Steven's Entrepreneurship Blog

Company culture

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:02:00 +0800

Culture is shapeless but defines a company as we know it. There is no better analogy than dark matter to the universe. It naturally evolves on a mission. A mission that everyone in the company are fully aware and knows the leaders are committed to. It’s hard to define a culture w/o talking about mission. It’s usually a bi-product of a company mission. Please allow me to use Buddy as an example if I were to run it.

Mission

Help the customers to increase the returning rate

Now we have a mission that we know as a team we have to accomplish together. Anyone who suggests features that don’t related to the mission should be reminded. Even when it’s easy to come up with features INDIRECTLY help to accomplish the mission but when we inspect every potential feature on the table we can easily focus on those have more direct contribution to the mission. The helps the team to stay laser focused on the problem. From that it’s not a rocket science to know to say no to social features and focus on PoC of getting existing customers to come back more often. The team works on the items that will engage customers more effectively.

Goal

x number of customers with y number of returning rate by z number of days

From the mission we can now break it down to smaller goals and milestone, devise necessary steps to succeed, measures to take etc. This requires operation and management efforts to combine all the knowledge in the business unit. Enforced regular meetings to update status, critical issues and changes in the market. Anything that might jeopardize from achieving the goal shall be dealt swiftly. The leader should exhibit great care to the goal. She does so by pushing new thoughts, solutions, problems she sees in the product and team. She works together with the team closely. The goals can be examined, challenged but every change has to contribute the mission.

Culture

We are ruthless workers to fight our way toward our mission

Making the mission means something to every employees is hard and it’s best to start with the leaders. If a leader always says customers or users are idiots and don’t know how to navigate the product UI, the designer will make unusable product. If a leader insists on updates the software that might fuck up some customers the team will make DB upgrades that wipe out the old data. If a leader talks shit about her leader instead of solving the problem then the team will talks shit about her. If a leader doesn’t help other departments the frontend devs will complain how stupid the UI designer is instead of giving help. Now it’s time to list items about the culture for Buddy

Customer first
We are to help them, not to make money from them
We care about the product and give all we got for it. The leader should show it so the rest can follow.
In order to succeed the team members need to help each other. The mission is more important than anyone.
Company reward generously to goal achievers
Company has 0 tolerance to those prevent the team from accomplishing the mission

(Image from layoutsparks)

Leader qualities

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:35:23 +0800

Over the Chinese new year holiday we had a family reunion dinner. On the table many ideas were exchanged pertaining to the recent presidential election in Taiwan. One of the most heated debate topic is whether one of the candidate exhibited fear of losing the election in front followers, or his campaign co-workers, when the public poll indicated so.

Quite often we see people in the leader position showed various emotions such as anger, fear, excitement etc. Each emotion has it’s own profound influence to the the team and eventually set a culture the company. People follows their leader’s every move and through observation it they learn what’s acceptable and what’s not in the company. Here are some guidelines I personally follow:

Never show negative emotions. It’s okay being scared, nervous, frustrated, or angry but they are simply not appropriate in leader’s position. In the short term they might help the organization to get through some difficulty times but in the long term they will be imitated by everyone. If you are not mature enough to control your emotion maybe you shouldn’t be a leader.
Be positive and inspiring. Everyone wants to do a good job but not everyone knows how. In frustrating occasions it’s very important to help the team member to find positive ways to tackle the problem. Show them what to do that will improve the status quo, not being angry or upset about it. If a leader is constantly angry the employees will take it for granted and learn to be angry to others too. Eventually the environment will be extremely toxic.
Don’t be politically correct. A true leader has guts to say what he thinks is right and has the patience to explain it over and over again. When encountering disagreements it’s critical not to lose your cool, sometimes a debate is the best way to really think about things. But never use authority to dissolve a disagreement. Respect is earned not granted.
Treat other as you want to be treated. If you don’t want your leader to be constantly in fear or anger all the time maybe you shouldn’t be too.

This post covers many basic principles to be a good leader but in a practical level it is very hard to achieve. I’d emphasize this is a never ending progress and one will only get better through a lot of practices.

(Image from http://alfalasy.com/)

"Be critical not cynical"

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 02:16:29 +0800

“Be critical not cynical”

Ridiculously transparent

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:03:29 +0800

We face the question of information transparency constantly in most occasions. This can happen in work, in personal life and sometimes we criticize others for making the wrong decision about revealing certain information the wrong group of people. The dilemma and struggle of what to tell to what people is only obvious to who have faced it before. For a owner of a startup company this is particular hard because there is usually no set of policies established.

Here are some of the tips that will help you pertaining to transparency.

Organization goal

Absolutely communicate this with your team. Bring everyone on the same page is extremely critical to the performance. The worse type of management are those keep many secrets from its team and naively thinks developers don’t have insights to the business side. Rather I found out most of them are just lazy to explain things. Personally I cannot remember how many times my developers pointed out the mistakes I make as a manager and they were right. Give the team a chance to learn about what the organization is trying to achieve and answer their questions. This not only help you to refine the goal but also train the developers to think beyond their daily operation. As a result they will build a better product.

Company financial

The team deserves to know the current water level to put everything into perspective. Some management might think in bad situations this approach would cause a widespread panic among employees and they would be right. But try to realize the basic source of panic and fear is not knowing what to do. A experienced management doesn’t just pass the bad news and let everything slide. At the same time they will offer solutions and keep everyone work together to resolve bad situations. This should be a precious lesson the entire organization can learn together.

Recruitment plan

Another important aspect to the company goal is its recruitment plan. It suggests necessary workforce to achieve the goal. Try to share this with the team and encourage them to recommend talents in their circle to the company. The key for a startup success is to keep everyone not just feel involved, but actually participating in company operations. When the team feels they are working for their own company they are much more likely to go extra mile in the tasks given. A experienced management doesn’t want grunts, they need good partners.

What’s to hide?

Your own negative opinion to anyone in the company. This includes peers, subordinates or managers. Instead of being a victim and whine about it you should take actions to make the situation better. Sometimes the feeling is so enormous that you think you need to tell somebody please do it outside of the workplace. A good leader sets a right culture by taking actions, not complaining about things all the time.

(Image from http://marpr23.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/transparency-is-a-must-even-in-interviews/)

How does a great leader communicate

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:55:49 +0800

I’ve been meaning to write an article about different communication styles one would normally experience in a workplace, and how they can have profoundly different effects on the final outcome. Human being is extremely complicated so predicting the emotional response is almost impossible. Nonetheless there are still some very useful techniques:

Focus on the value

If someone did something that causes your any inconveniences. Don’t go and tell him about how he has victimized you. Instead try to stay neutral and let him know things would be much better if he has done it differently. It will be even more effective if you can show him how. This altruistic act would be perceived as you are offering so accepting will come effortless. I found out telling people about how he does certain things wrong almost always triggers negative emotional response. The result will be likely to be that he agrees with your point but at the same time he is reluctant to improve as that proves his mistake in the first place.

Be helpful

After you have communicated the value the next logical step is to tells him how. It’s important to see things from other people’s perspective especially when you want to change their behavior. Make a strategy that would solve the problem first before the communication starts. The key is to show you are on the same side.

Don’t be dogmatic

The purpose of communication is to understand each other’s point of view better. This is achieved by talking and listening. A leader might think it’s a waste of time to listen to what subordinates has to say but my experiences repeatedly showed otherwise. Every thing happens for a reason and sometimes for a good one. Listening will help you identify whether a mistake happened because of training, tool or the interview process. This knowledge will ultimately move the company to a better situation. At the end of day when you are a leader you only got yourself to blame.

These techniques are useful in pretty much all circumstances. Try to practice on this with your peer first so later when you start to lead you would have mastered this art already.

(Image from P Shanks, CC License)

When you have an idea

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 11:54:06 +0800

People who are interested in making a startup company are usually smart people. They tend to have ideas all the time, good ideas that solve some problems in the current market. The next step is typically try to attract people with the similar interest and vision to build a team toward the common goal. It all sounds reasonable but the funny thing is most of the time people are not willing to commit that much in the beginning. In the other words they are chickens rather than pigs.

A reputable entrepreneur might pull that off effortlessly as he oozes leader’s charisma and backed by successful stories. Typically people would find it a lot more comfortable to follow this type of leader instead of someone who are new to the entrepreneurship world. Here are my suggestions:

Don’t Wait For the Others

I know it might not be easy to understand why we should hastily dive into the startup venture without validating how good an idea is. But the cruel fact is you will never know the full picture before you start. Market validation with hard numbers is nice if you are pitching to a VC because they are paying money out to you, and the ultimate goal is to get a lucrative return in the investment. They don’t care too much about what problem you are trying to solve as that’s only a mean to an end for them. However, this strategy will need to change if you are recruiting people because they care exceedingly about the problem you are solving. I find the more effective way is to have some prototype that explains your idea and its application to get some responses.

Show Confidence

A prototype (preferably a working one) worth a thousand words in showing how confident you are to your own idea. If you truly believe something is worth doing and the world is dying for a solution you would commit more than just talks. Finding something with that attributes is hard but it helps you and the team motivated in the long term.

What if I Can’t Code?

Find someone who can and pay them. The most important thing is to get things off the ground and how you do it isn’t that important. I’ve heard a founder with a legal background outsource his idea to an Indian developer just to get things started. If you think your idea truly rocks you would get out of your way to get it done ASAP. Also I found when recruiting, developers are drawn to a team that has a working prototype. Developers love to see the inner working of things just out of curiosity. That’s why they chose to be developers.

Don’t Try to Lead

I had spent months to understand leaders do not build followers intentionally. They just do what they think what is right and in time followers would come. If you are putting together a technical team or if you are finding a technical co-founder the best strategy is to start building it rather than trying hard getting free development resources for your idea. If it has certain value the rest would come. But first you need to believe in it completely.

(Image from TalkDroid)

Basic Java Coding Style

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:42:23 +0800

Having a consistent coding style across the team make code more readable and improve productivity. Every company has different standards that suit it the best. Here are some of the experiences from my previous development career. Hopefully you will find them useful.

Layout

All documents or source code should not exceed 80 characters in a line to make sure the display won’t break on any monitors. On Eclipse you can find the setting at

General -> Editors -> Text Editors -> Show print margin

Toggle it on and set Print margin column to 80

Documentation

Every function needs to have some documentation explaining its behavior. It starts with a verb, for example:

/**
* Gets the user defined value for price from a specified ID.
*
* @param ID a {@link String} containing the ID for a price value.
* @return a {@link String} representing the price if the ID exists, {@link null} otherwise.
*
* @throws NullPointerException if the argument ID is {@link null}.
*/
String getValue(String ID) {
// Impl omitted
}

In addition to function documentation, every class should have a documentation detailing its objective. However the format can be more relaxed.Tip: Use Alt + Shift + J for quick documentation population

Coding Practice

The curly brace starts on the same line after the conditional statement and there should always be a space between each clause or identifier. For example:

if (a == b) {
} else if (b == c) {
} else {
}

The exception clauses should follow the same standard.
All unused imports need to be removed. Ctrl + Shift + O on class level would do the job. It is also important to include “this” on each class field or function access.Tip: Go to Java->Code Style to set it up.
One of the most important practice in programming is the parameter validation. Check for null value or other unacceptable values in each function as preconditions before it executes. This will help us to identify where the problem actually occurs. For example:

String getValue(String ID) {
If (ID == null) {
throw new NullPointerException(“The ID value specified may not be null”);
}
}

One More Thing

Don’t use tabs. Instead please replace them with 4 white spaces.
Tip: Java->Formatter->Edit Profile->Tab Policy to change the setting. You will need to create a new policy other than the builtin-in ones.
Other Resources:http://www.shortcutworld.com/en/win/Eclipse.html

"Too often when we see successful figures talking about their philosophies on a stage we foolishly..."

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:35:00 +0800

“Too often when we see successful figures talking about their philosophies on a stage we foolishly believe that’s everything it takes. Actually in the majority of time they work their ass off too get things off the ground.”

"In a job interview: Emphasize on the needs of the company and how you can help out, rather than what..."

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:34:26 +0800

“In a job interview: Emphasize on the needs of the company and how you can help out, rather than what skills you have.”

What is the most important thing for a business idea?

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:59:48 +0800

(I got some of the inspirations from reading Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers)

I’ve seen quite a few teams made the mistake by focusing too much on the extrinsic environment rather than intrinsic business core value. This means when we have a good idea we typically search on the Internet to see if someone has already done it, and try to think how can our service be different. This is a logical step but it also has the potential to limiting the scope of the idea, even deviate it to something that is significantly different from the initial ideation. So what is the most important thing in the beginning?

The Core Value

An idea should have legs, meaning it must provide some value to all the stakeholders. One good way of doing this is to design couple of personas (use cases) that describe from the beginning of what does the user engagement look like, the interactions with all other users and the outcome. This will help to identify all the stakeholders to sustain the idea analogous to a supply chain. Once they are identified one should go a great length to scrutinize the value brought to them when using the service. If you can’t think of any prominent values for a stakeholder maybe it doesn’t fit into the picture. There is a good chance you are just imagining it. As a result it should be removed immediately to avoid the risk it might incur in the future. A well-thought business idea tolerates no weak link and VCs are inquisitive beings. Experienced ones can smell something is not right from miles away.

Business Model

Out of all the stakeholders getting some sort of value from interacting with the service based on the idea. How do we charge money for it. It’s actually quite simple. Find the stakeholder who is likely to receive the most commercial benefits and make them pay, while other stakeholders can use the service for free. The reason is we want to encourage the usage of such ecosystem and make it easy for the remaining of the stakeholders. If a business idea only has its direct users as a single stakeholder, make them pay too. Remember placing ads is also a form of getting money from the users. But make sure that is acceptable to your users when defining the pricing.

What About Competitors

Crush them! One important thing to remember is the market won’t multiply itself when there are more players in the space. Inevitably you have to steal customers from the current players. Even with the similar offering (which I doubt if the idea is truly original) there are still ways to make a difference. If your competitors are offering more stable services with less downtime. Beat it by offering sublime support. Go extra yard on these areas that your competitors don’t. In the end of the day for a business to survive it doesn’t need the whole market. It only takes a small bunch of users who like something indispensable in your service and they are willing to pay.

Question: What is your sequence of validating a business idea?

(Image from Wiki, CC License)

Make it easy for customers

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:03:16 +0800

Last night I saw a movie (Everything Must Go) starring Will Ferrell.

Spoiler Alert

In the story Nick (starred by Will Ferrell) was fired from his job, kicked out by his wife on the same day. Because the law prohibits people from living on their front lawn so he had to sell his stuff that were thrown out by his furious wife. As the story developed he found a kid to help him with the sale. When he started to teach the kid how to sell stuff some interesting dialog happened.

Make it easy for customers - A first lesson Nick taught the kid in the movie. This is not limited to the functionality of the product offering but equally applicable to the purchasing process. A case study ($300 millions button) describe a common user behavior in e-commerce system. By removing the “Register” button to enable users make purchases has a profound effect that boosted the annual revenue by $300 millions.
Focus on the benefits - Nick as a veteran sales man taught the kid when customers are asking for bargains, focus on the benefit to make them feel the product worth every penny. This is generally a good strategy but it should be used carefully. When we sell something to customers we have to focus on benefits customer can perceive and deem has a certain value to them. It’s not good enough if a product can do a lot of things that the targeted users don’t care about. An experienced sales person reads the customers and focus on the benefits that will bring them.
Go extra yard - Customers are hard to impress. If we do things according to their expectation than they will be satisfied customers, not impressed customers. They will certainly come back but they are not likely to go around and tell people how impressed they are. Try to find out what they want and go extra yard to impress them has an unimaginable effect.
Know your product and your customers - Some companies put together a sales team after a product finishes development. What they look for inside the sales team is usually their connections but rather their expertise to the product. They optimistically hope these sales people with little knowledge with the product can complete sales. Does it work? Yes, for a short term but eventually when the sales team run out of people to sell to the revenue stream slumps like a busted hot air balloon. A smart manger should always find people with genuine interest to the product so they are not meeting their quota, but also providing useful feedback for the product.

In the end of the say we all have something to learn from a yard sale :)

(Image from http://collider.com/)

Don't run with a limp leg

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:17:00 +0800

Today I want to talk about a good practice that every entrepreneur should embrace full heartily because it may save countless of businesses from failure.

A lot of times we are too eager to solve the problems we setup the company for so we can’t spend any moments waiting. We are driven by a burning passion also a firm believe that the market is drooling for our product to release. Therefore, instead of asking around we quickly mobilize the team to build the product/feature. Because a adventurous start is better than a perfect delay, right?

Yes! But that will kill your company

The idea of MVP(Minimum Viable Product) tells us to take smaller steps when comes in developing something for the market. Before getting the developers to start real implementation try to make some prototypes and use them as mediums for communication between sales, channel partners, users and other stakeholders. Often time a feature or a product will receive a much better design clarity as a result . If the market doesn’t like it, make sure you also understand the reason and change the focus immediately. Maybe it’s time to pivot. This technique ensures your company is spending valuable resources on a better ROI. Sometimes it’s very tempting to pursue an imaginary market needs but this human weakness has generated quite a number of victims. Another commonly used technique to decide if a feature should be implemented is to place not-working links (like a straw man) on the production version. When users clicks on them we show them an apology page and ask them if this feature could be useful to them. Through observing the clicks from analytics and survey we can get a much better understanding if the feature should be built.

Do you have other techniques? Please share with us.

(Image from Michael, CC License)

Be Respectful, Be Punctual

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:38:00 +0800

We will all one day become an important person and have lots of meetings all over our schedule. They can be meetings with investors, strategic partners or co-workers. Regardless what’s the purpose of a meeting as a serious professional we should aim to be punctual. And I have a secret to share.

Leave early to have some buffer. You can slow down if the situation doesn’t require it. But you should never take the risk of not having it.

So true, this concept also works for project management. If your organization adopts agile development methodology there should be a 20% buffer between each sprint. Trust me they will be used later.

Being late or delaying a project is one of the cardinal sins in professional life because it leaves an impression that you are not serious player. Soon enough no one will take you seriously anymore.

(Image from Cornell University Library, No Copyright Restrictions)

This video was taken when Facebook was only 1.5 years old....

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:59:42 +0800

This video was taken when Facebook was only 1.5 years old. It’s substantial evidence that a successful startup doesn’t come from a great idea that will sweep the world, but rather a slow progress. Do one thing at once and do it well.

Strategy and tactic

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:48:27 +0800

Few days ago an article sparked a small debate inside my friends. The article told a story of a startup company specialized in customized chocolate received a huge order that’s way beyond their producing capacity. The buyer is a large European luxury retailer and intend to give the chocolate away in their high-end stores in major U.S cities. This opportunity represents both revenue and good reference but they still declined it because of the risks. Apart from the risk factors I believe there are many other things worth considering when a business owner is making decisions:

The outcome of the decision must contribute to the long term strategy - There are occasions when a decision will help the current situation but violate the long term strategy. If this happens too many times a business owner should review the strategy and communicate the change to all stakeholders.
The tactics to fulfill a strategy needs to be effective - When in doubt you need to sit down and think harder to make sure there is no jumping logic in between. Always ask a few people when making decisions because no one is gonna have all the answers, including you as a business owner.
Have a vision - The first thing my previous CEO did when he came on board was to make a mission statement. A mission statement can be pretty cheesy but in time it helps the company to stay focused when developing strategies. And it works equally well for boosting the morale within the company. But beware not to make your mission statement be too vague or doing too much, it will lose its effectiveness.
Ask the team about what they think - The dilemma described in the article provides a perfect chance to understand what the team think about the company and its culture. This helps business owner to instill the team with the right culture.
Have a strategy and vision - If your company doesn’t have a vision and an array of strategies to move things forward. Make sure you have one, but don’t decide everything by yourself. Talk to the team first and start from there.

You must be wondering why I didn’t mention a lot about tactics but did so with strategy abundantly. This is because I believe having a good tactic is less of a problem for a company. But lacking a long term strategy to fulfill a vision is more common in a lot of startups. There are also extreme situations which a company faces a survival problem. A business owner must make a tough call to forget about the vision and make the decision that will keep the company afloat. But later the business owner has to reflect on himself why he brought the company into this situation in the first place.

Startup Weekend Taipei

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:48:00 +0800

Couple of days ago Startup Weekend held an event in Taipei. There were around 150 attendees and 20ish judges and speakers. The event lasted 54 hours and each elected team are expected to come up a 5 mins presentation as a deliverable to attract VC interests. I will skip the rules procedures and jump to my suggestions:

Inspire the team - Most of the team members never seen each other before. How to inspire the team to a single goal is extremely important to this event. Try to figure out everyone’s skill set and put them on the right job will not only bring motivation, but also higher quality results.
Reality check - Often times an idea can stray away from the reality and the team can waste countless hour into developing a product the market doesn’t want without noticing it. Try to appoint someone to constantly ask users if the team is on the right direction. Don’t let the product development get ahead of actual demand.
Make snap decisions - Hey, I’m not saying this apply to most of your life. But when you only have 54 hours a snap decision is much better than no decision. Getting the team in a prolonged debate is dangerous for any businesses. You always have a chance to rectify an incorrect decision but the right leadership should always keep things moving forward.
Make no assumptions - Assumptions isn’t cool at all and VCs don’t take them kindly I learnt. For every claim you make there should be a solid supporting evidence. You need to have extensive research and survey skills to do this right. There are couple of tools out there like SurveyMonkey. It allows up to 10 questions for trail. Use it wisely.
Relax and be cool - After all one of the biggest point for this event is to know more people in the industry. That’s why being a cool person is absolutely critical. You have 54 hours to leave a good impression to other attendees and it also works in the opposite way. Work hard on your project but don’t be an anal. And especially don’t be a slacker because that will leave people an impression too. Get off you butt and start talking to people. If you gonna start your own company you need to learn how to be sociable.

Even I thought I know a lot things about building a startup this event still blew my mind. There are just so many things to learn from other talented. I strongly recommended any early entrepreneurs to join the local Startup Weekend. You won’t walk away empty handed.

Do you have what it takes to build a startup?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:33:00 +0800

Many might think this is too hard because not a whole lot of people are doing this. While the rest might think it’s easy because they see all sorts of technology offerings in the market and it doesn’t seem not too hard to build them. My take on this it really depends but the first thing is to get your mindset in the right position. I suggest:

Be active and reach out. You might be a rookie but people will admire your spirit if you try hard.
Be communicative. An awesome idea is worthless if you can’t convince anyone into believing it. Try to pitch the idea to people close to you, like friends and familiy members. If they can’t grasp the concept you need to try harder.
Always question yourself. Sometime an idea can spawn spontaneously without any supporting evidence. Do yourself a favor, before dive into the implementation you should spend some time to make sure it’s what the market wants.
Be patient. Nothing is free and available around the corner when there are people involved. Frustration can easily set in if things do not happen as expected. Rinse and restart but never give up.
Be self-disciplined. The timeline can potentially drag on forever if you are in total control of what to do and deliverable. Try to think as you are your own employee and ask more from yourself.
Relax and have fun. Regardless if you succeed in the end. If you tried hard in the process you won’t walk away empty-handed.

These are couple of things off the top of my head. Welcome to contribute your experiences.

Naming your startup

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:06:00 +0800

Naming your startup:

Although this article has many suggestions for naming a startup but one is not forced to follow all of them, chose whatever works for your business is more important.