It&#8217;s easy to overthink what other’s might say or think on the other end of a screen during meetings, and this is especially true in a <a href="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/what-its-like-working-at-hov/">fully remote job</a>. We can&#8217;t gauge other peoples body language because we aren&#8217;t physically with them and words often get mistranslated.
<img class="size-medium wp-image-2335 alignleft" src="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4-300x300.png" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4-300x300.png 300w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4-150x150.png 150w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4-768x768.png 768w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4-231x231.png 231w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-4.png 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
We tend to be defensive, jump to conclusions and judge a person by whatever they say before asking for clarifications. Heartbeat quickens and our mind begins to race—first in search of an explanation for the assault and then for a retort to rationalize whatever actions are in question.
So, now I’m trying to see <a href="https://www.betterup.com/blog/how-to-give-and-receive-constructive-criticism-at-work">criticism</a> as an opportunity to learn. Even if it’s not delivered in the best way or if it’s unfounded. Instead, maybe we should view it in the sense that it gives us a window to understand other people’s perspective.
Perhaps we should give the benefit of the doubt — it’s also difficult to give feedback to another person. So maybe the person giving you feedback is nervous or may not express their thoughts perfectly.
It&#8217;s time to start training my crooked mind to not go into fight or flight mode, and I encourage you to do the same! Be optimistic. Be open to stuff you hadn’t thought about earlier, be open to better ideas. And say thanks to the person giving feedback as well. Perhaps, it wasn’t easy for them either.
<img class="size-medium wp-image-2336 aligncenter" src="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5-300x300.png" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5-300x300.png 300w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5-150x150.png 150w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5-768x768.png 768w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5-231x231.png 231w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Untitled-5.png 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Listen to understand—not to respond. This is the best way to take positives out of criticisms.

Receiving criticism

Speak to anyone startup founder, and they will answer this customer is some shape or form.
Dig a little deeper on the vague description they may have provided, and that is when the wheels start to come apart.
Entrepreneurs fall prey to confirmation bias very easily.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one&#8217;s prior beliefs or values.
When we finally stumbled onto a profitable target segment with Identifi for the first time, my primary customer was multinational companies based in APAC with a large distributed salesforce. Scratching the surface one can find many cracks on a seemingly decent answer.
First off, who was my primary customer and what was the job they wanted to be done? Initially, I thought we were selling HR software; thus, the buyer ultimately is going to be the head of HR. (Wrong answer, I discovered the hard way).
I fell into the confirmation bias trap, and I did not speak with enough companies to truly validate our hypothesis.
<a href="https://twitter.com/paulg/status/898476047263518720?s=20" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Paul Graham says that talking to your customers</a> is the most frequent he gives to founders that are just starting.
For the rebuild that we are currently doing with the product, we have a specific type of company and person we are targeting. We are still working through this, and as we collect more data, I will update this.
Our current customer is the founder of a remote-distributed company with over 50 employees. The primary problem they are currently facing is providing visibility as to who does what at the company. The secondary problem is sending out broadcasts about company plans and significant events through a medium that encourages discussion and reactions. (Slack/WhatsApp is the default medium due to the noise and lack of threaded responses in WhatsApp make it challenging to use).
I do not think we have spoken with enough companies and intend to ramp that up this month before our beta release.
One of my favourite question sets is from <a href="https://davidcummings.org/2015/11/25/6-customer-development-questions/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">David Cummings</a>, who has a treasure trove of SaaS related posts for founders.
If you are looking to build or are building a business, my advice is to do the uncomfortable act of going and speaking to your customer.
Don&#8217;t fall prey to making assumptions about needs. You may think this will slow you down; however, getting to the top doesn&#8217;t make a difference if you are climbing the wrong wall.
<h2>Resources</h2>
<a href="https://davidcummings.org/2015/11/25/6-customer-development-questions/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">6 Customer Development Questions</a>
This list of questions is straightforward and helps you get the prospect to talk about how they are going to do things today.
<a href="https://fs.blog/2017/05/confirmation-bias/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Confirmation Bias And the Power of Disconfirming Evidence</a>
Farnam Street is one of my must-read blogs. This post dives deep into the working of our confirmation biases.
<a href="https://kromatic.com/blog/how-asking-works-a-crash-course-in-customer-discovery-questions/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">How Asking Works: A Crash Course in Customer Discovery Questions</a>
I like how this blog breaks down the process of talking to customers with an example that helps you follow along.
<a href="https://www.strategyandsourdough.com/episodes/research" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Customer Research Tips &amp; Techniques</a>
A friend and hosts this podcast and is doing a great job in covering important topics on marketing. They go into detail on getting into the right mindset before getting started with your research.

Who is your customer?

<a href="https://automattic.com">Automattic</a> is one of the largest fully distributed companies in the world. It is most well known for WordPress.com and the contributions to the opensource platform WordPress. They currently have over 1300 employees and are growing quickly.
In March of 2020, I heard Matt talk about the future of work on Sam Harris’ podcast which I would highly recommend. (Links in resources)
The part which stayed with me was his break down on the five levels of autonomous organizations and how organizations progress through the levels.
<img class=" wp-image-2319 aligncenter" src="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/conceptual-framework-300x161.jpg" alt="" width="592" height="317" srcset="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/conceptual-framework-300x161.jpg 300w, https://wordpress.highoutput.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/conceptual-framework.jpg 580w" sizes="(max-width: 592px) 100vw, 592px" />
I will quickly go through the levels which you can read about in more detail from Matt’s own blog where he goes through them in detail.
Level 1 &#8211; Can’t be away from the office for more than a few days
At this level, the company has no infrastructure in place to promote distributed work. The assumption is that all work needs to be done in the office. Constraints like VPN or in-person discussions with no online presence make it nearly impossible to work outside of the office.
Level 2 &#8211; Basic tools in place without any supporting structure
Most companies find themselves at this point where they have tools like Zoom/Slack/Teams. However, everything needs people online at the same time. Very little effort has been put to support any asynchronous work.
Level 3 &#8211; Investing in processes and tools to promote async work
At this level, companies have begun to start putting in processes that support async processes. A proper wiki/documentation culture is in place and people have the option to not be in every meeting and still know what happened. Companies such as HOV find themselves with a foot in this level and another one in Level 4.
Level 4 &#8211; Completely embracing async processes as the norm
Companies at this level can hire from anywhere in the world. If the company has invested heavily in handoff processes you could theoretically be working 24 hours a day with people from all around the world. There is deep trust with the people you work with and complete transparency as to who is responsible for what.
Level 5 &#8211; Nirvana
In Matt’s framework, this is the aspirational level. Where your company would consistently perform better than <a href="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/culture-and-consumer-insights/">any in-person</a> organization could. Where everyone at the company would have a rich life at and outside work.
I was reflecting on where <a href="https://www.identifi.com">Identifi</a> sits in the framework today. It is squarely in taking organizations from Level 2 and 3 and getting them to Level 4 ideally or a high level 3.
In the episodes linked below Matt talks about a lot of custom software that they run internally to have enabled them to scale to Level 4. I believe that is where the opportunity for Identifi is and the product we are building addresses many of the pain points companies will have with the progression.
Resources
<a href="https://ma.tt/2020/04/five-levels-of-autonomy/">📝 Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy</a>
Matt’s original article outlining his framework. It goes into more detail on each of the levels and provides some good links to resources for you to read up more on.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJSf2Clx6qY">📹 The New Future Of Work (with Matt Mullenweg)- Sam Harris Podcast</a>
This is a far-ranging discussion on the future of work. Matt has a front-row seat to this new world and talks about many trends he sees coming.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49HSZ4JQlHY&amp;feature=youtu.be">📹 Matt Mullenweg: Collaboration Is Key | The Knowledge Project</a>
Shane Parish recently had Matt on his podcast and it was a great discussion where he speaks about the levels as well as the drawbacks of distributed work. I particularly enjoyed this discussion and there are some great takeaways that I will document later.

The Five Levels of Autonomous Organizations

One of the books I enjoyed recently reading was <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53138083-working-backwards" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Working Backwards</a>. Both authors had a long tenure at Amazon and worked closely with Jeff Bezos in building the company that we see today. There are several strategies within the book that are very helpful for growing companies.
One of my favourite strategies in the book was an internal communication strategy called the PR/FAQ. Given that Amazon has &#8216;customer first&#8217; as the core ethos, this document made a lot of sense. Whenever a team would pitch a new idea, they would need to write a press release and internal FAQ to all major stakeholders.
The PR document is structured using the following outline:
<ol>
<li>Headline: The first sentence of the press release describes the product from a customer angle with simple words.</li>
<li>Sub-headline: The next part describes the customer for the product and the benefits they would accrue from it.</li>
<li>Summary: Next, we let the audience know when it will be launching and a few more detail about the product and its benefits.</li>
<li>Problem: We go deeper into the problem the product is solving and frame it from a customers point of view.</li>
<li>Solution: Finally, presenting our solution and going into some detail as to how our product solves the customer problem.</li>
<li>Quotes and Getting Started: Concluding the press release with a fictitious quote from someone on the team and providing a link stating how customers can get more information or buy.</li>
</ol>
The FAQ component is more for an internal company review. Questions that may have to do with the customer&#8217;s needs or market size, the economics of the proposed solution and any dependencies that may be present that may hinder the launch. Some sample questions are:
<ul>
<li>How many consumers have this need or problem?</li>
<li>How big is the need?</li>
<li>What are the per-unit economics of the device?</li>
<li>Are there any third-party technologies we are dependent on?</li>
</ul>
If you are looking to <a href="https://wordpress.highoutput.io/8-simple-steps-to-build-a-unicorn/">start</a> a new project/company, I would strongly recommend putting together a PR/FAQ and showing it to people. While on the surface, it looks simple, it challenges you in many ways.
<div>
<hr />
</div>
<h2>🧰 Resources</h2>
📚 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53138083-working-backwards" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon</a>
Working Backwards is an insider&#8217;s breakdown of Amazon&#8217;s approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time, top-level Amazon executives.

Strategy tool: PR/FAQ

One of the discussions we had today was about the sales strategy about selling. We discussed many important topics such as category leadership, positioning ourselves correctly and defining that ideal customer.
All of these are a current work in progress and as we roll out to customers in the future for whichever product, we will get more clarity as have crisp answers for all three of those topics is critical to the success of any business.
The most interesting point in the discussion was about the sort of culture that our ideal customer has within their company. During the discussion, I was reminded of an organizational culture design model by Edgar Schein. The model has three components:
<ol>
<li>Artifacts: These are the visible aspects of the business. Their logos, the office design and how people dress etc. Assuming if a company adopts an open office design and a casual dress code with them being creative would be a mistake in the majority of cases.</li>
<li>Values &amp; Beliefs: The next component is all about the words and beliefs that the company declares to be core to who they are. Many businesses have very articulated values on their websites, yet when you were to interact with them you would have a very different experience.</li>
<li>Basic Assumptions: The final component is the most important in the model. These include the behavioural traits of the people within the business. The unwritten rules that determine how things get done. If you have a value of providing on-time delivery and the norm at the business is to go home at 5 pm regardless of delivery timelines, we have a major disconnect.</li>
</ol>
I am sharing the above model as one of the values that we were discussing our prospective customers was ‘openness’. Many business owners will strongly defend that they have an open culture that fosters creativity and innovation. However, when you take a look at their <a href="https://identifi.substack.com/p/harnessing-conways-law" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">communication patterns</a> you will find something very different.
Armed with this insight when we run our customer interviews and work with beta customers it will be essential to map basic cultural assumptions when building an ideal customer persona. 
<div>
<hr />
</div>
<h2>🧰 Resources</h2>
📚 <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-sg/Organizational+Culture+and+Leadership%2C+5th+Edition-p-9781119212041" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Organizational Culture and Leadership</a>
Edgar Schein is one of the pioneers in the field of organizational culture design. This book breaks down the model above in much granular detail and gives you a good understanding of the inter-relationship of organizational culture dynamics and leadership. Great for anyone who wants to get an overview of the topic.
📺 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSbBxwxZilY" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Edgar Schein&#8217;s Culture Model</a>
If you are short on time and want to get a good idea about the model and a practical example of how to use it, this video is a good primer on the topic.
📺 <a href="https://www.saastr.com/how-to-scale-an-open-culture-atlassian/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">How To Scale an Open Culture</a>
The way Atlassian has scaled its business has been awesome to watch. Hopefully, once you have read the post above and understand Schein’s model, give this video a watch and listen to how the founder speaks about the three components seamlessly.

Culture and consumer insights

<blockquote>“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” Benjamin Franklin</blockquote>
It&#8217;s easy to spot people who are zooming through life without a plan. Every day is an assortment of scattered thoughts and actions that often leave them living life in a circular motion. There is movement, but it doesn&#8217;t account for much as they have very little to show for it.
This characteristic is not one of procrastination. Instead, it is a lack of clarity of thought and direction. 
When one doesn&#8217;t take the time to plan and visualize the path and is constantly making up stuff on the fly, they almost always get tackled by the well-prepared competitor.
Legendary sports coaches remind their teams to have those first couple of plays edged into their memory before the start of a game. Regardless of what happens, you follow a sequence you have practised.
Public speakers do the same with the opening and the closing of their speeches. It helps with getting things started on a solid footing. If you are leading people, this becomes critical.
When strong leaders do not have a plan, the people they are leading lose their level of confidence. The first sign of trouble finds people deserting the playing field, looking for safer pastures.
Use a plan to set the guard rails of where you would like to go. Start strong and have a clear idea of what you are setting out to achieve. The rest is improvisation and responding to the ever-changing conditions. 
The world desperately needs leaders who have the self-confidence and courage to chart the way forward.

Planning Ahead

I was speaking with a founder today who was entering the messy middle.
The part of the startup journey where the excitement of those initial honeymoon months start to collide with the realities of life and <a href="https://identifi.substack.com/p/inertia" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">inertia</a>. 
I remember the first time I experienced this feeling. It was after launching my first tech product, and the launch went well. We exceeded the number of initial users and thought it was only a matter of time until VC&#8217;s would coming rushing to our door.
Unfortunately, after that initial spurt, we got hit with churn issues, difficulty acquiring new customers, inability to attract the right team members, and every day seemed to bring a new problem.
The only thing that keeps you going at this point is the hope that you need to get over this initial bump, get that next big round of funding or land that enterprise customer and everything will be smooth sailing.
I have good news and bad news. Most people like the bad news first.
Bad News: Once you get over the initial bump, there will be another bigger one that you didn&#8217;t anticipate on the other side.
Good News: This reality is not to dissuade you from taking your shot. Instead, making peace with the fact that the struggle is part of the path you have selected. Entrepreneurs are born to solve problems and challenge the status quo. Bumps are part and parcel of this process. The days when the bumps/grind will be gone will be the day you would have lost interest in what you are working on.
Most people never make it through the messy middle. They get stuck along the way and <a href="https://identifi.substack.com/p/failure-and-doubt" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">lose the drive and hope</a> to take that next step.
The people who make it through the middle are those that:
<ol>
<li>Have a genuine interest in what they are building and care for the customers they are building for. Most people will say they care, but you can quickly tell how they react with the first sign of struggle and problems.</li>
<li>They have build a team of people around them who give them energy. The startup grind is a long and arduous journey. Having people who care as much as you do around makes a world of difference and gets you through the difficult times.</li>
<li>Have the humility to face the truth rather than hide their head in the sand hoping that the problems will go away. One can remain in denial for a very long time.</li>
</ol>
The grind is what gives the entrepreneurship path its allure. It is when you can do things that seem like fun for you but work for others; most of the time, you are onto something good. 
Remember, the easy path is the quickest way to get to a crowded place where there is very little to gain.

The startup grind

Everything you need to know about BitClout.
It started on a Saturday when I noticed several people on my Twitter network signing up for this service called BitClout. I had only read about it in passing and didn&#8217;t pay too much attention.
If someone were to go to <a href="http://www.bitclout.com/" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">www.bitclout.com</a>, you would see a cryptic message asking for a password. This block led me to find out <a href="https://bitclout.com/sign-up?password=825bbae8589b65720731d867f436471e18683c6a3192a20140105ee1733bb7cc&amp;stepNum=5" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">what that was and I ended signing up</a>. 
As someone who is relatively comfortable with crypto, this isn&#8217;t your regular sign up. You get a private key which is your password, and that&#8217;s it. If you ever forget your private key, then you can&#8217;t ever get your account back, which is why people are petrified of holding their crypto.
Once you get into the system, it is fairly familiar:
<div class="captioned-image-container">
<figure><a class="image-link image2 image2-860-1456" href="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0f7af86e-98bf-4d0a-8c16-9bb88d8c13cd_2496x1474.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0f7af86e-98bf-4d0a-8c16-9bb88d8c13cd_2496x1474.png" alt="" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0f7af86e-98bf-4d0a-8c16-9bb88d8c13cd_2496x1474.png&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:860,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1033899,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null}" /></a>Where it gets interesting is that you will notice a buy button next to everyone&#8217;s profile. This button is one of the core innovations around BitClout other than hosting their entire service on a public blockchain.
What you can do is support other participants on the network by buying their coin. Previously this has been very difficult to do. Patreon, BuymeaCoffee and Substack have all built fairly decent sized companies around this, but none of them has enabled the supporter to benefit from their early pledges. 
If I find a great content creator who is writing very well, I could subscribe to their substack. I would get access to private content that they will produce for a certain amount of time. Suppose this writer becomes very famous well I can call myself one of the early supporters.
In the world of BitClout, I would buy the creators coin. This coin is a liquid asset that will appreciate or depreciate based on the performance of the creator. As an early supporter, I now benefit as the coin appreciates as more people find out about the artist. 
BitClout gives me the availability to buy and sell the coin whenever I want. But there is a catch!
Since BitClout is less than a month old, there is no way for me to take my BitClout out of the system. This constraint is causing creator coins to inflate rapidly, and I have had a very profitable couple of days.
Sequoia and A16z are backing this project and some of the most prominent names in crypto. I bet that an off-ramp is on the cards. When it does come about, I expect to see a rapid descent in the price of a BitClout coin, which today stands at $150.
Regardless, I would recommend most people to check out the network and get comfortable moving around small amounts of Bitcoin and testing out the platform. This post in no way is investment advice as crypto is a highly speculative asset. 
This platform gives you a glimpse into the future where the YouCorps of the world will have traded market caps, and they will act as signals with whom you would transact and wouldn&#8217;t.
This decade continues to surprise!</figure>
</div>

Why BitClout is a big deal

The early build phases of a technology startup are exciting. We have spent time speaking to prospects, uncovered a segment we are building for and validated our solution with some rough prototypes.
In several of my early startups, I skipped all that to get into the building part. Rest assured almost all of them ended in failure other than the ones I got lucky with.
Our rebuild process is a little different from other early-stage startups where you just have 2- 3 people wearing multiple hats. Our team size is over to 10 people and includes specialists that give us the ability to go deeper faster. (This is also a big risk in the rebuild project and we may easily overbuild)
As the product owner/founder a critical decision to make is whether we choose to work in cycles or just use Kanban to ship features when ready. I don’t think there is a single right answer to this question. Listed below is what we have selected:
We are working in single week cycles
<ol>
<li>I chose a single week cycle versus the Kanban method as I believe it provides the whole team with structure and some synchronization given our size. If we were a smaller team I may have opted for Kanban.</li>
<li>A week cycle helps to bring urgency as well as reduce feature creep that can easily set in if one were to let cycles run longer. One doesn’t have time to ensure that every border-radius and shadow depth are optimal. (I have burned through many work cycles being far too critical on the design which I have learned to let go)</li>
<li>We are able to discover blindspots faster. Today in one of our early iOS builds I found a broken flow that the backend was able to rectify immediately. Left unchecked we let our assumptions build up and that almost always backfires.</li>
<li>We are running without any cooldown days/weeks. This drawback makes this cycle unsustainable over the long run. I plan to switch out of this cycle once the beta has shipped by the end of the Q1. Otherwise, you will be running the team way too hot and it will end up in burnout or lower quality output.</li>
<li>Friday afternoons are internal demo days and most importantly a sense of progress for the entire team to see that they are working towards a set goal that is becoming a reality week after week.</li>
</ol>
I have found far more success with the above cadence. While this may be working for our team your mileage may vary. Speak to your team members, figure out what is important to you and at what stage you are in the validation and build cycle.
There are no perfect work cycles. There are several resources below that could be of some assistance in helping you find a cadence that works for you.
<div>
<hr />
</div>
<h2>🧰 Resources</h2>
📚 <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42611483-escaping-the-build-trap">Escaping the Build Trap</a>
This books talks about cycles as well as not benchmarking your success only with output. Building features for the sake of building, rather than validating demand almost always ends in failure.
📚 <a href="https://basecamp.com/shapeup">Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters</a>
The famous 6-week cycle broken down by Ryan Singer at Basecamp. This short read goes into detail on how they effectively use this cycle length at the company. It is a great read and one I would recommend everyone who is building products.

Early Optimal Work Cycles

Today I was listening to an excellent episode on the Saastr podcast. Link to the podcast and some references are in the resources. Listed below are great insights from Auren Hoffman.
<ol>
<li>Don&#8217;t take the advice from people ten years older than you too seriously: I hadn&#8217;t heard this one before. He reasons that life is changing rapidly; most advice that worked ten years ago is not as relevant today. Early in my career, I made a mistake to rely too heavily on others&#8217; advice rather than blazing my path.</li>
<li>Avoid good opportunities: This was my favourite takeaway from the episode. I have learned this again the hard way. Good options are where one doesn&#8217;t have an asymmetric upside. This advice also applies to people who have already attained some level of success. Good opportunities take the same work as great opportunities. Wait for those to knock on your day. Say no very often.</li>
<li>Delegate things you are good at: Common advice is to delegate those tasks we are not good at doing. Instead, we should delegate the things we are good as that gives us greater amounts of leverage and time to building our skills in the areas where we are weaker.</li>
<li>Smartest people think ten days and 30 years out: Think for the short term and optimize for the long term and not the midterm. High performers pass the marshmallow test with ease. They can delay immediate gratification; however, they are making decisions to optimize for optionality. By removing the mid-term outlook and thinking with the longest of horizons, we can make far better decisions.</li>
<li>Easier to decide which companies to invest in and which companies to start: To make money as an investor, you need to be both unconventional and right. To create a business, you need to have a third component to have the required unique advantage and desire to build it.</li>
<li>VC&#8217;s almost always lie when they pass on your deal: They may say your addressable market is not big enough or that your team is not right. It usually isn&#8217;t the case.</li>
<li>In startups doing trumps planning: Planning is critical at the earliest stages of your company. Referencing airforce pilots who use the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act). &#8220;Being wrong will hurt you a bit but being slow will kill you.&#8221; Jeff Bezos. The need for speed is essential for all startup operators. There is always a balance that needs to be managed between 1% improvements and step functions.</li>
<li>True 10xer&#8217;s take more time to manage than high performers: They take longer to hire, they require more of your time as a leader, but at the end of the day they bring back the value to the company in spades. Discovering future opportunities before you can even see them. Take the time to nurture them if you have been lucky enough to have hired them. Keep on giving them more responsibilities.</li>
</ol>
He spends the second half of the episode answering audience questions which are worth a listen as well.
<h2>Resources</h2>
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/saastr-413-how-to-build-unicorn-in-8-simple-steps-auren/id1089973241?i=1000503741486">SaaStr 413: How to Build a Unicorn in 8 Simple Steps with Auren Hoffman, CEO @ SafeGraph</a>
Join four-time Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman as he breaks down how businesses can become the right model for explosive growth, emulate their strategy, and join the path to Unicorn potential in eight simple, hand-made steps.
<a href="https://www.wealest.com/articles/what-is-an-asymmetric-opportunity">What&#8217;s an Asymmetric Opportunity?</a>
Great write-up referencing many great resources for people who want to understand the concept of asymmetric opportunities in detail.
<a href="https://fs.blog/2018/01/john-boyd-ooda-loop/">OODA LOOP: What You Can Learn from Fighter Pilots About Making Fast and Accurate Decisions</a>
Another great gem from Farnam Street breaking down the OODA Loop in much greater detail for those interested.

8 Simple Steps to Build a Unicorn

The start of my entrepreneurship journey is almost cliche. It started at university in sunny Singapore. 



I still remember in vivid detail how my cofounder and I had started our design and printing business. It was a few months into starting the company that we got our first big break. Designing and printing a large batch of name cards for a well-known company.



We were excited and had grandiose plans of what our business would become. Once we realized what we had agreed to, that is when the panic set in!



Instead of playing it safe, we decided to take most of the job&#8217;s proceeds, buy a large-scale printer, and keep it in our dorm room. I remember the day we received the printer. The delivery person was very confused when he ended up at a student hostel. We assured him it was right and managed to convince him to drop it off in our dorm.



The excitement was palpable. In our head, this printer was what we needed to do to build a big business. I remember reading through a ton of manuals to figure it out. After many hours we finally got everything assembled, plugged the printer into the socket and turned it on.



Immediately the entire circuit for the floor went off with the load. That was when all of our excitement turned into horror in a flash.



I still laugh when I think about that day. While the business had an exciting beginning, it didn&#8217;t account too much, and we soon shut it down.



Every entrepreneur will have a genesis story. The moment when they decided to take a risk and put themselves out there. 



Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs do not have the story of their dorm room startup, becoming a company like Dell.



After building startups for nearly two decades, I believe what it comes down to is whether an entrepreneur and startup can make it through the journey of relevance. 



Listed below are the five steps I believe are needed if the entrepreneur and startup have a chance of completing the journey. 



Step 1: The founder&#8217;s ability to become an exceptional producer



The best founders are not ordinary people. The words ordinary or average are their kryptonite. One cannot do 10,000 hours of being a founder and hope to have mastered everything about starting successful businesses. Exceptional founders are like producers who can bring together a variety of people together and create something phenomenal. 



The pattern I have noticed is that the best founders start their journey by sampling many areas of expertise and hone in on one or two of them. These skills range from attracting top talent, creating buzz, designing products that delight users, writing amazing copy, understanding how finance works or being great at sales.



In the end, they can make things happen on their own. 



Everyone believes that they can do this. However, when it comes to making those difficult trade-offs in life: sacrificing personal relationships, your health, all your resources and committing to something when everyone else tells you that you are wasting time. Very few people can keep up with these pressures.



If you are not ready to do the above and spend every waking moment becoming exceptional at one or two competencies that will give you an edge, you are better off not going further on this journey. 



Step 2: Finding an opportunity where you have an edge and are on trend



The internet has democratized the ability for anyone to create a startup. As a result, anyone can pay Shopify $29/month and is now an entrepreneur. The best founders combine the exceptional skills that give them an edge with an opportunity that is part of a rising trend. 



In 2005 a pair of founders started a service called Odeo which was going to bring podcasting mainstream. While they had the expertise in building businesses around content, the trend wasn&#8217;t there. They would have had to stick it out till 2018-2020 to have a relevant business.



Luckily in 2006, Odeo pivoted into a service called Twitter, building on the rising trend of providing short status updates found on Facebook. By pivoting their business, they could use their expertise to create one of the most significant companies of our times. 



The longer the journey to relevance becomes, the greater the amount of sacrifice needed. Don&#8217;t get stuck on an idea if there isn&#8217;t a meta trend that is pulling you forward. 



Step 3: The distance between your customers and yourself



I have met exceptional entrepreneurs who have found trends where they have an edge, yet failed to convert them into viable businesses. The reason is that the distance between them and the customer was too wide.



When one cannot easily reach their prospective customers, I wonder how well the founder truly knows the customer segment. These days everyone is talking about how remote work is the future, and I meet several founders wanting to build products for this segment. Yet, very few of them have worked remotely or had founders and company owners within their network who run remote companies. 



You can bridge this gap by picking up the phone and calling up these companies. However, when you don&#8217;t truly understand who the customer is and have difficulty reaching out to them, it massively slows down the process.



When the process slows, you can&#8217;t iterate fast enough. When you can&#8217;t iterate fast enough, you start to make incorrect assumptions far more regularly. Which almost always leads to failure. 



Step 4: Time to value



A much smaller set of founders reach this stage. However, this is the stage where your producer skills are put to the test. 



We live in a world filled with new products and services that are vying for our time and attention. The bar for a new product and services has never been higher. Which means that the longer it takes for your product/service to deliver value to the customer, the more likely they are to churn or not buy from you. 



The best founders understand this metric intuitively. The shorter the time to value, the greater the probability that the product will have a higher chance of going viral or achieving word of mouth growth. 



The skills needed to reduce this metric are very high, which is why the first step was the founder to prove themselves as an exceptional producer. These are the people who can see the whole picture and work on how to bring that value sooner to the customer that they deeply understand. 



Step 5: Building momentum 



Successful startups and founders who become relevant understand the importance of building and keeping momentum. 



If you have been fortunate enough to make it through step four and have a compelling product/service with a low time to value, the next step is to find a sequence of events that if repeated enough times will propel you to the next stage. 



I meet many founders who have built decent businesses yet struggle to become relevant. It&#8217;s like they are stuck in quicksand. Always on the hunt for that one magical channel to solve all of their growth problems. 



What I have learned in building businesses is that the founder has to be the force of nature that goes through the brick walls to get the momentum going in the beginning. 



Once you have built significant velocity in a niche, you need to construct a strategy behind what levers you need to invest in, which will increase your speed and elevate you towards becoming relevant!



&#8211;



On a long enough time horizon with unwavering persistence, I believe most people can make it through the journey of relevance. 



We have all read stories of the struggling founder who suddenly hit it big overnight and became a worldwide celebrity. More often than not, the founder was making the same mistakes and hoping for a different result. 



Getting all five of the pieces above in a row is very challenging. On the surface, it might sound straightforward. Most entrepreneurs who have been through the cycles many times will tell you stories of juggling an almost insurmountable set of tasks at any one time.



When luck is on your side, and you get them all in a row, that is when the founder and the startup become relevant. 



This article is one that I wish I had read when I was starting my journey of entrepreneurship. I hope that it can help someone out there who is either starting or stuck on the journey.



Wishing all of you who embark on this journey the very best. I’ll be sharing information like this in the HOV <a href="https://www.hov.co/newsletter">Newsletter</a> as well, be sure to sign up!



*This article was originally published by <a href="https://propakistani.pk/perspective/founders-guide-journey-to-relevance/">ProPakistani</a>.