The Secret to Scaling Success as a Whiteboard Startup
Startups are constantly talking about building things that scale.
To prove my point; have you heard these questions before?
“Is that the right thing for the long run?”
“That feels like short term gain for long term pain?”
“Are you suuuure this will scale?”
It’s not that they’re bad questions.
But they can be dangerous.
You can spend so much time thinking about how to be successful tomorrow that you forget what’s required to be successful today.
Sometimes the best thing is to do what DOESN’T scale.
Paul Graham talks about this in his famous Y Combinator startup blog.
Airbnb is a classic example of this technique. Marketplaces are so hard to get rolling that you should expect to take heroic measures at first. In Airbnb's case, these consisted of going door to door in New York, recruiting new users and helping existing ones improve their listings. When I remember the Airbnbs during YC, I picture them with rolly bags, because when they showed up for tuesday dinners they'd always just flown back from somewhere.
Airbnb now seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, but early on it was so fragile that about 30 days of going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between success and failure.
Funny story: A buddy of mine has a business where he organizes parties and events for the uber wealthy. Practically speaking, he won’t do an event unless the budget starts at $1M.
Woof.
Well a year ago, he did a birthday party for the founder of a unicorn startup that you may have heard of, and he was telling me that they spent $14 buying custom ice cubes with his initials on them.
That’s not $14 for the drink.
…that’s $14 for the ice cube.
And to think, the success that led to $14 ice cubes all began as a #whiteboardstartup.
For those of you who haven’t heard that term before or as a quick refresher for the rest of us…
Dan Steinman, Leadr Board Member and Chief Customer Officer from Gainsight, says one of the most common mistakes startups make when they've come from bigger companies is that they tend to overcomplicate and over-engineer things too early.
The last thing you should be doing is overcomplicating systems, tools, etc, as your greatest competitive advantage at this stage is your speed and agility. It's going to have to change soon, so for as long as you can, embrace being a "Whiteboard Startup,” where just about everything can be done on a whiteboard and spreadsheets, so you can quickly pivot and adjust whenever needed.
That, to me, is focusing on #thingsthatdontscale.
I feel this tension constantly.
It feels easy to fall into the trap to create scalable systems and processes for everything; when in reality, some things can wait.
So startups, here are my questions for you:
Where are you overcomplicating things?
What needs more ‘today attention’ instead of ‘tomorrow attention.’
Do you want to try a $14 icecube?
Okay, maybe not that last one…
But for as long as we can… let's focus on things that don’t scale and embrace being a whiteboard startup.
Thanks for reading.
MT