The GleepLog

Long Term Planning in Startups

We interviewed a job candidate recently.  He was just a kid, really. 2 years out of college and spent most of that at “big blue”.

He asked us what our company would be like in 5 years. I laughed. 

I told him we only had the roughest ideas of what our system would look like in 5 weeks. We have firmer ideas after our next spring planning session. This seems to surprise him quite a bit.

You see, he had listed “Agile” on his CV but admitted his team at IBM didn’t use it.  That got me thinking.

5 year plans

5 year plans only make sense at big companies. Why? Because they’re so slow and unwieldy it takes them 5 years to do anything useful.  Why should a company like that embrace an agile methodology?

They can’t iterate quickly, changing their plans as they go.  They can’t experiment to find the best solution.  They’ve got a 5 year plan and a billion dollars of CapEx depending on it!  

Innovation

That’s why so many new ideas come out of small companies and startups.   They take chances on things and find new ways to make things work. They fail. all. the time.  

Rebels

I sat in a meeting room at [REDACTED LOGISTICS EMPIRE] once.  It was a meeting Sanjay had set up so that a bunch of us startup gangsters could meet executive suit wearing types from said empire and talk about adoption of technologies, priorities etc.

One of them told us he was considered a rebel because he was willing to adopt technology that was ONLY 5 years old.  I almost fell out of my chair. None of us had even been in business for 5 years.

Don’t make plans

If you have to make plans because you just have to make plans then make very general plans. Put them in your backlog and then get back to work on short term, specific goals.

Leaving the Peach

The short version: I’m leaving StarPound and moving back to Orlando with my family.  

Atlanta has been my home base since I moved here in 2003 after the small company / startup I worked for mostly imploded.  I’ve thought about moving back a lot because I still have family and friends there.  Recently an opportunity came up to make that happen and after giving it a lot of thought I decided to go for it.

It wasn’t easy.  I’ve lived here a long time now and I have a wife and kids now.  I thought with the housing market like it is that we’d be stuck forever but we found someone that wants to rent our house from us.  

In the end, making a big decision like this is pretty scary but having an entrepreneurial streak in me, I’m ok with taking risks.  There are some times when you have to fight your way out of a rut and really stretch yourself.  This is one of those times.  The easy, safe answer would be to keep my head down and stick to the status quo but that’s just not my style.

The technology / startup community in Atlanta is great and has grown tremendously since I came here.  I plan on staying in contact with all my new friends and acquaintances.

I talked to a number of companies in Atlanta that offered me positions as tech cofounder, architect, engineer etc and many of them were very tempting.  In the end, the position in Orlando may turn out to be only a temporary diversion.

Like Tom Petty said, “The future is wide open”.

Thanks Atlanta, Keep in Touch!

Lesson Learned… #aws

So it turns out this:

elb-configure-healthcheck prod-lb —healthy-threshold 2 —interval 30 —target “http:80/index.php” —timeout 15 —unhealthy-threshold 5

and this:

        RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https

        RewriteRule !/status https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R]

are not compatible…

Resolutions are for Suckers.

So once a year you decide you’re going to lose weight, get in shape and finally learn to speak Italian? to hell with that.

Here’s what you need to do.  Write down some things you NEED to get done.  READ that list to yourself EVERY DAY.  If anything on that list is still on that list in a year then YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

Pursue. Attack. Destroy. Repeat.

Here is your homework: Do something dangerous that makes you uncomfortable.  No, do something that scares you.  Check back in with me when that’s done. 

[Update: I need to learn to follow my own advice.]

Just Do Something.

To all the non-believers:

unlike what you’ve been taught by your television, it is necessary to alter the world in order to have lived in it.  If you fail to change the course of history at all then no action you ever took meant anything.  if that doesn’t bother you then you are already dead.

if you don’t know the shape or size of the dent you will make in the universe then hurl yourself at it with all your might and do the most destructive, violent, creative thing you can think of.

if you make a big enough impression in the universe, others will see it and want to make their own.  if you fail to make any impression, continue hurling yourself into it until you succeed. 

if you hit it hard enough you might just get lucky and blow the whole thing up.

in all cases the most common mode of failure it INACTION. when presented with choices, choosing naught is immediate failure.  

1. if you risk nothing you die anyway.
2. if you take the easiest path you die anyway.
3. if you live in fear you’re better of dead.

choose a course and attack it with FEROCITY.  pursue it with every sinew of strength you can muster. let no obstacle deter you.  nothing else matters.

do something that makes you hate yourself for not doing it better.  enough being comfortable. 

JUST DO SOMETHING. 

CAN’T WAIT.

Inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJshw2Axsqc

Recruiting begins with Selling Yourself

For a long time it’s been status quo for companies to have a “jobs” or “careers” page on their website.  

Sometimes it’s something hideous like a link to some outsourced portal that will suck the life out of you the moment you try to search for an opening in one of their 117 global offices (Looking at you, multinational defense contractors…).

At small companies, though, it’s usually just a list of a few job openings that may or may not still be open depending on how busy the person with access to the content has been lately.

Startups

And then there is this new wave of catchy, compelling and soulful attempts to sell the visitor on the corporate culture.  This movement isn’t new but it’s become ever more fervent and creative.  

Take, for example, the infamous Hipster campaign to give a year supply of PBR as a referral bonus. 

Good Examples

When I took a job at CoffeeCup Software my interest was due in no small measure to their creativity and humor.  It was clear from the “About Us” page that they took pride in their little company and enjoyed working together.  Once I started there I realized quickly that their culture was real and I quickly assimilated.

Similarly, the Twilio jobs page has evolved and now shows their own strong company culture and unique brand of personality and humor.  

Having worked there I can tell you that their strong company culture is one of their biggest success factors. More about that in another post maybe…

Another good example I saw today is the Wordpress Engine team.  Lots of emphasis on fitting in and being at home.  

They’re clearly looking for the right person instead of just a warm body.  

To do that, they lay out their corporate culture before you and let you judge for yourself how you fit it.  

What about your company?

What does your jobs page say about your company? Can visitors to your site get any sense of your company culture?  Do you get serious applications from serious talent or crazy random CV that make little or no sense?