tricky at times. There is no rule book for building the right product. In fact, scratch that, there is only an evolving product, where the path of evolution feels right. It is very easy to get carried away with all the low hanging fruits, most of which present themselves with a financial upside. There is a saying which goes like — An art becomes good by what is put into it; but, it becomes great by what is left out. We, at UrbanPiper believe in the craftsmanship of software development. Very frequently, we find ourselves in a dilemma of whether or not to build a new feature or pursue a product direction. In such a case, we just allow a few weeks (or even a month or two) to pass without implementing the feature, and then seeing if it still seems that important. We believe in doing the simple things first. And doing them good.
  We think of Software development as poetry; and if we can’t do justice to the prose by adding another line, we prefer not to.
• Third, The right client support: Concentrating on resolving client concerns and addressing their requests often comes at a significant opportunity cost. The cost of time and patience. Moreover, there’s no obvious financial upside to it. But what we lose in time and possibly inner-peace, we make up in surplus through goodwill.
• We believe client support is something which keeps you in business. Over time, it also makes your clients become your sales force. In a market where the primary motivation is almost always about business growth, taking time out to do right for those who have placed their faith in you can certainly become a defining quality.
  The other good thing about support is that, if it’s done right, it often becomes one of the best pipelines for features to work upon!

The year is 2017. Our team is about 25 people strong. We’ve got ourselves into a nice groove, and it’s feels great to know that we as a unit have the governing dynamics, which makes it all seem worthwhile!