These from Adriaan Theron, a fellow Product Management type who is now working as a recruiter.
- "Building a product is easy, building a company is hard". I couldn't agree more. As hard as it is to build a successful product (and it is hard), building a company means putting all that other stuff in place so that the product can be successful. And it means creating the organization and culture that will allow future products to be built and launched. Lots of companies are started in order to take someone's great idea and turn it into a winning product or service. Some (perhaps most) of those companies fail to figure out how to turn that great product or service idea into something that everyone wants, is available everywhere, works first time every time, and so on. Others succeed once, but then stumble. There's a point where the company becomes more than Engineering and Marketing. Successful companies build a foundation by bringing people in who have already solved problems the emerging company is only beginning to see.
- "There are four D's to every product: Define, Design, Deliver, Deploy. Most companies focus on Defining and Designing, and neglect Delivering and Deploying." Anyone who has worked at a startup knows the craziness associated with getting the first product out the door; at times it feels like the clown act at the circus. Successful companies realize that the methods used to ship the first product won't scale, and put an emphasis on creating methods for delivery and deployment that are both repeatable and scalable. If your methods are repeatable you can bring in new people and train them to do the job... which means you can grow. If your methods are scalable, you can ship a hundred units with not much more work than it took to ship ten... which means you can be profitable.
Food for thought!
Comments