Ever tried fitting a square peg into a round hole? That’s what designing mobile apps feels like without considering layouts for iOS apps. You want it to work on every device, but it doesn’t. Many others have encountered the same difficulty.

I’ve been there, too – grappling with app layouts that look perfect on one screen size but distort or shrink awkwardly on another. It can be frustrating and time-consuming!

In this article, you’ll uncover the key to a website design, forming adaptable designs that adjust easily across various gadgets and display sizes. We will explore how to set up your development environment correctly, design optimized layouts, implement responsive components effectively, and, more importantly – troubleshoot common issues you might face.

Building Responsive Layouts: The Step-by-Step Guide

TechAhead builds all web apps and mobile applications, including those with responsive layouts for iOS apps. Our process involves several key steps:

• Determining User Needs: We start by understanding what our clients want their users to achieve with the application.
• Crafting Wireframes: Next comes creating wireframes, which serve as blueprints for the final design.
• Selecting Suitable Elements: We choose appropriate elements, like buttons, text fields, etc., based on device specifications.
• Making Use Of AutoLayout: To ensure responsiveness, we use AutoLayout – a tool Apple provides that automatically adjusts interface elements based on changes in the screen size.
• Testing: We conduct rigorous testing to ensure the app’s layout performs well across different devices and orientations.

In this era of mobile-first design strategies, recognizing the importance of responsive layouts is essential. With a user-friendly interface that adapts seamlessly to various screens and orientations, your iOS app can deliver an enhanced user experience, leading to higher engagement rates.

Highlighting the Importance of Responsiveness

In this digital age, having a responsive layout for your iOS apps is no longer an option but a necessity. With the rapid increase in mobile usage, ensuring that your app delivers an optimal experience across all devices and sizes of the screen is paramount.

The Rise of Mobile Usage

A recent report by Statista revealed over 6 billion smartphone users worldwide. This number is projected to reach 7.33 billion this year. Furthermore, DataReportal’s Global Digital Overview shows people spend over 40% of their internet time on mobile devices.

User Expectations and Experience

Users today expect seamless navigation and interaction with applications regardless of their device. A study conducted by Google Think Insights found that if an app or website does not satisfy users’ expectations, they are likely to switch to another one immediately.

The Impact on Business Success

A well-designed and responsive website design layout can significantly impact business success factors such as customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and search engine rankings. According to research from Clutch Co, businesses with optimized mobile websites tripled their chances of increasing their customer base up to 5 times compared with those who don’t have one.

At TechAhead, we understand the importance of building responsive layouts for iOS apps. We specialize in developing web and mobile applications that are visually appealing and use the latest responsive design principles by providing a seamless user experience across all devices.

Ensuring a Smooth User Experience Across Multiple Devices

Creating an app that functions seamlessly across multiple devices is crucial in mobile application development. This is especially true for iOS mobile apps, where users expect high-quality performance and a smooth user experience regardless of screen size or model.

Understanding Responsive Layouts

The first step towards ensuring this seamless functionality lies in understanding responsive layouts. A responsive layout adjusts its design based on the screen size and orientation to provide optimal viewing and interaction for optimal user experience. It allows your iOS app to look great on everything from smaller iPhone SE screens to larger iPad Pro displays without additional coding.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Responsive Layouts for iOS Apps

To create a responsive layout for your iOS app, follow these steps:

• Determine Your Breakpoints: You’ll need to decide at what points your design will change based on different-sized screens.
• Create Flexible Grids: Your grids should be able to resize themselves depending on the viewport width.
• Use Auto Layout: This tool provided by Apple helps you define rules (constraints) about how views and UI elements relate to each other regarding positioning and sizing.
• Prioritize Content: Last but not least, ensure that critical content remains prominent no matter what device it’s viewed on.

TechAhead has extensive experience building all types of web apps and mobile applications, including those with responsive layouts. We understand the importance of providing a smooth, user-friendly experience across multiple devices and are committed to helping you achieve this goal.

1. Create Wireframes & Mockups

Once you understand your users’ needs, start creating wireframes or mockups of the application using tools like Sketch or Adobe XD. These visual hierarchy guides represent the skeletal framework of your app and serve as a blueprint for its design and functionality.

2. Select The Right UI Elements

Your choice of responsive UI elements can significantly impact how users perceive and use your app. For example, buttons should be large enough for easy tapping; text must be legible even on smaller devices and screens; images must scale well across different devices and font sizes without losing quality.

3. Leverage Auto Layout Constraints

Auto Layout constraints, offered by Apple’s development environment Xcode, allow developers to create flexible interfaces that respond appropriately regardless of screen size or orientation changes.

Remember: Building responsive layouts isn’t just about making things look good—it’s also about ensuring usability across all devices.

Setting Up the Development Environment

Creating a responsive layout for iOS apps starts with setting up your development environment. You need to get everything in place before you can start building, just like a chef prepares their kitchen before cooking.

To commence, download Xcode onto your Mac. Apple’s integrated development environment (IDE) lets you build and design apps for all devices. Here is the link to download Xcode.

1. Xcode Installation Steps

You’ll find this process similar to downloading any other software:

• Go to the Apple App Store on your Mac and search for ‘Xcode’, then click Get once it appears.
• Type ‘Xcode’ into the search bar and click Get once located.
• Wait as your computer downloads and installs Xcode automatically.

The installation may take some time because of its large size. So, while waiting, grab a coffee or do something productive.

2. Coding Languages: Swift & Objective-C

Once installed, familiarize yourself with Swift or Objective-C– these are programming languages used by TechAhead when designing app layouts. Swift, particularly, has gained popularity due to its simplicity and power over recent years.

3. Create Your First Project

To ensure everything works perfectly fine after setup, create an initial project in XCode, which will give you hands-on experience in actual coding practice. Click File > New > Project from the menu options within the XCode interface, then select the appropriate template based on needs.

In essence, creating a development environment for your iOS app is akin to building the foundation of a house. It would be best to have it solid so that everything you build on top will hold up. With Xcode installed, understanding Swift or Objective-C under your belt, and an initial project underway – you’re ready to dive into designing responsive layouts.

Designing the Layout

When it comes to iOS app development, creating a responsive layout is vital. It’s about more than just aesthetics; you’re shaping the user experience. At TechAhead, we’ve gained knowledge over the years on how significant this procedure is.

A well-designed layout can adapt to user feedback from your target audience on different devices and screen sizes without compromising functionality or appearance.

Determining Your Audience’s Preferred Devices

The first step is understanding your target audience and their preferred device types. To start designing a practical layout for your iOS application, it helps to know what devices your target audience prefers. You need data on which iPhones or iPads they use most frequently so that you can optimize accordingly.

The Apple Developer site offers valuable resources on device usage statistics and design guidelines for each model.

2. Selecting Appropriate Responsive Design Elements

Moving forward with these insights allows us to select appropriate design elements – buttons, images, text fields – based on the average screen size of our target audience’s preferred devices. This approach ensures consistency across various screens while enhancing usability.

We have found tools like Sketch and Adobe XD incredibly useful when selecting other elements, allowing designers to visualize their work in real-time on multiple screen layouts simultaneously (Adobe XD).

3. Ensuring Seamless User Experience Across Devices

• You’ll want a clear hierarchy of information: prioritizing critical functions by placing them at the top of your layout.
• Navigation should be intuitive and simple. Aim to reduce the number of taps needed to access key features.
• Always design with thumb-friendly zones in mind – these are areas easily reached while holding a device single-handedly.

These elements ensure your app works smoothly on different devices – key for keeping users engaged. For more insights, check out the studies by Nielsen Norman Group.

Implementing Responsive Components

Creating an iOS app that functions optimally across all gadgets is essential. One key element to this goal is the implementation of responsive components. What does it imply for an element to be ‘adaptable’?

A responsive component adapts its size and layout according to the screen size and orientation of the device. This flexibility gives your app an edge, ensuring a consistent user experience across different iPhone models.

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines recommend prioritizing adaptability in design. The company provides Xcode’s Auto Layout toolset, which lets you create flexible UIs for multiple screens.

1. Making Use of Constraints

The core principle behind implementing responsiveness lies within constraints – rules defining how responsive elements relate to each other and their parent view.

To start, specify horizontal and vertical constraints for each interface object. This helps determine their position relative to others or edges of the super-view.

2. Leveraging Stack Views

You can further streamline your design process using stack views (UIStackView). They automatically manage layout based on set parameters like spacing, alignment, and distribution – making it easier than ever.

3. Tailoring Designs with Size Classes

Beyond just adjusting dimensions, achieving truly adaptive layouts often needs variations in design depending on the screen size or orientation.

This is where font size and classes come into play. These abstract measurements allow designers to categorize devices based on font sizes and display characteristics, helping them tweak designs accordingly.

For example, iPads are smaller devices usually assigned Regular and font sizes and size widths, while iPhones have Compact widths.

You can use size classes to alter the number of elements visible on the screen or change their arrangement based on device type. Remember, creating an app that feels right at home across all devices is more than just scaling; it’s about giving a tailored, user-friendly experience.

Testing Design Layouts

As we create our iOS app layouts, testing becomes a vital step. This ensures that your design works well across different devices and screen sizes.

To guarantee that users receive an ideal experience on their device, examining your design across all the elements and sizes of the screen is critical. This includes iPhones of all models and iPad variants.

Think about it this way: You wouldn’t buy a new pair of shoes without trying them on first because they might not fit right or be comfortable. It’s the same with designing for multiple screens; you have to make sure everything works perfectly.

1. Selecting Devices for Testing

You don’t need every Apple device under the sun, but try testing your responsive layout using representative models from small (iPhone SE), medium (iPhone 12 Pro) to large devices (iPad Pro). These should cover most user scenarios and catch any major issues.

2. Finding Issues Through Testing

Different problems can surface when you start testing your designs across varying devices – overlapping elements, font size too small, or big buttons are just some examples. Like how professional chefs taste their dishes before serving them up – designers must do similar tests with their mobile apps.

Xcode offers excellent debugging tools such as ‘View UI Hierarchies’, which lets us examine each layer within our user interface closely, helping us find where things may have gone wrong during implementation.

• ‘Slow Animations’: By slowing down animations, developers can better understand the transitions and interactions between elements.
• ‘Color Blended Layers’: This tool helps identify layers that are being overdrawn, which can affect performance. It colors these areas red to highlight potential issues.

Optimizing Performance

Your iOS app’s responsive layout must perform smoothly, irrespective of the device or the user-friendly-sized screen. The performance optimization journey begins with the efficient use of resources.

1. Effective Use of Resources

The key to optimized performance lies in using your resources effectively. It’s like running a finely tuned machine; each part should function most efficiently. This means understanding how different components interact and optimizing their interactions for speed and efficiency.

Avoid unnecessary computations by caching results where possible. Caching is akin to jotting down a recipe instead of trying to remember it every time you cook – it saves time and effort.

2. Image Optimization

Apple’s guidelines on image optimization suggest we must aim for the right balance between image quality and file size. Imagine stuffing a king-sized comforter into a small washing machine – not practical. Similarly, large images can slow down your app considerably.

You can reduce image sizes without compromising quality using various online tools like TinyPNG.

3. Coding Practices

Clean coding practices go far in improving an application’s performance, too. Code clutter slows down apps just like traffic congestion slows us down during rush hour commutes.

• Ruthlessly eliminate dead code (unused variables/functions).
• Leverage lazy loading techniques similar to ordering pizza when you start feeling hungry – get what you need precisely when you need it.
• Make sure to use synchronous and asynchronous calls judiciously. It’s like deciding whether to call a friend (synchronous) or send them a text (asynchronous).

4. Testing Performance

No optimization strategy is complete without testing its efficacy. Apple’s Instruments tool allows you to monitor your app’s real-time performance, helping identify bottlenecks.

Optimization improves an app’s speed and ensures its performance remains consistent despite changes. It also ensures the app stays speedy, even when adding new features, squashing bugs, or updating the latest iOS versions.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Creating responsive layouts for iOS apps is not without its challenges. Sometimes, even the most meticulously designed layout can encounter issues when viewed on a different device or a different size screen.

You can confidently address any design challenges with the right tools and understanding. Let’s delve into some practical strategies that TechAhead employs to fix typical hiccups with your website designs.

1. Flickering UI Elements

If elements in your app flicker when transitioning between different states or views, it might indicate a synchronization issue between various layers of the app’s User Interface (UI). One way to solve this problem is using CAMetalLayer, which provides high-performance rendering capabilities and minimizes graphical glitches.

2. Inconsistent Layout Across Devices

Sometimes, an app may look perfect on one device but completely disarrayed on another. This usually stems from hard-coding dimensions instead of employing relative sizing techniques like Auto Layout. Apple’s official documentation about Auto Layout is an excellent resource if you need help understanding how to implement dynamic sizing methods effectively within your application.

3. Poor Performance On Older Devices

No matter how beautiful an app looks, users will abandon it faster than a sinking ship if it doesn’t perform well across all devices – especially older ones. Test your app on different hardware configurations to ensure smooth performance across multiple generations of iPhones and iPads. Tools like XCode can simulate older devices and help identify performance bottlenecks.

4. Misaligned Touch Targets

Another common issue is touch targets not aligning correctly with the screen size, making the app difficult or frustrating. Again, Auto Layout comes to the rescue by allowing you to define constraints for interactive elements relative to other views, ensuring a consistent and optimal user experience regardless of device size.

FAQs- Layouts for Ios Apps:

How do I get different app layouts on my iPhone?

You can use Apple’s native tools like SwiftUI or third-party apps to customize your iPhone layout.

Can you change the layout of apps on iPhone?

iOS 14 and above lets you alter your home screen using App Library and Widgets for a unique look.

How do I organize my iPhone apps aesthetically?

Group similar apps together to make your iPhone more visually appealing, leverage color coding, or apply themed icons with Shortcuts.

How to structure an iOS app?

Create a solid structure by planning the navigation flow first. Use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern as a starting point, then refine it based on needs.

Contact TechAhead today for all your web and mobile app development.

Inner Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Thank you!

Featured Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Thank you!

The post Building Responsive Layouts for iOS Apps: A Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on ReadWrite.

Having a strong online presence has become almost essential for small businesses in the modern world.

As such, high-quality and attractive website designs are now more sought after than ever. From proposal websites to e-commerce shops, customers expect nothing less than professional web services that meet their individual requirements and preferences.

If you’re looking to launch your own website design business, there are specific steps you will need to take in order to promote growth and attract clients.

The focus of this outline is to provide an overview of the journey from starting up a single operation run by you as the sole proprietor right through to expanding the scope of your services in line with changing trends across industries on an international level.

Defining Your Niche and Target Audience

In order to create a successful website design business, it’s important to first define your niche and target audience. This involves taking a deep dive into the types of websites you want to specialize in (e.g., e-commerce sites, portfolio collections, blogs).

Conducting industry and market research is also an important step for gaining insight into what your target audience is looking for; this could include gathering data on their preferred style and functionality needs or tracking trends within the area of website design.

Once you have all the necessary information at hand, you can start shaping your services according to specific client requirements or marketing goals—positioning yourself not just as a designer but rather as an invaluable partner able to truly make an impact.

Developing a Solid Business Plan

Source

When optimizing for content targeted with certain keywords, it is essential to ensure the website provides value and caters specifically to its target audience. Quality is key when creating content in order for search engines to recognize and reward optimized pages.

Developing keyword-optimized content should be balanced with staying within the reader’s attention devices and addressing the search query from a neutral perspective (avoid forcing superfluous keywords).

Relevant articles offer readers insight into targeted topics without going off track which can help build credibility and trust in your brand.

Additionally, maintaining natural keyword density helps to periodically get popping throughout the article body without disrupting engagement or overstuffing the post leading to optimization failures & possible blacklist warnings from Google.

Building an Impressive Portfolio

Creating an impressive portfolio is one of the most important steps when starting a website design business. It shows clients who you are and what kind of work you do and gives them insight into how it would be to work with you.

Designing sample websites to showcase your skills will allow potential customers to see not only the finished product but also your development process. Furthermore, making sure that different projects demonstrate versatility in order to illustrate many types of services that can be achieved will draw even more attention from users.

Additionally, case studies should provide an accurate description of how problems were solved and give credit where it’s due by letting customers know there was teamwork involved, too, if needed.

Setting Up Your Online Presence

Source

Setting up your online presence is an important step when launching a website design enterprise. First, you need to register a memorable domain name for your business and design a sleek website that reflects your brand’s identity.

It should describe the services & scope of work being offered as well as provide links to showcase portfolios, case studies, testimonials & most importantly, contact information.

Social media platforms offer great opportunities for businesses to expand their reach and visibility online, and good quality content marketing increases traffic towards websites, setting them ahead in the competition.

You might even consider hiring a local SEO agency that would strategize effective SEO campaigns proven to deliver winning outcomes.

Crafting Effective Marketing Strategies

With an online presence being increasingly important for businesses, crafting effective marketing strategies is essential for a successful website design business.

Using social media platforms to showcase work and engage with potential customers, SEO techniques to increase visibility, networking within the industry, and collaborating with other services can help drive engagement and attract new clients.

Strategic advertising on platforms like Google Ads as well as other digital campaigns can draw in even larger numbers of leads while promotions including discounts or referral programs will further boost interest. Quality customer service married with persuasive yet personal messaging consistently delivered across channels will build brand loyalty over time.

But be aware: organic marketing takes years as doing so requires that you build more than just a website, but an actual brand.

Offering Exceptional Customer Service

Great customer service is key to a successful web design business. You should establish clear communication channels from the outset, and provide clients with realistic project timelines and expectations.

Put yourself in the client’s shoes—make sure they have an enjoyable experience working with you every step of the way. Where possible, go the extra mile by exceeding their expectations to gain positive reviews and referrals which can help build overall credibility for your business.

At the end of it all, take the time to gather feedback from both satisfied and dissatisfied customers about improvements that could be made. With exceptional customer service as well as creative skills, you can turn a website design enterprise into a thriving endeavor.

Scaling and Growing Your Business

Scaling and growing a website design business requires careful planning and execution. As your client base expands, you may need to hire additional designers or staff to support the increased workload. Focus on expanding your service offerings too – while retaining current clients and staying up to date with evolving market trends in the industry.

It’s also important to continue honing skills and embracing new technologies along the way. Make sure that every aspect of customer engagement is satisfactory so they keep using your services again in the future. With solid foundations laid, it’s much easier for you to build a flourishing enterprise over time.

Conclusion

Launching a successful website design business requires hard work, careful planning, and the willingness to continuously innovate.

By clearly defining your niche and target audience, creating a solid business plan, showcasing your portfolio with pride, establishing an online presence, formulating effective marketing strategies supported by great customer service, and gathering feedback for valuable insights into what can be done better—you are well on your way to building your flourishing web design enterprise that stands out in today’s markets.

With dedication and passion for this creative profession, you can harness technical know-how and skills and become very successful as a web designer.

The post How to Launch a Website Design Business appeared first on ReadWrite.

Understanding Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) refers to a company that produces and supplies components, assemblies, or finished products to other companies, which then use these parts in the assembly or construction of their own products.

These OEM-produced components are typically designed and tailored according to the specifications provided by the client company. The term “OEM” may also imply that the final product carries the branding of the client company, not the manufacturer.

Key Takeaways

1. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are companies that produce components, parts, or subsystems used in the final assembly of another company’s end product. They play a crucial role in the supply chain for various industries, such as automotive and electronics.
2. OEMs often offer cost-effective solutions for companies needing to source specific components for their products. By working directly with an OEM, the purchasing company can reap the benefits of economies of scale, specialized production capabilities, and reduced lead times for procurement.
3. Establishing a partnership with an OEM can lead to long-term collaborations, as both parties work together to improve product quality, streamline production processes, and drive technological innovation. This can result in increased efficiency, reduced costs, and an overall competitive advantage for the businesses involved.

Featured Partner for Equipment Parts Learn More on EquipmentShares's website Shop OEM and Aftermarket Parts  Sorted by Manufacturer Fast Shipping and Customer Service

Why are Original Equipment Manufacturers Important?

The term Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) holds significant importance in the equipment and construction industry as it refers to companies that produce and supply original parts and components for a product.

These OEM companies are crucial for maintaining quality, performance, and compliance standards within the industry.

By collaborating with OEMs, businesses can ensure seamless integration, optimum functionality, and adherence to specific design and safety specifications for their equipment or projects.

Additionally, relying on OEM parts and components guarantees that products meet warranty requirements, reduce potential liabilities, and maintain a higher resale value. In essence, OEMs play a vital role in sustaining the integrity, reliability, and long-term success of various equipment and construction projects.

Featured Partner for Equipment Parts Learn More on EquipmentShares's website Shop OEM and Aftermarket Parts  Sorted by Manufacturer Fast Shipping and Customer Service

How Original Equipment Manufacturers Work

Original Equipment Manufacturers, commonly referred to as OEMs, serve a crucial role in various industries, including automotive, electronics, and construction equipment. Their primary purpose is to design, manufacture, and supply components, assemblies, or systems that are included within a finished product or system sold by other companies, known as value-added resellers or VARs.

As specialists, OEMs contribute to the performance, durability, and overall quality of the end products that people use on a daily basis. For instance, an OEM may provide essential components like engines, transmissions, or braking systems for automakers, exerting a significant influence on the reliability and efficiency of the vehicles they produce.

Collaboration with OEMs enables value-added resellers to focus on their core competencies, such as marketing, distribution, and after-sales support, while leveraging the expertise of OEMs in research, development, and manufacturing specific components. The partnership between OEMs and VARs drives the production of higher quality products and fosters continuous innovation in the market.

Additionally, OEM components are often sought after in the aftermarket for repairs and maintenance, as their use ensures that the replacement parts are as close to the original components as possible, maintaining the product’s performance standards. This interconnected relationship between OEMs and VARs demonstrates the critical purpose of original equipment manufacturers in today’s dynamic marketplace.

Featured Partner for Equipment Parts Learn More on EquipmentShares's website Shop OEM and Aftermarket Parts  Sorted by Manufacturer Fast Shipping and Customer Service

OEMs Versus ODMs

OEMs and ODMs are two distinct types of companies that play different roles in the manufacturing and supply chain process. Here are the key differences between them:

Product Development

OEMs are involved in the entire product development lifecycle. They conceive the idea, conduct market research, design the product, and manage the engineering and manufacturing processes. OEMs focus on creating unique products that differentiate them from their competitors.

On the other hand, ODMs are primarily focused on the manufacturing aspect of the product development cycle. They collaborate with OEMs to convert their specifications and requirements into a finished product. ODMs have expertise in manufacturing processes, cost optimization, and scalability.

See also: Have You Heard of These 6 Amazing Ways to Use AI In Construction

Branding and Marketing:

OEMs build and market products under their own brand names. They invest in marketing strategies, brand recognition, and customer loyalty. OEMs often have a direct relationship with customers and handle sales, distribution, and after-sales support.

Contrarily, ODMs do not market products under their own brand. Their role is to produce goods based on the specifications provided by the OEMs. ODMs typically remain anonymous to end-users and rely on the OEMs to handle branding, marketing, and customer support.

Intellectual Property (IP) Ownership:

As the creators and designers of the products, OEMs retain the intellectual property rights associated with their products. They have control over the design, patents, trademarks, and other IP elements related to their branded products.

Instead, ODMs operate based on the specifications provided by the OEMs. The intellectual property rights associated with the products generally belong to the OEMs, unless there are specific agreements stating otherwise.

Supply Chain Relationships:

OEMs usually have a network of suppliers and contractors to source components and parts required for their products. They manage the overall supply chain and coordinate with various vendors and manufacturers.

ODMs, on the other hand, often have established relationships with manufacturers and suppliers. They leverage these connections to procure raw materials and components necessary for the production process. ODMs focus on efficient production and assembly operations.

Featured Partner for Equipment Parts Learn More on EquipmentShares's website Shop OEM and Aftermarket Parts  Sorted by Manufacturer Fast Shipping and Customer Service

OEMS Versus Aftermarket Parts

OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and aftermarket parts refer to different types of products in the context of automotive and other industries. Here are the key differences between them:

Quality and Standards:

OEM parts are known for their high quality and reliability because they are manufactured according to the same standards as the original parts. They are designed to meet the specific requirements of the vehicle, ensuring optimal performance, fit, and safety.

The quality of aftermarket parts can vary significantly. While some aftermarket parts may meet or exceed OEM standards, others may be of lower quality. It’s important to research and choose reputable aftermarket brands to ensure the quality and compatibility of the parts.

Availability:

OEM parts are typically available through authorized dealerships or authorized parts distributors. They may also be available through online platforms or directly from the OEM. However, OEM parts are generally more expensive compared to aftermarket parts.

Aftermarket parts are widely available through various channels, including independent auto parts stores, online retailers, and local repair shops. The aftermarket industry offers a broad range of options, allowing consumers to choose from different brands, qualities, and price points.

Price:

OEM parts tend to be more expensive compared to aftermarket parts. This is partly due to the higher quality and the fact that they are produced by the original vehicle manufacturer. Additionally, OEM parts often come with warranties that can contribute to the higher cost.

Aftermarket parts are generally more affordable than OEM parts. The competitive nature of the aftermarket industry can lead to a wide range of pricing options, allowing consumers to choose parts that fit their budget.

Warranty:

OEM parts often come with a warranty provided by the vehicle manufacturer. These warranties usually cover defects in materials or workmanship and may vary in duration depending on the part. Using OEM parts during repairs or replacements may help maintain the original vehicle warranty.

Warranty coverage for aftermarket parts varies depending on the manufacturer and retailer. Some aftermarket brands offer warranties that are comparable to OEM warranties, while others may provide limited or no warranty coverage. It’s important to review the warranty terms and conditions before purchasing aftermarket parts.

Featured Partner for Equipment Parts Learn More on EquipmentShares's website Shop OEM and Aftermarket Parts  Sorted by Manufacturer Fast Shipping and Customer Service

Examples of OEMs

Takeuchi

Takeuchi is a Japanese company that specializes in the manufacturing of construction machinery, primarily compact excavators, compact track loaders, and compact wheel loaders. As an OEM, Takeuchi manufactures these construction machines and sells them to other companies or equipment dealers who then brand and market them under their own names.

Volvo

Volvo, a renowned name in the automobile sector, also has a construction equipment division called Volvo Construction Equipment. They manufacture road construction and maintenance equipment, as well as machinery used in construction, mining, and infrastructure projects. Their product range includes wheel loaders, excavators, articulated haulers, and compact equipment like skid steer loaders and compact excavators.

John Deere

Known primarily for its agricultural machinery, John Deere is also an Original Equipment Manufacturer in the construction equipment industry. They produce a wide range of equipment, such as backhoes, loaders, excavators, and motor graders, which are used in various sectors, including construction, agriculture, forestry, and landscaping. Their equipment is designed to provide high performance, durability, and ease of operation, catering to the needs of construction projects across the globe.

Featured Partner for Equipment Parts Learn More on EquipmentShares's website Shop OEM and Aftermarket Parts  Sorted by Manufacturer Fast Shipping and Customer Service

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ)

Q1: What does Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) mean?

A1: Original Equipment Manufacturer, commonly known as OEM, refers to a company that produces parts, components, or complete equipment that are used as essential components in the construction or assembly of another company’s final product.

Q2: What is the difference between OEM and aftermarket parts?

A2: OEM parts are produced by the original manufacturer of the equipment or vehicle and are typically designed to meet precise specifications. Aftermarket parts, on the other hand, are made by third-party manufacturers and may vary in quality, fit, and design.

Q3: Why choose OEM parts over aftermarket parts?

A: OEM parts tend to have a higher quality, as they are produced by the original manufacturer. They usually come with a warranty, ensure a perfect fit, and maintain the integrity of the equipment or vehicle. While aftermarket parts can be less expensive, they might not offer the same quality, reliability, or compatibility as OEM parts.

Q4: Are OEM parts more expensive than aftermarket parts?

A: Generally, OEM parts are more expensive than aftermarket parts due to their guaranteed quality, fit, and performance. However, the cost difference can vary depending on the specific part and brand.

Q5: Where can I purchase OEM parts for my equipment?

A: The most reliable source for purchasing OEM parts is through the equipment manufacturer or through an authorized dealer. This ensures you receive genuine parts with the expected quality and performance. Our partner EquipmentShare has a reliable online marketplace for getting the OEM parts you need to keep your equipment running.

Q6: Do OEM parts come with a warranty?

A: Most OEM parts come with a warranty provided by the manufacturer, which guarantees the part’s quality and performance for a certain period or specific conditions. The warranty’s length and coverage may vary depending on the manufacturer and the specific part.

Q7: How can I identify if a part is OEM or aftermarket?

A: OEM parts usually have the manufacturer’s logo or identification markings on the product’s packaging or the part itself. To ensure a part is genuine, purchase it from a reputable source, such as the original equipment manufacturer or an authorized dealer.

Q8: Can using aftermarket parts void my equipment’s warranty?

A: Using aftermarket parts can potentially void your equipment’s warranty, depending on the manufacturer’s warranty terms and conditions. It’s essential to review your equipment’s warranty information and consult with the manufacturer or an authorized dealer if unsure. This is almost always true. Typically, if an OEM part is not available, you may get special permission from a manufacturer to use an aftermarket part.

The post Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM): Meaning, Examples, and More appeared first on ReadWrite.

Cryptocurrency investments have gained significant popularity recently, attracting many investors seeking lucrative opportunities. However, with this increasing popularity comes inherent risks that must be effectively managed. 

This article will explore valuable tips to help investors mitigate risks and make informed decisions when venturing into crypto investments.

Conduct Thorough Research

To navigate the cryptocurrency market successfully, it is crucial to dedicate time and effort to comprehensive research. Begin by understanding different cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology. 

Investigate various cryptocurrencies’ market trends and historical performance, allowing you to assess their potential. It’s essential to do market research as cryptocurrencies are so popular, and for more profound research now, people can use the quantum ai app. 

Delve into the team behind a particular cryptocurrency project to evaluate their credibility and expertise. Consider regulatory frameworks and legal considerations that may impact your investments.

Diversify Your Portfolio

Diversification is a fundamental principle of investment risk management, and it applies equally to cryptocurrencies. By spreading your investments across different cryptocurrencies, you can mitigate the risk associated with individual assets. 

Diversifying within the crypto space involves including different types of crypto assets, such as coins, tokens, and stablecoins. This diversification strategy can help balance risk and potential returns, safeguarding your portfolio against significant losses.

Set Realistic Goals and Risk Tolerance

Before entering the crypto market, defining your investment objectives and time horizon is essential. Assess your personal risk tolerance and comfort level with volatility. Understanding these factors will help you align your investment strategy with your goals and risk appetite. 

Stay Informed and Updated

The cryptocurrency market is highly dynamic and influenced by various factors, including news and market developments. Stay informed by following reliable sources of information and analysis. Subscribe to newsletters, join online communities, and participate in forums to gain insights into the latest market trends and potential opportunities. 

Monitor regulatory changes, as they can significantly impact the cryptocurrency landscape.

Secure Your Investments

Ensuring the security of your crypto investments is paramount in the face of increasing cyber threats. Choose reputable and secure cryptocurrency exchanges to conduct your transactions. 

Implement strong security measures such as two-factor authentication and consider utilizing hardware wallets to store your digital assets offline. Be vigilant about phishing attempts and scams, and never disclose your private keys or sensitive information to unauthorized sources.

Use Stop Loss Orders and Take Profits

To protect your investments from sudden market downturns, consider setting up stop-loss orders. These orders automatically sell a cryptocurrency if it reaches a predetermined price, limiting potential losses. 

Similarly, take-profit orders can be utilized to secure profits by selling a cryptocurrency when it reaches a specific price target. Regularly review and adjust these orders based on market conditions to optimize your risk management strategy.

Avoid Emotional Decision-Making

The cryptocurrency market is notorious for its volatility, often leading to emotional highs and lows. It is crucial to be aware of the influence of emotions on investment decisions and develop a disciplined and rational approach to investing. Avoid making impulsive decisions based on short-term market fluctuations and focus on long-term trends and fundamental analysis.

Consider Long-Term Investing

While the allure of quick profits may be tempting, it is essential to recognize the volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market. Consider adopting a long-term investment strategy that focuses on fundamental analysis and the viability of the cryptocurrency project.

Seek Professional Advice if Needed

If you are unsure about navigating the complexities of cryptocurrency investments, it may be prudent to seek professional advice. Consult with financial advisors or experts in the field who deeply understand the crypto market. 

They can provide guidance tailored to your needs and help you make well-informed investment decisions. Alternatively, consider professional portfolio management services that specialize in cryptocurrency investments.

What are the fundamental risks in crypto investments: A must-know for beginners and experts

Engaging in cryptocurrency investments offers exciting opportunities, but it is equally crucial to understand and be aware of the fundamental risks associated with this volatile market. Both beginners and experts must recognize and assess these risks to make informed investment decisions. 

• Volatility and Market Fluctuations: One of the most prominent risks in crypto investments is the high volatility and rapid market fluctuations. Cryptocurrencies can experience significant price swings within short periods, making them susceptible to sudden market crashes. Beginners and experts alike must understand that substantial gains can be swiftly offset by substantial losses, requiring caution and careful risk management.

• Regulatory and Legal Uncertainty: Crypto investments are subject to an evolving regulatory landscape that varies across different jurisdictions. Governments and regulatory bodies worldwide are still defining their stance on cryptocurrencies, resulting in uncertainty and potential legal risks. Changes in regulations or the introduction of restrictive policies can impact the value and usability of cryptocurrencies. Both beginners and experts should stay updated with regulatory developments and ensure compliance to avoid legal complications.

• Cybersecurity and Hacking Risks: The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, while providing advantages, also exposes investors to cybersecurity risks. Hackers target exchanges, wallets, and other crypto-related platforms, aiming to steal digital assets. Beginners and experts must adopt robust security measures, such as using hardware wallets, two-factor authentication, and reputable platforms, to safeguard their investments. Neglecting cybersecurity practices can lead to devastating losses.

• Technology and Project Risks: Crypto investments often involve supporting specific blockchain projects or cryptocurrencies. However, not all projects are equally reliable or successful. Some projects may lack a solid foundation, competent teams, or disruptive technology, increasing the risk of failure or loss of investment. Beginners and experts must conduct thorough research, analyze project fundamentals, and evaluate the team’s credibility and technological advancements before committing funds to any project.

• Liquidity Risks: Liquidity risk refers to the ability to buy or sell cryptocurrencies quickly without significantly impacting their market price. Some lesser-known or illiquid cryptocurrencies may face challenges in finding buyers or sellers, leading to liquidity issues. Beginners and experts should be cautious when investing in low-cap or less popular cryptocurrencies, as exiting positions during market downturns can be difficult or result in substantial losses.

Conclusion

Managing risk in cryptocurrency investments is crucial for safeguarding your capital and maximizing returns. You can make informed investment decisions by conducting thorough research, diversifying your portfolio, setting realistic goals, and staying informed. 

Furthermore, prioritizing security, stopping loss and taking profit orders, and avoiding emotional decision-making will enhance your risk management strategy. Responsible and informed investing in the cryptocurrency market is key to long-term success and wealth accumulation.

The post Tips For Managing Risk In Crypto Investments appeared first on ReadWrite.

Cryptocurrency trading has gained immense popularity in recent years, with traders looking to capitalize on the volatile nature of digital assets. One crucial aspect of successful crypto trading is identifying potential entry and exit points. 

See also: Has Trading Cryptocurrencies Reaching an Tipping Point

By understanding when to enter a trade and when to exit it, traders can maximize their profits and minimize their losses. This article aims to provide a comprehensive guide on identifying these crucial points in crypto trading.

Understanding Entry Points

Entry points refer to the optimal moments to initiate a trade in a particular cryptocurrency. Several factors come into play when identifying entry points because of the ethereum code. This is an automated app that helps you understand all the hidden markets of cryptocurrencies and most safer for trading and collecting points. 

Technical analysis indicators, such as support and resistance levels, moving averages, and candlestick patterns, provide valuable insights into potential entry points. 

These indicators help traders gauge the strength and direction of price movements, enabling them to make informed decisions.

Technical Analysis Indicators for Entry Points

Support and resistance levels are key technical analysis tools that help identify entry points. Support levels represent price levels where demand is strong enough to prevent further price declines, while resistance levels indicate price levels where selling pressure increases.

Moving averages are another essential technical indicator for identifying entry points. Moving averages smooth out price data and provide a clearer picture of the underlying trend. Traders often use the crossover of different moving averages or the interaction between price and moving averages to determine entry points. 

For example, a golden cross, where a shorter-term moving average crosses above a longer-term moving average, is considered a bullish entry signal.

Fundamental Analysis for Entry Points

While technical analysis is valuable, fundamental analysis is equally important when identifying entry points. Staying informed about the latest news and project updates related to a cryptocurrency is crucial for making informed trading decisions. 

News can significantly impact the market, causing sudden price movements. Traders must evaluate the credibility and relevance of the information before considering it as a potential entry point.

Market Sentiment and Trend Analysis for Entry Points

Market sentiment plays a vital role in crypto trading. Traders often follow market trends and sentiment indicators to identify potential entry points. Identifying the prevailing trend, whether it’s an uptrend, downtrend, or sideways market, can help traders determine the appropriate entry strategy. 

Tools like trendlines, moving averages, and indicators like the Relative Strength Index (RSI) can assist in trend analysis.

Identifying Exit Points

Exit points refer to the opportune moments to close a trade and secure profits or minimize losses. When determining exit points, traders must consider risk management and set profit targets. 

Establishing realistic profit targets based on risk-reward ratios ensures traders maintain a disciplined approach to trading. Stop-loss and trailing stop orders are effective tools for managing exits, as they automatically trigger an exit when prices reach predefined levels.

Risks of misidentification or misunderstanding of potential entry and exit points 

Non-identifying or misunderstanding potential entry and exit points in crypto trading can expose traders to several risks. The ability to accurately determine when to enter or exit a trade is crucial for maximizing profits and minimizing losses. Here are some risks associated with not properly identifying or misunderstanding entry and exit points in crypto trading:

1. Missed opportunities: Failing to identify the right entry point can result in missed opportunities for profitable trades. Crypto markets are highly volatile, and prices can change rapidly. If traders enter a trade too late or at an unfavorable price, they may not fully capture the potential gains that could have been achieved with better timing.

1. Increased losses: On the other hand, misunderstanding exit points can lead to increased losses. If traders hold onto a losing position for too long, hoping for a reversal, they risk further price declines and potentially significant losses. Setting clear stop-loss orders and adhering to them is essential to limit potential losses and protect capital.

1. Emotional decision-making: Misunderstanding entry and exit points can lead to emotional decision-making, which is often driven by fear or greed. Emotional trading can result in impulsive actions, such as panic-selling during market downturns or FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) buying at the peak of a price rally. These actions are often detrimental to profitability and can lead to significant losses.

1. Lack of discipline: Properly identifying entry and exit points requires discipline and adherence to a trading strategy. Traders who lack discipline may be tempted to deviate from their predefined plan, leading to suboptimal decisions. Consistency and following a well-defined trading strategy can help mitigate the risks associated with emotional and undisciplined trading.

1. False signals and market noise: Crypto markets can be subject to significant price fluctuations, which can result in false signals and market noise. Traders who misunderstand potential entry and exit points may fall prey to these false signals, leading to poor trading decisions. It’s important to use multiple indicators and tools to confirm signals and avoid making trading decisions based on unreliable information.

1. Overtrading: Non-identifying or misunderstanding entry and exit points can also contribute to overtrading. Overtrading occurs when traders excessively buy and sell assets, often driven by impulsive decision-making. Frequent trading can lead to increased transaction costs, higher exposure to market volatility, and reduced overall profitability.

1. Lack of risk management: Traders who fail to identify suitable entry and exit points may also overlook risk management measures such as setting stop-loss orders, calculating position sizes based on risk tolerance, and implementing a diversified portfolio. This lack of risk management can expose traders to excessive losses and increased vulnerability to market fluctuations.

To mitigate these risks, it is important for crypto traders to develop a well-defined trading plan that includes clear entry and exit criteria, risk management strategies, and adherence to a disciplined approach. Implementing thorough research, technical analysis, and using reliable indicators can help improve the accuracy of identifying entry and exit points. 

Conclusion

Identifying potential entry and exit points is essential for successful crypto trading. Traders can identify entry points by utilizing technical analysis indicators, such as support and resistance levels, moving averages, and candlestick patterns. 

Fundamental analysis, including staying informed about news and project updates, and analyzing market sentiment and trends, further enhances the accuracy of entry and exit decisions. Implementing risk management strategies and setting profit targets are crucial for maintaining a disciplined approach to trading. 

With practice and refinement of entry and exit strategies, traders can increase their chances of success in the dynamic world of crypto trading.

The post Identifying Potential Entry And Exit Points In Crypto Trading appeared first on ReadWrite.

Every year, millions of employees across the United States complete job-related courses in compliance, soft skills, upselling, product training, and more. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, companies are reinvesting in training practices. This is especially prevalent among small businesses and large companies, who are investing on average 600 more dollars a year in training than midsized companies.

How Do You Properly Measure the Value of Corporate Learning in Your Business?

Measuring the return of investment, or ROI, of learning and development programs is incredibly important to making visible the impact of these programs. Revenue and profit are two classic indicators of a successful ROI.

Post-coronavirus, new metrics like employee confidence, increased sales, and employee engagement levels are feeling more indicative than pre-covid metrics such as training attendance, travel for learning and development, and webinar completion. One problem is that 92% of companies do not track learning and development ROI at all, which means that they are missing out on valuable information to the success of their company.

The basic formula for ROI is simple: learning and development benefit, minus the cost of learning and development, divided by the cost of learning and development multiplied by 100. Expenses of ROI include time (including corporate learning material development), effort (training time per employee) and money (including transportation, venue, catering, speakers, and equipment).

On average, having an in-person training session could end up costing upwards of $40,000. This number is also missing another major cost, which is the total a company may spend on an employee being trained. When basing on a salary of $15 an hour, a company could be spending over 1k based on 71 hours of training.

It may seem worth it for a company to outsource their training, but alternative and online models are not always as money saving as they would appear to be. These outsourced options still include costs for content libraries, course authoring tools, communication tools, third-party consultants, course marketing tools, and learning record stores.

While some of these options can be found from trusted sources such as LinkedIn and Mailchimp the investment may overall still be more than a company finds proportionally worth it.

Some are Worried About Outsourcing their Corporate Learning Programs Outside of the Organization

Unfortunately, when asked about their experiences many employees reported mixed outcomes. A quarter of employees surveyed said they forgot learning and development material immediately. 1% less said that the training wasn’t relevant to their position, and another 21% of employees said the material was out of date.

Out of the organizations surveyed, 35% of them felt they did not have access to the training content they would want for their employees. This cumulatively leads to major losses in learning and development– only 10% of money spent on traditional learning and development delivers real results. Ineffective training leads to a loss of $1.35 million per 1,000 employees.

Accurately measuring ROI is key to turning the major loss into new potential for the company. When tracking an increase in revenue, a direct correlation was found that for each $1 spend on L&D there was a $4.70 revenue increase. This correlation shows that the key to revenue increase is finding the best tool to use to measure your L&D ROI. Arist is a new company that describes itself as a “science-backed microlearning platform.” It is used by 15% of Fortune 500 companies.

Bringing it All Together

Arist attaches value to modern key performance indicators like confidence life and employee retention, which can be hard to quantify or consider in a traditional framework. Arist also costs less time, money, and energy.

Arist takes 195% less time than traditional modules, saves $96 annually per learner, and can alleviate 82% of the energy learning and development teams have to spend on course creation.

This boosts ROI and revenue along multiple avenues, and increases the adoption of learning by 90%. Arist is a very effective tool for companies attempting to clarify their ROI in learning and development. See more in the infographic below.

Published First on ValueWalk. Read Here.

Featured Image Credit: Pexels; Thank you!

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Growing attention has been paid in recent years to the need for sustainable and novel approaches to agriculture’s age-old problems. Hydro-tech farms are one approach that is gaining popularity as a means to this problem. These farms use state-of-the-art hydroponic systems and cutting-edge technology to grow their produce in a sustainable and effective manner. This article will go into hydro-tech farming, discussing its history, current state, and potential future applications and effects on the agricultural industry.

One way to cultivate plants without using soil is through hydro-tech farming, often known as hydroponics. In hydroponics, plants are grown in a water solution that is rich in nutrients. This gives the plants easy access to the minerals and elements they need to thrive. Tilling, a common farming activity that can cause soil erosion and nutrient loss, is unnecessary with this method. Hydroponic farms are able to increase crop yields while decreasing water and pesticide usage by providing plants with a controlled atmosphere and optimal conditions.

Hydro-tech farms are built to make the most efficient use of water and other resources. By cultivating plants in a greenhouse, growers are able to provide optimal conditions for plant growth by managing environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, and light intensity. Water is conserved with this precision farming method by being reused inside the system. In addition to being better for the environment, hydroponic systems use significantly less fertilizer and pesticide than conventional farms.

The capacity to grow crops throughout the year is a major benefit of hydro-tech farming. Seasonal shifts and inclement weather are common constraints on conventional farming. In contrast, hydroponic systems offer a climate-controlled setting in which crops can be grown in any season. This guarantees a year-round supply of fresh vegetables while decreasing the need for imports and the associated transportation costs.

When faced with the problem of scarce farmland, hydro-tech farming provides a novel answer. Hydroponic systems make efficient use of space by employing vertical farming methods. The vertical arrangement of plants makes it possible to grow several different types of food in the same space. This type of vertical integration not only improves crop yields but also decreases the amount of land required. This allows for the establishment of hydro-tech farms in urban areas, which brings agriculture closer to consumers and lessens the environmental impact of food delivery.

The widespread adoption of hydrotech farming has fundamentally altered the agricultural and food production systems. Hydroponics is having a profound effect in several fields, so let’s look at a few of them.

Urban farming has been made possible by the proliferation of hydrotech farms. As the world’s population and rate of urbanization rise, so does the demand for environmentally responsible methods of urban food production. Hydroponic systems are a great option since they can be set up in confined areas and under strict environmental control. Fresh, locally grown produce can be made available to city dwellers through the use of urban hydroponic farms, which can be incorporated into buildings, rooftops, or even converted industrial locations.

Growing plants in indoor facilities where environmental conditions are carefully monitored and regulated is known as controlled environment agriculture (CEA). Hydroponics is essential in CEA because it allows farmers to control the environmental factors that affect plant growth. In areas with harsh weather or scarce farmland, this technology can make a huge difference. Hydro-tech farms can guarantee constant crop yields and limit the chance of crop failures due to external influences by providing a controlled environment.

The term “vertical farming” describes a method of farming in which crops are stacked or layered vertically, typically in urban settings. Vertical farming relies heavily on hydroponics, a technology that allows plants to thrive without soil. Hydro-tech farms are an economical and space-saving solution because they maximize crop yields per square meter by making vertical use of available space. Farming can be brought closer to urban populations and the carbon footprint associated with food transportation can be reduced by incorporating vertical farms into high-rise buildings, refurbished warehouses, or purpose-built structures.

In comparison to conventional agricultural methods, hydroponics are more environmentally friendly and productive. Hydroponic systems use technology and innovation to allow for year-round food production, decreased resource use, and optimal use of available space. Hydro-tech farms have the potential to play an important role in the future of food security, environmental protection, and agricultural sustainability. A more robust and long-lasting food system is possible with the help of this technical development.

First reported on CBS News 

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In today’s fast-paced business environment, where having the right product is critical to success, Chief Product Officers (CPOs) have become increasingly essential. They play a crucial role in driving revenue growth and ensuring that a company’s product strategy is aligned with its overall business objectives. But how does that translate into revenue acceleration? In this blog post, we’ll explore who a CPO is and why they have become in such high demand, what to focus on to drive revenue, and how to take your organization to the next level and accelerate revenue growth like a CPO.

What is a Chief Product Officer?

Before we can talk about how CPOs drive revenue acceleration, let’s paint a picture of what a CPO is.

CPO, short for Chief Product Officer, is a senior executive in a company responsible for managing and developing the company’s product strategy and roadmap.

The CPO’s main responsibility is to oversee the entire product development process, from ideation and design to launch and post-launch maintenance. They work closely with other stakeholders, including engineering, marketing, and sales, customer success, and finance teams, to ensure that the product roadmap aligns with the company’s overall business goals.

Why Chief Product Officers are essential to driving revenue acceleration

As we mentioned, CPOs are responsible for developing and executing a company’s product strategy. This makes them crucial for revenue acceleration because they are the ones defining the product vision, prioritizing features, and ensuring that the product delivers value to customers. But beyond the roles and responsibilities, there are two overarching key areas that CPOs focus on to help drive revenue growth. These areas are achieving alignment and autonomy, and building company-wide visibility.

Enable Strategic Alignment and Team Autonomy

Why is this so crucial to driving revenue? To put it simply, a row boat cannot maximize its speed if one of the rowers is pushing their oar in even a slightly different direction. It’s the same with your company. If not everyone in the company is aligned on what to do, how can they push towards those goals effectively? Furthermore, if they aren’t given the freedom to push towards these goals, the metaphorical rowboat will remain stagnant.

That’s why a key part of a Chief Product Officer’s role is to create a strategy that ensures everyone on the product team understands the company’s overall business outcomes and OKRs and moreover, how their work contributes to those goals.

At the same time, they need to provide the team members with the autonomy to make decisions and take ownership of their work. As the people on the ground, they are most suited for day-to-day decisions so long as they have the context. Additionally, when teams are given autonomy, they are more likely to come up with creative solutions to problems which lead to innovation and growth. That brings us to visibility.

Enable Context and Visibility for Effective Company-wide Decisions

To truly provide alignment and autonomy, everybody needs clarity and visibility. Chief Product Officers need to establish a process that establishes clear goals, metrics, and reporting. This gives everyone a window into how other departments are working and how their own work fits into the bigger picture.

Additionally, when teams have visibility into other areas of the organization, they can identify opportunities for collaboration and can work more effectively with other teams to drive revenue.

Alignment, autonomy, and visibility are the foundational blocks to increasing efficiency, innovation, and collaboration within an organization. These elements will ultimately lead to increased growth and success for organizations.

6 Steps to Driving Revenue

Now we know the who (CPO) and the what (alignment, autonomy, and visibility) of driving revenue. Let’s finally dive into the how of it all.

We’ve broken it down into these 6 steps that CPOs follow to create visibility. Which ultimately builds a high-performing product machine to drive revenue.

1. Set OKRs (the right way)

To build a high-performing product team, you need to have goals for them to hit. CPOs typically use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) as the goal-setting framework to do-so.

There are a few tips and tricks to setting OKRs. When done right, good OKRs will be specific, measurable, and aligned with company business objectives. When done wrong, improperly set OKRs or too many or too few OKRs can lead to confusion, siloes, and lack of focus.

When using this framework, here are some simple tips to keep in mind:

• Align them with company objectives so everyone is working towards the same goal
• Focus on your outcomes over outputs
• Set challenging (but achievable) goals to push your team
• Create a feedback loop and review your OKRs

2. Build an Effective Operations process

CPOs rely on their operating process to ensure that their team is aligned, efficient, and delivering high-quality products. Here are some steps you can take to build an effective operating process:

• Define your product development process for how your team will develop and launch products. This process should be documented and shared, so everyone is clear on their roles and responsibilities.
• Establish clear communication channels between team members, including regular check-ins, progress reports, and team meetings. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals.
• Set up regular reviews and retrospectives to evaluate your team’s progress and identify areas for improvement. This will help you refine your operating process and ensure that your team is continuously improving.
• Create a culture of experimentation and learning. Encouraging your team to experiment and take risks, while also providing them with the support they need to learn from their mistakes will help your team stay innovative and responsive to changing customer needs.
• Implement a framework for decision-making that outlines how decisions will be made, who will make them, and what factors will be considered. That way, your team can make better decisions, faster.
• Ensure visibility into the product development process with a system and tooling for tracking progress and providing visibility into the product development process. This will help you identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals.

3. Adopt a Platform to Enable Source of Truth Data and Framework for Decision Making

Adopting a tool that is purpose-built for outcomes cuts out a lot of manual work in your operating system, enhancing your team’s productivity and allowing them to focus on what’s important.

A great CPO entrusts a great tool to keep organizations on track by helping teams manage product backlog, prioritize features, and track their progress up to OKRs.

In many ways, a tool shapes the way a company runs. Look for tools that:

• Connects strategy and delivery. This is a crucial feature that allows you to be outcome-focused.
• Provides flexibility so that your teams don’t need to change how they work to fit the tool (the tool should fit you!).
• Create visibility. The right tool will give you insights into how your whole company performs so you have a full picture.
• Empower teams with best practices and pre-set workflows so your team is working at its highest capacity.

Nothing is more expensive than “free” tools like spreadsheets for operations. While these tools can be useful for certain tasks, they are not a scalable solution as your company becomes more complex and will ultimately be more costly.

4. Upskill Your Teams

Your team plays a critical role in the success of your product. That’s why it is crucial to invest in both your customers and employees. By investing in your employees, you can increase productivity, stay up-to-date with industry trends, promote employee satisfaction, encourage innovation, and build a strong team culture. Providing your team with autonomy is a key component of this investment.

To maximize the potential of your team, consider allocating a research and development budget, providing access to relevant slack channels and communities for continuous learning, and offering training on methodologies, best practices, and other relevant skills. This will equip your team with the tools they need to work at their best and drive success for your product. By prioritizing employee development, you can create a work environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, and growth.

5. Measure Your Outcomes After Work is Done

Analyzing results is a crucial yet often overlooked step that drives companies to stay competitive. After setting up great OKRs and tracking the progress of deliverables, it’s important to perform a periodic look-back to identify areas for improvement, ensure accountability, demonstrate returns, and ultimately drive continuous improvement. This is especially critical for Chief Product Officers who play a key role in decision-making.

By analyzing results, you can ensure that decisions are always data-driven, enabling you to make informed choices that drive revenue. This step not only helps you identify areas for improvement but also allows you to celebrate successes and learn from mistakes. It’s important to prioritize accountability and transparency in this process to ensure that all team members are aligned toward the same goals.

Continuous improvement is key to maintaining a competitive edge, and it starts with analyzing results and making data-driven decisions. By leveraging data, you can identify trends, anticipate customer needs, and make adjustments that lead to improved performance and customer satisfaction.

6. Prioritization Guide Team Prioritization with Strategic Allocation

Sometimes, allocation can be more important than prioritization in running a business. Companies need to ensure that they are allocating resources to the most important areas rather than just focusing on prioritization. Doing so communicates:

• Where the company is headed
• The highest priorities
• What decisions need to be made based on the priorities

Prioritization alone does not ensure success. Allocation is what will help you optimize your resource utilization and ultimately balance your short and long-term goals. This is key to managing risk because you have the resources to address any unexpected challenges or opportunities.

In Summary

Chief Product Officers play a vital role in today’s business world as they are responsible for overseeing the entire product development process. The most successful CPOs prioritize creating alignment and autonomy while building company-wide visibility to drive success.

To achieve this, CPOs can leverage proven strategies such as setting clear product vision and strategy, establishing effective communication channels, and fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. These steps not only promote alignment and autonomy but also enhance company-wide visibility, enabling stakeholders to stay informed and engaged.

The success of a CPO in executing these strategies can significantly contribute to a company’s revenue acceleration and ensure that its product strategy aligns with overall business objectives. By creating a shared vision and fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, CPOs can drive the development of products that meet customer needs, exceed expectations, and drive business growth.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Roman Ska; Pexels; Thank you!

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The best, most effective teams collaborate well and work together to accomplish goals. But team collaboration today is very different than it was before the pandemic. With some teams now entirely remote and others hybrid, fostering collaboration in your workplace has become more challenging but also more essential.

Fortunately, as workplaces evolve, technology also evolves to keep pace. The result is a wide array of collaboration tools that can help keep your business running smoothly and efficiently.

Featured Partner for Workplace Productivity Learn More on Monday's website Free Version: FREE FOREVER Starting Price: $8 / monthly Integrations: Outlook, Teams, Slack, Zoom, Excel, Zapier, LinkedIn...

Top Collaboration Tools for Your Team in 2023

If you want to support team collaboration in 2023, these tools should be at the top of your list. They can help with everything from communication to meetings to staying organized and more.

For Communication: Slack

Slack functions as a digital headquarters for your team, and it can foster team communication.  Slack operates through channels. You can create channels for your projects, topics, and teams. These channels help keep all of your communication organized, and they give your whole team the ability to see important information and work in sync.

Since everything is organized by channel, you can quickly bring a new team member up to date. Conversations and files become searchable archives, so you can quickly access the information you need without having to ask others to resend a file.

Your whole team will enjoy several other flexible communication options with Slack. Huddles promote connection and communication, and you can access audio or video calls in a single click, whether you need to reach out with a quick question or have a more in-depth conversation.

With Slack clips, you can create short videos, audio, or screen recordings to swap information. Transcripts of those clips are archived and can be searched, too, so team members can always retrieve those updates.

Slack offers four subscription plans, including a free plan and a Business+ plan for $12.50 per user, per month.

For Video Recordings: Loom

Loom is one of the best collaboration tools to improve your meetings. We all know that they sometimes seem to drag on and interrupt workflow. With Loom, you can record videos and bypass time-consuming meetings entirely. Loom lets you record your screen, and thanks to its desktop and mobile apps, it will work on any device.

Once you’ve recorded a video, you can share it with a link, so recipients don’t have to log in to watch it. Your team members can react to the video with time-stamped comments and emoji reactions to keep the conversation going.

Loom’s Starter plan is available for free and supports videos up to five minutes long. Upgrade to Loom’s Business plan for $8 per creator per month for unlimited videos and unlimited length. Loom also offers an Enterprise option.

For Shared Workspaces: Jotform Teams

With Jotform Teams, you can create shared workspaces for your teams. No matter where your team members are based, they can collaborate on online forms, tables, apps, and more. Functioning as an all-in-one workspace, Jotform Teams allows you to keep all of your data in a single location, so team members have access to the latest information.

Within Jotform Teams, you can use Jotform Tables to organize and manage data and stay on top of project progress and deadlines. You can also assign team members different roles, which gives them different levels of access. Jotform Teams even allows you to monitor activity logs and recent changes made to forms.

Jotform offers five subscription plans, and Jotform Teams is part of the Enterprise plan.

For Project Management: Asana

Asana helps keep your whole company and all of its teams connected in a shared space. The platform offers multiple view options, including list, timeline, and board views. Changing the views gives you a broad look at the overarching project progress, or you can opt for a much more nuanced, detailed view of each element of a project.

With Asana as one of your collaboration tools, you can assign team members tasks and deadlines. You can also easily break down a project into smaller components. Team members can communicate through cards and upload documents directly to cards to save time. The platform’s automation capabilities include project templates and automated work requests. Asana also offers the ability to create custom rules to automate tasks like assigning work and setting due dates.

Asana offers three subscription plans, including a free Basic plan, a Premium plan for $10.99 per user per month, and a Business plan for $24.99 per user, per month.

Featured Partner for Workplace Productivity Learn More on Monday's website Free Version: FREE FOREVER Starting Price: $8 / monthly Integrations: Outlook, Teams, Slack, Zoom, Excel, Zapier, LinkedIn...

For Meetings: Zoom

Zoom has emerged as one of the go-to collaboration tools for meetings. Known for its quality webinars and virtual meetings, Zoom is a robust platform that supports workplace collaboration in many ways.

This platform is an ideal choice for teams that include remote members. Zoom’s online whiteboard allows your team to expand on and clarify ideas, even when team members are in different locations.

Zoom Rooms are virtual conference rooms that support collaboration. These rooms allow both in-person and remote team members to collaborate in real-time, creating a valuable experience for your entire team. Zoom Rooms help foster a sense of connectivity among your team members, even if you can’t be physically present in the same space.

The platform offers a broad selection of plans. That includes specific options for products like Zoom One, Zoom Whiteboard, and Zoom Rooms. Zoom One plans include the free Basic plan, the Pro plan at $149.90 per user, per year, and the Business plan at $199.90 per user, per year.

Choosing the Right Collaboration Tools for Your Team

Whether you need a better way to stay organized, want to facilitate online project collaboration, or need to improve your video chat capabilities, these collaboration tools can help. As you explore the different tools, consider not only what your current needs are — but what your collaboration needs will be as your business grows. To get the best value, choose a tool that can grow with your business and provide the support it needs to expand and evolve.

Featured Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Pexels; Thank you!

Related Post: Best Productivity Tools of 2023

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The metaverse is getting much attention now as technologists, marketers, and pundits examine and debate what’s possible in this domain and how companies can leverage it. As a result, brands may wonder if they should create metaverse experiences now or wait and see if the metaverse lives up to the hype.

We think the decision is easier to make with an imaginative perspective on the metaverse, how it may evolve, and how your key personas, business, technology, and infrastructure can benefit from it.

Develop a Working Definition of What the Metaverse Means to Your Company

The idea of the metaverse is not new, but the zeitgeist is still scouring for a universally accepted definition. There are common themes like 3D visualizations and video game-like immersive experiences.

Some even say it is the internet in 3D because dimensionality is one of its essential elements. But in a more practical sense, the metaverse is effectively the next stage of internet evolution that transpires over time instead of at the flip of a switch and will continue to unwind.

We are heading to a future of technology-enabled “superpowers” that let us go inside the internet rather than solely experiencing it through a flat screen. Instead of visiting web pages and apps for everything, we’ll frequent virtual spaces and overlay information into our everyday realities. Instead of consuming, creating, and sharing content, our virtual experiences will be the content that others engage with. Think of what that means to your brand.

Will these immersive experiences replace websites? Not likely. However, the metaverse’s lure over the flat internet does seem irresistible. The level of immersion will be a central topic for user experience designers, design agencies, and consultancies in the coming years.

Why the Metaverse Should Matter to Your Enterprise

Gartner expects 25% of people to spend an hour or more each in the metaverse by 2026. And at least half of US adults and teenagers are counting on the metaverse to improve their experiences shopping for beauty, travel, clothing, furniture, real estate, and workout routines. Not to mention the opportunities VR, AR and MR bring to asset management, training, analysis, and automation.

There’s a clear potential first-mover advantage for brands that start creating immersive experiences in the metaverse. Brands daring to plunge in can help define the emerging metaverse. Brands that sit out risk treading water in a metaverse defined for them instead of riding the waves.

Let’s go back to the definition of the metaverse as the next stage of the internet. Should your brand have a website? The question seems almost ridiculous today, but in the ’90s, it wasn’t a requirement. The brands that started first got more experience about what works – other brands waited to develop an internet strategy. And thus, the concept of digital transformation was born to assist the companies that didn’t embrace the world wide web.

Determine What’s Possible for Your Brand in the Metaverse

Thinking about the metaverse in three categories can be helpful.  First, there are the immersive experiences that most of us associate with it — gaming and community.  Second, there’s blockchain technology, which encompasses Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), smart contracts, cryptocurrency wallets, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Third, are digital-twin technology that uses 3D representations of structures as large as cities to artifacts as small as a pin. But processes can also be digitally twinned.

It’s also helpful to think about the goal for each metaverse experience. Is it to immerse consumers in brand-related moments to engage them in new ways? Or is the plan to leverage digital twin technology for exact, location-independent employee training or more responsive and efficient field service? What other use cases exist for employee, customer, and asset journeys?

Once brands know which use case they want to start with, they can develop the right metaverse to fit from consumer-facing experiences to industrial applications and everything in between. Brands should be willing to experiment with metaverse technologies. This is faster, cheaper, and less risky, given the metaverse is in its infancy and the technology is rapidly evolving.

Identify the First Steps Required for Your Brand’s Entry into the Metaverse

What does a brand need to start getting some quick wins in the metaverse?

Metaverse project leaders need support and clear cross-organizational communication. For example, it’s wise to find out if other metaverse projects are planned or underway inside the company. If so, coordination will streamline tasks, prevent duplication, and generate efficiencies. Projects may also require a consultancy partner to help implement or leverage immersive technology, identify projects with fast outcomes, and develop a roadmap and metrics for success. With those steps in place, brands can embark on their journey toward metaverse maturity.

Thinking of the metaverse as the internet, but better take some of the mystique away from this unprecedented shift. However, it also compels brands to seek immersive experiences to produce. So they’re not left behind as the metaverse goes from a shiny new trend to an inevitable part of humanity’s evolution.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Thisisengineering; Pexels; Thank you!

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Every small business aspires to grow as big as a Fortune 500 company one fine day. In fact, any business would want to keep advancing in an incremental way to scale new heights. Besides, this is what makes the enterprise world highly competitive. The ultimate objective of every business is to penetrate its market to dominate the market share in its own exemplary way.  This explains why businesses lay great emphasis on market penetration strategies.

The fact of the matter is that business advancement strategies cannot exist without market penetration tactics. The market share of a company will always be a key performance indicator of its advancement and authority.

Probing further, in every industry, we identify the top performers in terms of their market share. For instance, if we talk about the smartphone industry, Samsung and Apple are the biggest players with dominating market shares. They have always had fierce competition in dominating the industry. Still, due to some extraordinary market penetration strategies, Samsung dominated the smartphone industry by leaving Apple in the second spot.

To substantiate, in the second quarter of 2022, Samsung made it to the top spot with a market share of 21.8. Whereas Apple bagged the second position with a market share of 15.6%. We can largely attribute the success of Samsung to its market penetration strategies. This example makes a clear case for paying heed to the need for a firm market penetration plan. However, what does the term market penetration exactly imply? Let us find out.

What is market penetration?

Market penetration is a measure of how much share a company holds in the overall market for a product. To elaborate, it defines how much a product is used by consumers relative to the total estimated market size for that product. For service businesses, it will be a measure of how much a service is used by consumers relative to the total market size for that service.

Now, let us also look at the definition of market penetration strategies. It is the course of action that a company initiates to increase its market share in the overall market. Besides, market penetration is one of the four elements of the Ansoff Matrix. To explain, Ansoff Matrix is one of the widely applied strategic models used by companies. A company’s market penetration strategy is the set of tactics aimed at increasing its market share.

Let us understand the same through an example. Currently, Tesla has over 70 percent market share in the US EV market. Now, let’s say the company sets a target for attaining a market share of 90 percent in the next three years. For that, the company will need to frame an effective market penetration strategy. The KPIs of its penetration strategy will determine whether the company meets its business objectives.

Now we know all about what market penetration is and what is a market penetration plan. For successful market penetration, companies need actionable strategies. This is what this meticulous blog is all about. The next section puts forth some incredible strategies for market penetration.

5 Business Strategies For Successful Market Penetration

1. Revolutionize Your Promotional Practices

Marketing and promotional strategies have nowadays become a major pillar on which the growth of every business majorly depends. Statistical data (vtldesign dotcom) states that big names like Salesforce and Oracle dedicate 20% or even more of revenue to marketing. Besides, the same reports validate that marketing is eventually responsible for generating companies’ revenue growth of 38.4%. This brings us to the very first marketing penetration strategy. In this, you have to ensure that you need to revamp your promotional practices.

To elaborate, thanks to technological advancements, we have tremendous marketing sources like affiliate marketing, social media marketing, and so on. Apart from the sources, technological advancements even revolutionized the way marketing was done before. For example, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), VR, and AR (augmented and virtual reality), have also contributed to the same. They have assisted in presenting even simple messages of brands in the most impressive form to attract more potential consumers.

Hence, revolutionizing the form of promotional practices will assist you in enhancing the awareness and brand visibility of your business. This greater brand awareness will assist you in attracting more customers. Besides, this will assist you in acquiring a bigger share of the market effectively.

2. Enhance Your Business Territories

Business territories here include all of your distribution channels through which you deliver your product or service in the market. Distribution channels play a major role in penetrating the market effectively. The success mantra is simple, the more distribution channels you have, the more accessible you are to your target audience.

Hence, in order to effectively penetrate your target market, you need to enhance the territories of your business. For online mediums, you can enhance the distribution channels by

• Creating websites
• Selling features of different social media
• Collaborating with e-commerce websites
• Creating separate apps

For offline mediums, you can invest in building up more brick-and-mortar stores. Other than that, you can also dig out the opportunities to give the franchises to other people.  Rather than handling it all at once yourself, you can let your other franchise partners handle it. This will assist you in expanding your business networks in terms of your business partners as well as your customers.

This way, you will be able to take advantage of different distribution channels to get more customers to your business. Hence, you will get successful in acquiring more market share for your business.

3. Acquire or Partner With Other Businesses

Jim Henson once correctly said, “when you can’t beat them, join them.” The most prominent and perfect example that fits the above-given quote is Facebook, now called Meta. This happened when Meta acquired Instagram and Whatsapp, which were some of its biggest competitors. With this comes another tremendous strategy that can assist you in penetrating your business effectively.

To elaborate, while acquiring, you can always target your competitors like Meta or go for acquiring small businesses. When you acquire any business, you will automatically get control of its existing clientele base. This will ultimately add up to your clientele base and will assist you in having more market share under your wing. Besides, when you go for partnering with other businesses, there is also a major consideration. You should always go for businesses that complement your business in one way or another.

For example, recently, an Italian MNC, Ferrero Group, or simply Ferrero’s subsidiary brand Kinderjoy ‘Nations’ has announced its expansion in India. Along with its expansion, the company joined hands with Discovery Channel. The main aim of this partnership is to promote their unique animal collection in order to encourage kids to gain effective knowledge of wildlife. Now, as Kinderjoy is a specific product created for kids, partnering with an educating medium enhances the value of both partners. Additionally, it also gave them the opportunity to totally tap into their partner’s target market to acquire new customers or audiences.

Hence, both partnering and acquiring are both great ways to penetrate the market. The only need is to identify which form of market penetration of these two goes best for your business.

4. Acquire customers through cost leadership

As per the cost leadership strategy, companies look to develop a competitive advantage by offering a product or service at the lowest price. It is a strategic advantage that companies look to gain over their competitors. To explain, when companies offer the highest quality products at the lowest price, they attract new customers.

In such cases, businesses often try to become the price leader in the market. To define, a pricing leader refers to the dominating firm of the market that sets the price and the rest of other firms the competition follows. Businesses become the price leader by lowering their profit margins and grabbing the attention of their customers towards them. One of the biggest examples of effective cost leadership in the aviation industry is RyanAir. The company used a dynamic pricing strategy and became the cost leader in the aviation industry.

However, in the race to become a cost leader, you also have to ensure that you can not make your prices too low. This will directly impact the profitability of your business, or people can also doubt your quality. Besides, being a cost leader cannot be a long-term pricing strategy. Once you acquire a substantial share of the market, you can change the pricing strategy. The foundation for that would, of course, be excellent customer service. When businesses offer great customer experiences, customers are even happy to pay premium princess.

This way, dynamic pricing will assist you in attracting more and more customers from different social groups. This will ultimately assist in gathering a larger share of the market.

5. Embrace Product Diversification

Last but not least, a strategy that can assist in enhancing your market penetration rate is product diversification. For those who are not aware of the term, let us explain it to you. Companies apply product diversification by introducing new product lines or services to attain a greater market share. The underlying objective of diversification is to amplify business profitability.

In fact, there are a host of successful product diversification examples to look at. Disney went on to introduce its own OTT platform and cruises after starting with cartoons. Similarly, Coca-Cola ventured into the healthy drinks market after starting with carbonated drinks. When businesses expand, they can tap into more markets and acquire more customers.

As diversification allows you to add more variety of products to your business. By implementing this, you will easily be able to capture the largest share of the industry. However, every diversification strategy should be accompanied by a clear change management strategy. An effective change management approach ensures better integration of transformations in a business.

However, one of the biggest challenges that might occur in product diversification is failing to identify the potential of the target market. Hence, it is really essential to rectify the attractiveness of your target market before investing a huge amount in it. This is where the analysis of the business macroenvironment and microenvironment becomes essential.

To encapsulate, with the increasing competition in the business world, it often gets difficult for businesses to enhance their market penetration rate. Hence, the need is to effectively understand the market and utilize some of the effective market penetration strategies in order to enhance the growth of your business.

Besides, the above-given strategies will effectively assist you in skyrocketing your market penetration rate. So what are you waiting for? Utilize them and experience the difference yourself.

Featured Image Credit: Gustavo Fring; Pexels; Thank you!

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Scaling So Far shares candid conversations with tech founders and leaders on how they’ve built and scaled their teams.

You’ll want to enjoy this entire podcast here.

In the 50th episode of the Scaling So Far podcast, Jonathan Siddharth, Founder, and CEO of Turing discuss the lessons he’s learned scaling the Turing team with Dan, the Scaling So Far host. Jon and Dan also talk about why unlocking global opportunities for top tech talent and tactics for sourcing, engaging, and nurturing brilliant engineers are critical today.

Dan

Jonathan, pleased to be chatting with you today. Firstly, thank you for joining us on the Scaling So Far podcast – great to have you with us. Could you tell us a bit about yourself to kick things off?

Jonathan Siddharth

Thank you for having me, Dan – excited to be a part of the podcast. For the listeners out there, I’m Jonathan Siddharth, CEO and Co-Founder of Turing. Turing is a platform that lets you push a button to hire prevetted remote engineers worldwide. 

Turing uses artificial intelligence to automatically source software developers from all over the world, automatically vet them, match them, and help manage the collaboration after we match software engineers with opportunities. 

We recently became a Unicorn a little over three years after we launched, and we are in the process of rapidly scaling. We call this process “blitzscaling,” where you grow at this accelerated pace. So excited to share some of our lessons learned and challenges with you.

Dan

Can you tell me a bit more about Turing’s mission and vision?

Jonathan Siddharth

Absolutely. So we now live in a remote-first world, and every company today is in a race to reap the benefits of remote engineering talent. Twitter is going remote; Square is going remote; Coinbase is going remote – even traditional companies like Siemens, Ford, etc., are seeing the benefits of going remote. 

And the reasons are obvious.

Number one, you can tap into a planetary pool of engineers versus just looking in your backyard. 

Number two, you have the opportunity to tap into geographies that nobody else is looking at today, like Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Central Europe, etc. 

And third, distributed teams work now, as we’ve discovered in the last couple of years.

Remote is hard. It’s challenging for three big reasons. First, if you are a Head of Engineering at a company like Coinbase, how do you build a global pipeline to find great people? If you want to hire tens of thousands, how will you build a pipeline of thousands of Golang engineers from Brazil or C-sharp engineers from Croatia? That’s hard.

Second, evaluating a global engineering talent pool can be tricky. For example, if you are looking at an engineer from Italy, say – you may not see Stanford or Berkeley in her educational background. You might not see Google, Facebook, or Stripe in her work experience. She could be a great engineer, but there’s just no signal from just the resume. So you have to interview that person. And how are you going to interview these thousands of people from all over the world without sucking up all of your engineering teams’ interview time — that’d be super hard.

And third, it can be tough to manage engineers effectively after you’ve found them. Because if your communication is a challenge because time zones are broad, often the right kind of daily communication and performance management does not happen. Often managers don’t have enough visibility into the work people are doing. Security can also be a concern.

So these are the three big problems. 

Number one, it’s challenging to build a large enough global pipeline to find genuinely great people. 

Number two, it’s hard to evaluate all these engineers at scale. 

And number three, once you’ve found that perfect engineer, how do you manage them? How do you take care of communication, security, and other issues?

And the traditional solutions, Dan, weren’t built for this. If you look at a recruiting firm or a staffing firm, most of them don’t do any vetting of engineers. They don’t have a global reach. If you look at marketplaces, they’re usually hit or miss in terms of quality. And these IT services companies also don’t have Silicon Valley-caliber talent.

So we asked ourselves a simple question: Can we solve these problems with software? 

What if we had software that could source engineers planet-wide? What if we had software that could evaluate engineers for a Silicon Valley bar? What if we had software that could automatically match the right engineers to the right jobs with machine learning? And what if we had software that could manage the collaboration after the match – this is why we built Turing.

Turing’s creating a new category called the ‘talent cloud.’ It’s a distributed team of developers in the cloud. These developers are sourced, vetted, matched, and managed by software. So an Engineering Manager, or the Head of Engineering, or an early-stage founder can push a button to spin up your engineering dream team in the cloud as easily as you spin up servers on Amazon. So that’s what we do.

Dan

This is great. Sounds excellent. So you Co-Founded Turing back in 2018, is that right? I’d love to hear what the journey to now has looked like for you and the team.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah. It’s been a journey. It’s one of those things where every year feels very different from the year before. In the CEO role, as a company grows, you have to scale with the challenges you see at that next step. 

Like in the last year, our headcount grew by almost 8X. So, the company’s been growing tremendously. A big inflection point for us was February or March 2020, when the pandemic hit. It accelerated a lot of this shift to remote work and this move to distributed teams. GitLab, Automattic, and a few companies tasted the benefits of remote, distributed teams.

And it’s never been a better time to be an engineer. Previously, your opportunity radius was maybe 20 miles from where you lived, regardless of how capable you were, how motivated you were, or how smart you were. Now that’s no longer the case. So at Turing, we want to kill the geo lottery. 

So we want to create a future where the place you live doesn’t impact the kind of opportunities you can access. So these last three and a half, four years have just been this period of rapid scaling as we grow our developer base. 

We now have about two million developers signed up on Turing and hundreds of companies building teams from Turing, including Coinbase and Johnson & Johnson. We also have fortune 500 companies like Disney and others. It’s been fun to experience blitzscaling in its purest form for all the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Dan

You raised $87m Series D in October last year – hit unicorn status. How are you investing the new capital? What do the next 12–18 months look like for Turing?

Jonathan Siddharth

We raised a unicorn round of about 87 million last year. Since then, we have focused on scaling up our sales and marketing and accelerating our developer growth. There are many developers worldwide, and we want Turing to be where the best developers work. And really, investing in our product R&D. So, we build many products to automate the sourcing, vetting, and management of developers. 

And it’s a lot of data science and machine learning coupled with software engineering to get the efficiencies of scale. So vetting is zero-touch in that we can have various job types, tech stacks, and seniority levels. So we want to build this machine that can evaluate engineers at scale in an objective, data-driven way without all the biases that a typical interview process would have.

Traditional interviewing is not very scientific. It’s kind of broken and has all sorts of room for bias. So we want to level the playing field for global talent. So a big focus for us after our series D is automation. So automation and sales and marketing, I would say, are the big levers. So we’ve raised about $140m so far. Most of the money is still in the bank as we continue to grow. We will also look at any attractive M&A opportunities in Europe and LATAM. So we’re always interested in great teams of people and technology that can give us an edge.

Dan

Forbes named you one of America’s best startup employers last year. Massive congrats on that. What is unique about Turing’s employee experience that you think secured this accolade?

Jonathan Siddharth

So there are a few things that are unique to our culture. Our main pillars are speed, continuous improvement, and a long-term focus on customer success. And when I say speed, I think one of the biggest weapons a startup has is the ability to execute fast without bureaucracy and much red tape. 

So we spend a lot of time thinking about how to go faster. And this means being very focused on what we do. It means only focusing on the significant needle-moving initiatives that can impact our metrics substantially. It means saying no to many things and saying no to a bunch of product initiatives that could be nice things to do but may not move the company forward in a meaningful way. And I think people like that culture. So when people come to us from some of these larger companies, they first notice the speed. This company moves fast.

One of the other attributes that fit in with speed is we are very comfortable failing. So we would rather take a big, bold bet in an area where we see an opportunity to do something 10x better or 5x better. And we’ll be happy if 80 percent of the time, rather than conducting tons of iterative, incremental improvements. And I think people like that. So that was speed.

And a second important part of our culture is a culture of continuous improvement. So when we hire people, we look for people who care deeply about making themselves better, making their teams better, and making the company better. It’s this mind mindset of getting better every day. I have an app on my phone where I track – did I work on an aspect of my self-improvement today? I like to maintain a streak of continuous improvements because these things add up.

Dan

So what will you focus on from a talent and people perspective in the year ahead?

Jonathan Siddharth

So we’re focusing on hiring exceptional leaders in the company and ensuring that our team is coordinated, aligned, and moving in the right direction. We are now about 700 people. It’s much harder to keep an organization of 700 people focused on the most needle-moving things than when we were 70. So it’s going to be recruiting extraordinary leaders into the company.

So I would say recruiting and ensuring that the entire team focuses on the right things. Everybody has a clear sense of company priorities, their team’s priorities, and how they contribute to moving the company’s key metrics forward.

One thing that sometimes gets missed is something that’s in between recruiting and ensuring the organization is aligned and moving in the right direction, which is onboarding — making sure that we are making the people we hire successful. So we have the proper checkpoints with them  — and that’s a whole different topic with its own challenges — you need an organization to have the right balance of leaders and individual contributors.  

I prefer the term leaders rather than managers at Turing. Like we want leaders, not managers. We want people who raise the level of performance of their team, not somebody rubber-stamping the work of an incredible team. So, ensuring we have the correct ratio of leaders to individual contributors will be a focus. So, recruiting, excellent onboarding, and having a great culture where the entire organization is moving in one direction to hit our company goals.

Dan

You’ve also been named one of Fast Company’s ten most innovative companies in 2021. I’m not surprised, given the demand for tech talent and the global transition to remote work over the past couple of years.

Why do you think unlocking opportunities for global tech talent is so important right now?

Jonathan Siddharth

Today, we live in a world where every company must become a software or a technology company to survive and thrive. Right. And the fundamental scaling constraint to a technology company is having great engineers and the ability to unlock the world’s untapped human potential. There are great people worldwide who could be the perfect engineer in your team to contribute to helping you go where you need to go. I think that’s the message that resonates powerfully with every tech company.

When you think about it, do you want to hire the best people in the world or people who happen to live near your office? It feels stark in terms of what the best path is. So we’ve benefited from those tailwinds. Traditionally, engineers that wanted to work in the heart of the technology industry had to relocate to a few centers in Western Europe, the west coast of the United States, certain parts of India, parts of China, or parts of Israel. 

These are influential tech hubs, but you have to uproot your life and move to those places to work. And today, the jobs come to you. And I think we look back on this era as being transformative, much like the internet was in the nineties regarding how it connected the world and made civilization progress faster.

So we are fortunate to be at the center of that shift which is a big reason why they included us in many of these lists. We were named alongside Slack, Zoom, and GitLab. These companies are powering the boundaryless future, where you can work from anywhere. And that’s the movement; it’s the work-from-anywhere movement. And I think it will be a hugely positive movement for the world. 

Even outside of the tech industry, if you look at it from an environmental standpoint, how much pollution are we avoiding by not requiring people to commute one to two hours daily? How much productivity do we lose when everyone commutes daily for one to two hours? And then they’re a little bit tired when they reach work. You’ve lost so many hours of your day – like 10 – 20% – it’s a significant amount of life that you’ve now got back to do whatever you want.

Dan

You held your event Boundaryless recently, didn’t you? What were some of the key takeaways from this?

Jonathan Siddharth

We used that event to announce big product launches for us. For example, one significant product we launched in our Boundaryless event was a completely automated self-serve system that made working with engineers, like picking the right engineer you want to work with, as easy as going on Amazon.com. 

Let’s say you are starting a company and want a backend Python engineer. So we have this system now where you can input what type of developer you’re seeking. What are the critical tech-stack strengths you need in a developer? Maybe it’s Python, perhaps you also want to add Node, and then you’ll see a ranked list of prevetted engineers from Turing, and you can push a button to choose which engineer you’d like to interview and get started.

And it’s just very, very efficient. We’ve taken a process that would typically take months and reduced it to a matter of days and, in some cases, the same day. And that took a lot of work behind the scenes to automatically evaluate engineers that scale used machine learning to recommend the right developers for the right jobs when choosing from a pool of 1.2 million. And we previewed that, and today, more than half of our startup customers use that product. And a lot of engineering managers value efficiency. Like they don’t like talking to a salesperson, getting on zoom. So they like this search engine just to find the developers they want, push a button, and get going.

Dan

What tech candidate assessment or evaluation do you feel is most effective for fast-growing companies?

Jonathan Siddharth

So for fast-growing companies, when we evaluate software engineers, we assess them along three primary dimensions.

We evaluate their technical skills, we evaluate their soft skills, and we vet their seniority level. When we assess an engineer for their technical skills, we build a deep developer profile for each type of engineer. This profile is a detailed, comprehensive, continuously updating vector representation of that developer’s strengths and areas for improvement.

So with a machine learning engineer, we would evaluate them for how good their machine learning theory foundation is, whether it’s probability statistics, linear algebra, or things like that. We evaluate them for how hands-on they are and how good they are at building a text classifier and working with the latest frameworks. We would also examine their software engineering fundamentals. 

How good are they at writing production-level code? We would evaluate them on their ability to build machine learning models versus maintaining the models in production. So we have all of these attributes that we are vetting the engineers for. Where relevant, we also evaluate them on things like their systems design capability or ability to architect systems and stuff like that.

And in the second bucket, soft skills, particularly for a startup, it’s crucial to have very proactive engineers with an ownership mentality who don’t need a lot of direction.

Typically in a startup, the engineer might report to somebody fairly senior, maybe one of the founders or a CTO or VP of engineering. So they need to be the kind of person who doesn’t need a ton of hand-holding where they can understand the vision for a feature or a product that you’re trying to build. They need the ability to take that to completion without requiring a ton of iteration and back and forth with the person they’re working with. They must be able to work with minimal supervision and be committed to working hard. I mean, startups are hard work, right? 

Like it’s not for everyone at all stages of their life. So you kind of want somebody who’s committed to the company’s mission and can work and put in those long hours. Look for somebody good at direct communication and escalating when things are not going right. In a startup, speed is paramount. So you don’t want somebody who sort of says yes to you. 

You want somebody who negotiates more directly with you. So the soft skills front, particularly for somebody working at a startup, I think some of these requirements are important in a startup, as you might also need to wear a couple of different hats. 

Sometimes the engineer might need to wear a more product-centric hat too. You might have to make some product-centric decisions. You might have to work with a designer. You might have to talk to customers. So you kind of need all of that too.

And on the third dimension, we pay a lot of attention to the level of seniority the client seeks. We have engineers who can work at the level of a task, at a feature level or the level of an entire product. And we typically have a conversation with our startup or enterprise customers to understand what seniority level they need. 

So it’s technical skills, soft skills, and calibrating on seniority levels so that we can help companies find the right talent they need. And often, Dan, it’s a conversation. Sometimes when customers come to us, they have a vague sense of what they need. And in a conversation with us and through iterating with our product, we help them sharpen their job rec for the task that they need to be done. 

Sometimes, what you need for a project might not be a machine learning engineer. Instead, it’s more of a data scientist or maybe an engineer who understands data sciences – it’s an iterative process to figure out what our customers need.

Dan

And aside from technical challenges, how do you assess for qualities like culture fit / add or hiring for “potential” even?

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah. How do we assess for culture fit and hire for potential? So culture fit is something tricky. Let me answer that first from a perspective, and then we can talk from a customer perspective. I think it starts with the Founder and CEO writing down the culture. So I spent some time writing down all the best practices from the culture we want, treasure, and value in the last month. We call it the Turing way, and we’ve written it down in this Google doc in conversation with our exec team – what traits have made us successful so far that we want to preserve? 

So it starts by writing it down because different companies have different cultures, and there’s no one size fits all, but you have to write it down to put a stake in the ground for what you stand for. And you’ve written it down.

Then you need to have a way to hire and fire and promote based on those values. So one of the things we are doing now is we’ve written it down, and we write specific examples of what each sort of cultural value means, and some of it can be kind of polarizing. Like in our culture, we write that we work crazy hard. 

We think Turing will be one of our generation’s most influential companies to unleash the world’s untapped human potential. And it’s going to take a ton of work, and we want you to know what you’re getting into, right? So this is not a company where things will go slow, and it’ll be a lot of work, but we can promise you it’ll be rewarding and fun. 

So the first step is to write it down. And you also want to write it down collaboratively, like taking input from the outstanding leaders you have in the company and your exec team. Then you also want to be mindful of not being too ossified in the culture itself. Someone told me that they hire not for culture fit but for culture addition. So you want to hire people who will contribute positively to the culture and improve the company’s culture and who can add their own to the Turing way.

So we kind of watch for that in our interview process. We have people who interview for culture. You want to have like a very standard way in which you assess culture. Ask the same questions to determine your ability to contribute to Turing’s culture. So you calibrate it across a broad group of people and share this culture document you create with prospective candidates and managers. Not have this be something sitting in Slack or a Google Drive, but actively use it. I think the more often you can point to that, the more it’s being used.

So step one is to write it down. Step two, be comfortable with evolving and editing it. And step three, have a hiring, firing, and promoting system based on what you’ve written down. So yeah. A culture document without enforcement is kind of toothless, right? So it’s important.

Dan

You have a database of 2m developers across 10,000 cities. That’s an incredible trove of talent. Talent that typically is in demand and tough to hire.

How have you attracted and engaged that talent to the extent that they opt-in to Turing?

Jonathan Siddharth

Great question. So firstly, we live in a remote-first world, and every company’s in the race to hire the world’s best remote talent, but it can be hard to stand out in a planetary pool. If you are an excellent engineer from a small town near Sao Paulo, Brazil, nobody looking at your resume might recognize the schools you went to or your prior work experience. And that’s a shame like this could be a perfectly fantastic engineer, but there are just not too many signals that exist. 

And if you’re an engineer historically before Turing, you had, I would say, three options that you could have, you could have done. One is you could have applied directly to the best companies that are hiring. And most of the time, when folks do that, they don’t hear back. So you get lost in the shuffle. Like you cannot get career growth, you kind of get mentorship. These are long-term engagements, and you’re working on exciting products. So that was good about them. The hard part was you never heard back. It’s hard to get noticed.

On the flip side, there used to be these marketplace companies, which were easy to get on, and the jobs were easy to get. You can post a job on some of these marketplaces. You might get a gig here or there, but these are gigs, not real jobs, like not jobs that contribute to your career growth. You don’t get good mentorship. Often you’re not working on the most important part of the product. You might be working on something on the site that people don’t care about much.

The third used to be. You could go work for like an IT services giant. The good thing is these are easy to get. But you’re not directly working with the companies. You’re working for the middle person. So we thought we could create a new category of work where we give people the benefits of each of these without none of the cons. 

What if you had access? What if you could work for Coinbase or Rivian? You could work for Johnson & Johnson directly on their core products and have long-term engagements, career growth, community, etc. It’s a model that combines all of the benefits with none of the cons. Have you had the flexibility to take time off between engagements? Why we build – to satisfy that goal. 

And people value the work we do on our community side to help our engineers uplevel their career growth. We have programs where we help them learn how to interview better, work on their soft skills, and work on their leadership skills – recommending what skills are in demand that they could learn to grow their value in the industry to get promoted faster.

So we want to give people like this guidance to be the sort of jet pack on their back to help them reach the heights they’re truly capable of achieving.

Dan

What have some of your biggest learnings been regarding building teams?

Jonathan Siddharth

I would distill this into three significant learnings. First, building teams is being intentional about the job description. You are starting to hire for a role – it may sound obvious, but often the most significant times when we’ve had challenges is when that initial job spec wasn’t super clear in terms of what we were looking for in this role in this person. So spending time being clear on who we are looking for to do what role and how we will measure success, making sure that’s defined very well upfront. So that’s number one.

The second learning is that  I would go back to our earlier chat on hiring for culture. And it only starts when you write it down. It’s not OK to just look for the person to do the job. Are they going to be a good culture fit for Turing? Do they get on well with other people on our team? We also look to do at least two back-channel reference checks for every exec-level role we hire. I think that that is important.

And the third learning for me is to –particularly for leadership and executive level roles – stay very close to the person for the first two to three months. I try not to give them a ton of responsibility too quickly. And it’s one of those things that requires a little bit of a lack of a better word, a top-down push where the person, particularly in leadership roles, I feel like the person may feel like they are ready at a particular stage sooner than you may know they are. 

And there would probably be a phase where the person probably feels like they have sufficient context, but you have more context about what they know to kind of stay close to the person for the first two to three months to ensure they’re successful, I think is key.

So number one is being clear on the job description and what you require them to do. Then, how are you going to measure success? The second is making sure that a good fit for the culture and stage of the company. And third is, staying close to the person in the first two to three months. 

Regarding the culture piece, I think I will be hiring a hundred inferior versions of this person. It’s going to be an army of this person. So the leader often becomes the ceiling for the function. So are you hiring people with a high enough ceiling so that they can attract amazing people? And the leaders also model what good performance is to their organization. 

So if you have like a hundred people who will be lesser clones of this person in terms of their ability to contribute, would you be happy with that? I think that’s a sound check.

You build teams by building leaders, by hiring leaders. So you want to make sure that the leaders, the template of the leader, is precisely the one you want a lot of copies made in your company.

Dan

I like that. And if there’s one thing you could wave a magic wand at and fix when it comes to building and leading tech teams – what would that be?

Jonathan Siddharth

My advice to any founder is that hiring speed matters with tech teams. And you’re going to hire the right engineering team fast by casting a planet-wide net. So I find companies sometimes being overly restrictive regarding where they hire, which always hurts the company. Your goal is to build a product that makes your customers happy and moves the metrics for the business. 

And you want to do that as fast as possible so that you can grow as quickly as possible. And the biggest stumbling block can be the speed of hiring. If you’re hiring one engineer a month when you should have been hiring five, that can profoundly impact your ability to compete with companies with better hiring velocity.

So my advice would be to be very thoughtful about which countries your team is in. A 4-hour time zone overlap is all that’s needed for an engineering team. If not, you are losing out on great people unnecessarily because a lot of engineering time is spent inside a code editor, GitHub, Slack or JIRA, or tools like that. So a 4-hour overlap for tech teams is acceptable. 

If you look at crypto or the open source movement, it’s a testament that distributed teams work with primarily asynchronous collaboration. So my advice would be to look for a 4-hour overlap. Other than that, cast as planet-wide net as you can so that you find genuinely great people. Tech teams are no different from other teams in that what makes a great team is a great leader who sets the right culture. 

As the founder, you can’t ensure that every IC on the team performs at the level they need to. You need great leaders. So I would recommend having an engineering manager, director of engineering, or head of engineering who’s hands-on.

At Turing, we have a culture where the leader is usually the best engineer in the team and is also good at managing the team. That way, they can unblock their team, which can help them identify and make the right architecture, systems, and design decisions so that the company moves critically in the right direction.

So I would say the two pieces of advice would be to cast a wide net, have a 4-hour overlap for distributed teams, and ensure you have a hands-on engineering manager. I think for a tech team today, I would split it into engineering product and data science; usually, design is in the product. You also want a tech team collaborating well with their peer organizations. 

You want an engineering team that can be an excellent partner to product and a strong partner to data science. You want a data science team that can be an exceptional partner to product, a good partner to engineering, and data science is a somewhat new function that didn’t exist in this form maybe five years, even ten years ago, for sure. Perhaps even five years ago. So it’s essential to clarify the boundaries for who makes what types of decisions, like, what is data science responsible for? What is engineering responsible for? What is product responsible for?

And when you are building a team, you might want to think through that more carefully. This new tech category of data engineering is now different from data science at Turing. We have data engineering under data science. As a result, we need to be very thoughtful about who defines the data layer in a company, which defines the database, which defines the nature of the metrics being tracked, the events being logged, the schema for a dashboard that you build, and who determines where the database sits, where the servers are located. 

So you kind, when you’re building a tech team, you want to be thoughtful about not just your team but your engineering team, your data science, data engineering team, and your product team, and how you split responsibilities between them.

Dan

A couple of light-hearted questions to bring our chat to a close today. First, is there anything you’re super passionate about? Something you find unapologetic amounts of joy in – this can, of course, be professional, personal, or both!

Jonathan Siddharth

Thank you, Dan, for that question. One thing that gives me joy is working on my continuous improvement. I want to wake up a little better every day than I was the next day. So I have a long list of areas for that. I want to up-level myself in places I want to improve at that I actively work on. And I always feel happy when I work on something related to my improvement. And these things compound over time. there’s a lot of value in it.

On the personal side, spending time with my wife and my one-month-old daughter is a huge source of joy and fun. Besides that, I love being at the cutting edge of machine learning. So I love reading up and playing with some of the most recent machine learning frameworks, just building things for fun.

That’sat’s interestiIt’sIt’s been so great chatting with you today. I enjoyed our conversation. I appreciate the time. So thank you very much for being on our podcast.

Jonathan Siddharth

Likewise, Dan, I enjoyed our conversation as well, and for Founders, there’s no better time to build a startup from anywhere in the world. You can fundraise from anywhere. You can hire a team from anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are based anymore. So I wish you the best of luck in building your companies.

And if you need to hire engineers, do check out Turing!

Featured Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Thank you!

The post Scede’s Scaling So Far Podcast with Jonathan Siddharth appeared first on ReadWrite.

In this after-show, Kat Hu, from our Chief of Staff team, and I, Jonathan Siddharth, CEO, and Founder of Turing,  discuss the main takeaways from our most recent TDLS episode with David Zhang, Partner at TCV.

You may enjoy watching this After-Show episode here.

As always, the full text of the discussion is below.

Kat Hu

Welcome to our podcast on scaling unicorns in a remote-first world. We’re going to reflect on today’s conversation with David Zhang. from TCV. What are your thoughts on how that call go? What learnings you’ve learned?

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, it was a fun chat. I am glad we are doing this aftershow on what was interesting from that chat. I think for our first question, I found David’s responses super interesting on what companies are doing differently, given the shift in the macroeconomic climate. What stuck with me was his three main comments. 

One was this is the time to “lean in and get fit” for most companies. 

The second was the focus on the quality of growth. It was interesting how for TCV, the quality of growth is not a temporary phenomenon that you just started thinking about in 2022. It seems to have been a part of their investing ethos for a while.

Third, being just being thoughtful about scenario planning. It was interesting that David called it different shades of red for what could happen and making sure your team is right-sized in the various areas. So, that stuck out to me. What about you?

Kat Hu

Along those lines, I saw so many parallels between what he said and what we see in Turing—of what we’re focusing on, how we’re navigating, the macro shifts, and focusing on quality. He talked about things like team development and building a world-class team, I know that’s something that you’ve been focused on, and we’re proud to have that at Turing today.

And something else that I found interesting was similar to the discussion with Sandesh. He said the most critical thing for CEOs who are scaling is balancing doing what you’re already doing well and looking at the horizon to catch the next S-curves and frontiers.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, that’s right. But, again, I was reminded of our focus on teams. Sandesh also had that same comment, where you have to be good at what you’ve always been good at. And you have to keep doing it while looking out for the next wave.

It was also good advice to ensure that even in that post-product market fit scaling phase when you’re very close to product innovation, ensuring the product velocity is high and staying close to customers is essential. 

Kat Hu

Yeah, for sure. I think having that cycle and that feedback is what we hear over and over again. It’s important, and hearing about how you do it with your emails is excellent tactical advice.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, and it was also interesting to hear his thoughts on board meetings as to how you would run board meetings. What are some ways to make them more productive?

Kat Hu

Yeah, it was interesting that other companies are thinking of similar topics at board meetings. David mentioned that on top of people’s minds are scenario planning, tracking growth quality, and ensuring we are doing the right thing regarding the team. It’s encouraging that what he says about building the right team for a company parallels what we are doing within Turing. It’s validating that many other companies are thinking about the same things during this time. 

One thing in terms of scenario planning that I found interesting was he didn’t just mention the various shades of red but highlighted the two frameworks. One. How do you survive? Two. How do you thrive? It makes you think of all the category leaders in the past who, during similar times of red. It’s more important now than ever to wonder how they did it and consider incorporating that into our strategy. 

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah. And it’s not just about surviving but also about having a strategy where you thrive in a storm.

He mentioned having strategy first, followed by execution, having board meetings to track how execution is happening on the agreed-upon strategy tightly, and ensuring that companies have an intellectually sound approach to measure success. And being asked how we are tracking relative to the success metrics that we set for ourselves, in some cases, if we need more data, then how can we go and collect more data to know whether or not we can validate our hypothesis? But it is too early to tell. We will probably figure it out later.

Kat Hu

Yeah, and again going back to scenario planning, what he said what I thought was pretty wise is when you have these scenarios planned. Then, amid all these other external stressors, you can just focus on execution and focus on continuing on your path because you’ve already mapped out these different scenarios.

Jonathan Siddharth

That’s right. And it’s interesting David also shared about the Sequoia deck. In Silicon Valley, there is often a group thing where everybody is looking for one simple formula, something to tell them what to do, like the silver bullet. But, unfortunately, there are no silver bullets, and there’s no one size fits all. 

Ashu from Foundation would say the same thing, which is too often, there are these prescriptive pieces of advice that just get parroted around, and people sometimes tend to apply them without thinking. It might be the right advice for a specific type of company at a particular stage, but some advice is not universally applicable. 

Kat Hu

Yeah, during your conversation, I noticed you were nodding many times. The two of you seem to align on many points. One other item I was thinking about was inflection points for Turing and companies at scale during this kind of time in the macro environment. 

It was so interesting to hear different examples of these companies that have pivoted or changed in drastic ways that sometimes not everyone sees but have a significant payoff. Have you thought that much about some companies or Turing?

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, I mean, one way I think about it is that there could be big inflection points happening in the macro environment that could be an opportunity to do something new, so let’s call them external triggers. But, also, there could be internal triggers that you’ve identified and some new disruptive things you could do and pursue. 

To me, in the external bucket, I kind of see the Netflix shift from DVDs to streaming. The world was switching to streaming, Internet videos were getting better and better, and the browsers were getting better at streaming stuff. 

For us at Turing, there were these external shifts like the pandemic, which was a big inflection point for remote work. And that accelerated the world’s transition to remote work by at least five years. So I think those are some of these external triggers, and you can’t control them. And when they happen, you want to recognize that there’s an opportunity for you and understand if you position the right way relative to that shift.

Then there are internal pushes where you feel like there is something disruptive, some new business that you can bring to market. And here, I am reminded of Amazon launching AWS, a big needle-moving business for them. 

Turing’s focus on teams is like that, and there could be more. For these inflection points, sometimes I try to answer the question of why now? Did something happen now that just makes this the right time to do something like this? Why hasn’t it been done before, and I separate that into the internal and external and try to think about what’s the next internal thing that we could do that could move the needle for the business? It does take time to reflect, and this is why our exact off-sites are helpful when you have some time to breathe, pause and reflect. It’s hard to do this in our weekly exact syncs or monthly business reviews.

Kat Hu 

Yeah, totally. I think that’s a good call. There could be times to reflect quarterly, and off-site is a good medium for that.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, anything you took away from for your future company after Turing goes public?

Kat Hu

I liked his recommendations. I searched up Pedro Franceschi, and there was this article about “what I learned about people that scale,” I am excited to read more about his Medium post. It’s helpful to have frameworks to be more efficient, productive, or successful in specific ways.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, that’s right. That’s a good catch, and on that, I think we can close our after-show. This was a fun conversation, and thank you, everyone, for joining us!

Please Enjoy Watching the Complete Video Here.

The post Turing Distinguished Leader Series: After-Show Episode Two appeared first on ReadWrite.

How to Scale Unicorns With Partner David Zhang, TVC

The theme of this episode is how to scale unicorns. Joining us for this episode is our partner David Zhang, Partner at TCV ((Technology Crossover Ventures). He focuses on investments in fintech, the internet, and software.

Jonathan Siddharth 

I’m excited to welcome David Zhang from TCV. We’ll have a fun conversation over the next 40-45 minutes. Welcome, David.

Here is the full YouTube — Please enjoy this episode: How to Scale Unicorns

And before we get started, could you share a little about TCV and what got you into venture investing?

David Zhang

I’m a partner at TCV, which we founded in 1996. We’re a crossover fund. We’ve been doing this for almost 30 years. 

So, think of the typical two founders with a pitch book in a garage. That’s not what we do. Instead, that’s the sort of pre-series-A investment where companies or founders have visions of where they think there are underserved market needs, and they’re coming up with something super excited to try to solve that. 

That’s not what we do. We come in after a product has landed and found product market fit and has some escape velocity. So we would invest in any conventional series B’s through public offerings. 

And, I think to go back to your question, Jonathan, on how I got to venture, I broadly stumbled upon it, if you will. I have been in and around technology for over ten years. I founded a startup years ago, and that’s how I started getting a taste of it. The startup didn’t work out, but I found ways to be around it, whether it was on the sales side in Goldman for a few years. And then, I also invested in tech companies as a public markets investor for several years before. 

Jonathan Siddharth

Sounds great. What’s your opinion on what’s happening in public markets and the ripple effect on private markets? How does that translate into advice that you give to your startups? I’m sure many of your startups are relatively large companies in the unicorn stage and beyond. What guidance for your portfolio companies?

David Zhang

Yeah, it’s undoubtedly an interesting time. It’s interesting for a bunch of reasons. 

I think everyone’s like the sky is falling. So many people think it’s doomsday and what’s super interesting about it is that narrative has completely turned if you just rewind the clock. A year ago, it was the complete opposite, right? Things were never rosier. We were at the tip of a bull market, and it was like the party wasn’t going to stop, right? It was like there was no end in sight. 

And now it’s like, gosh, the sky is falling, and it’s the opposite narrative. There’s a lot of fear in the market. So the broader issue is that two things need to be parsed separately. 

One is the investor sentiment, which is what I just described. 

The other is that investor sentiment is changing because there appear to be potential fundamental cracks in the economy. We haven’t seen any systemic collapses or big pockets of the economy get entirely decimated, but there are certainly worries about those things happening. And a big part of that trends and signals portend potential calamity, right? So inflation is always one where it’s not fun. There can be all kinds of different knock-on effects from it. So that’s the big one, obviously, with the geopolitical tensions, not just Russia and Ukraine. But broader geopolitical and economic instability.

I’m trying to be optimistic. There are a lot of worries, but it doesn’t feel like the economy has collapsed. 

If the market hits a severe downturn, how long will it last? And what happens in that scenario? There is a bunch of conventional wisdom out there, and one of them that’s super trendy is to make sure you have three years of cash runway, right? 

Sequoia sent out this deck. I’m sure you guys have probably seen it too. Anything that goes around just gets circulated like wildfire. It’s almost like the venture community is almost like an influencer bubble. 

In my humble view, there’s a danger in providing a one-size fits all type of advice. I think every company’s portfolio is different, so they’re all different sizes, different stages, different geographies, different cash positions, and different market leadership positions. 

I will say the one thing we tell all our portfolio companies is to get fit and lean in. So the “get fit” part of it is whatever your circumstances are today, lean inwards a little bit, do some introspection, and figure out which part of the house requires some cleaning up.

Good CEOs will look inside and say: “Hey, maybe we’ve been hiring a little bit too much during the sugar rush phase of the pandemic, and what does that mean for performance management? Have we become soft? Can we squeeze out more from folks that we’ve hired, and are there things that maybe we have completely neglected? Can now use the opportunity to right-size it or improve it?”

Indeed, if you don’t have enough cash, I would almost say you should always have three years of cash runway. So this is becoming the number one piece of advice on the street. And it is kind of silly because that was always supposed to be the case, so if you don’t have that, you better get it now, that’s for sure. 

And then you know, the lean in part is that if you’re a market leader, for example, and your house is in order, and things are going well, how do you use this opportunity to separate yourself from the pack? Chaos often creates some of the best opportunities, so we tend to back category leaders. And so, as part of our DNA, we say if you are in a decent spot now, this is the time. Others are going to be potentially suffering. So how do you use this chance to kind of really break away?

Jonathan Siddharth 

Yeah, that was super insightful. I like the get fit and lean in. I feel the same way, and at least for me, from Turing’s perspective, we were in a Blitzscaling phase, where in Reed Hoffman’s terms, where you prioritize speed over efficiency in moments of uncertainty. And now, I think there is a shift that we’re seeing where everyone prioritizes efficient growth and scaling a lot more than before. So such things as contribution margin, burn multiples, GTM efficiency, and ROI of different marketing teams become more important.

Do you feel the same way and think the focus on efficiency of growth is more important than just pure top-line growth? So first, we were much more sort of with a high growth rate, and we did not even care about how we got the revenue when we got it. And now we are much more careful about revenue quality revenues. Would you say that? 

David Zhang

Yeah! I love the candor there, Jon, and it’s very true. I think you characterize it super well. So there’s a product side and a business side. 

The beauty of software, in general, is that you have this concept of MVP. Building a business around software has always been different. When you’re building a business around something, you’re monetizing something. You’re going out to acquire customers. You are creating something around it. 

We’ve always thought about that. And this is one of the pillars we talk about internally, but also to our founders. All the companies we invest in have a similar value alignment, and we call this quality of growth. So this has always been our most significant focus area, whether in 2022, 2021, or 2001. 

But with quality of growth, the centering question has always been, how do you grow as quickly as possible without sacrificing underlying unit economics? So having just growth is not enough. You need to have as high quality as possible. 

So I’ll give an example. We led the investment in a new bank, their Series F, in 2019.

Now they’re a public company, and they’re a great example of high-quality growth. So they have about 60 million customers now, and they have a view of the net present value of each customer when they’re onboarding them and their models to show it. So they have quantifiable risk profiles and ultimately map them to lifetime value, right? 

And these things are dynamic as they see real-time signals from how customers behave when they’re paying back bills. You know, when they’re loading up the phone and stuff like that. The vast majority of their customer acquisition is word of mouth. So they acquire customers with very little pocket expense. 

When you put those two things together, you get high-quality customers, high LTV, and acquisition at super low costs. So that’s an example of the quality of growth by not just blind growth. They are also growing at a crazy speed on those dimensions, but the quality underlying it is also really high. 

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, yeah. That’s great, David. How do you measure the quality of growth? Do you have other efficiency metrics that you look at when you evaluate businesses to check the quality of growth and the quality of the revenues? 

David Zhang

Customers come in, and they leave, or they stay. If they love something, they typically stay. And you know, a cost goes out with an acquisition, so whether it’s hiring a salesperson, commissions, or paying Google. Sometimes you don’t pay them at all. They call them word of mouth. So all these are different ways to acquire customers. And those customers must bring some kind of value to you, right? 

So if you break it down to those three components, the first is how are you acquiring a customer? That’s number one.

And then the number two question is, are they staying? Because if you’re acquiring customers, but they’re leaving at a fast pace, then you have a leaky bucket. So is this a one-time acquisition or a multiple-time acquisition to get the person to that door?

And then finally, it’s doing the math on the value. Whether it’s $3 or $3,000 can make sense depending on what that person eventually pays you back.

The conventional LTV CAC is generally used for subscription-type businesses where things tend to be more of a recurrent nature. The numbers don’t always tell the whole story if you dig deeper. But stuff like retention is super important. So how sticky are your customers, and can you break that down to customer retention? You can break that down into the inverse of that churn. You can break that down to revenue retention because different types of models, whether subscription, usage-based, or transactional, will have different retention metrics. 

And then you have LTV that can be measured by knowing if customer sticks for two years, three years, or five years, and during that time, how did they grow with you? And what is the associated economic value that comes with that? 

And that’s the fourth piece is more qualitative than quantitative, is how you’re monetizing. Do you think one way is more sustainable than the others? So your way of monetizing your business does factor into quality. So the quality of growth has implications on the revenue stream’s sustainability.

Jonathan Siddharth 

That makes sense, David. And in board meetings that you have today, are there any topics you see coming up for discussion that perhaps didn’t come up one or two quarters back?

What is your primary advice to companies that still have to adapt to what may come? I would love to hear your advice for companies of these types.

David Zhang 

Here’s the first one. I think many companies are now starting to do scenario planning. So they’re like: “Hey, if the economy goes to different shades of red, are we well positioned to survive?”

And then the next question is: “Are we well positioned to thrive? Are we well positioned to emerge even better? So depending on where you are in this stage of that discussion, or that preparedness, if you will, it typically marches through that sequence.

The second one is talking about the quality of growth again. We’ve always centered around that, but what’s changing this time? We were very sure before. So, let’s make doubly sure this time. So, ensure your quality of growth is super solid.  Doing this allows you to be confident about your path without being distracted: “Hey, is this working? Or is it going to come back to bite me later?”

And then the third is the team. And so a lot of it is performance management. You need to know all the people I’ve hired or the people I’m about to hire, whether up and down the stack, people in the engineering team, people on the C-suite management team, and what we expect from them. So narrow the focus to ensure we know what we’re trying to play for.

And in times like this, there are opportunities because many companies are in this trend. Later stage, public companies are right-sizing their teams, so there are many opportunities out there. So just keep an eye out; depending on your growth stage, it could be reasonably attractive. So it’s important not to lose talent.

Jonathan Siddharth

Cool, David. And, if you think of a company’s journey as a sort of there is that 0-1 phase, i.e., finding product-market fit stage. And then you have that early traction where you’ve hired your early team, and you’re in that one to 10 million revenue type run. And then there is the 10 million plus scaling stage at which many post-unicorn companies are likely at.

In your mind, what is different in the way companies need to operate in that post-unicorn stage? 

David Zhang

Yeah, that’s a great question. I love how you’re very clear about the centering metrics in your mind with revenues, which reflect scale. 

You know, a lot of times, what we hear is: “Hey, what does the company do is $5 billion of equity value is $10 billion.” That’s a valuation number and pricing number. There are billion-dollar startups that have a later stage of maturity than the $10 billion company, right? Like that happens. 

And so that’s exactly how we see it. We think of it much more in terms of how many employees does the company have? What’s the revenue scale? 

So I think of it as a company’s lifecycle, and a few qualitative stages are important. We have multiple companies in our portfolio. But different companies fall into different stages.

The first one is the pre-product-market fit which we don’t do. 

Then the post-product-market fit is what we discussed as growing and naturally hyper-growth. And then, every product that business matures at some point. So, in that hyper-growth phase, we don’t think about [these things], but going from series B to series E needs a lot more. I’ll give you examples.

Amazon today is still unlocking different S curves, small ones or big ones along the way. So from when they founded the company three decades ago, there are still arguably some parts of the business in hyper-growth, and some are not. 

And so, the point is, we often talk about second X or new S curves for every product that matures in parallel with the core business or core product or business that’s in hyper-growth. 

And so, Amazon with AWS is the most prolific example. They started with the core merchant business, and suddenly, they have a consumer business; where did that come from?

The company is still innovating and unlocking new curves. They’re still in hyper-growth if you will. And then, finally, when all the growth spurts and S curves slow down and die down, the company matures. 

And at this point, the company has reached its full potential. So if it’s a great company, it’ll grow slower but at a very healthy compounding rate. And they will hopefully produce or prioritize profit margins if the economics work. So that’s how we see the growth phase. The growth phase is the most exciting in the entire lifecycle of a company because of the explosion of innovation and growth. And that is where I spend all my time at TCV. That is our specialty. And we’ve been doing that for three decades.

Our advice to our founders is that they’re underpinned by a few pillars we discussed. So the quality of growth is number one. That’s something that we have been centering around forever.

The team is super important. Ten out of ten times, the path from a promising startup to achieving greatness as a company depends on whether or not a co-founder can surround themself with what we’d like to call a world-class team. 

The team is not just an effort of one super soldier but like the impact of an army. It’s a skill. And so, in the growth phase as a co-founder, you start spending a disproportionate amount of your energy on team quality. It is essential to recognize that the team and the bench you build around you are super important, but most people don’t realize that working on their ability to attract talent is vital. So even if you recognize it, it doesn’t mean you can do it right.

And then the third one is keeping your eye on the S curves. I’m going to describe a few conflicting statements in there. But you will appreciate why it’s kind of interesting.

This subject relates to some of the stuff we discussed early on S curves and examples. It’s a very tough balance because, on the one hand, as a co-founder, 200 percent of your focus needs to be on the core product and mission.

Suppose you dropped the ball in that – game over. But if you’re doing it right, these new opportunities and perspectives will often l emerge with the organic evolution. And they can be big ass curves that mark inflection points and even be needle moving. So how do you focus on scaling your core product and business to its full potential while not being distracted by new shiny objects? 

It’s very different for every company in every category. So many things are path-dependent. But often, it comes down to this delicate balance between visionary and execution. And the very, very best CEOs have this unique mix of both qualities of vision and execution. Such CEOs can orchestrate a team around them to achieve both simultaneously. So if you’re good at one, how do you make sure that the other gets done, whether or not it’s you that’s driving it, or you have a great team that’s driving? 

Jonathan Siddharth 

That was super interesting, David. It’s somewhat paradoxical and something I think about a lot. How do you work on maximizing the fullest potential of the current business and not skipping a beat while looking for that next S curve? 

I’m reminded of Apple in a sense. In the early days, the iPod to iPhone transition. It was tough, right? I mean, even after the iPhone, you could argue that the iPad and Apple Watch were kind of good, but not as good as the previous one. And it’s a balancing act to sort of keep optimizing the current machine to its fullest hilt and go while continuously running a background process for the next step function shift. 

What are the most common pitfalls you see companies make in that post-product-market fit scaling stage? 

David Zhang 

The number one danger is losing sight of the product and your customers. And so, what you got here in the first place won’t get you to the next stage. And that’s the theme that we’ve been focused on this entire podcast, but at the same time, there are specific primitives you can never let go of.

There are some truisms. And one of them is your product. 

Most of the companies that we invest in are product-driven companies. They are often the market leader not because of market positioning, but they are the market leader because they have the best product in the market. Their product is better, faster, and cheaper. And a lot of times, there are technological underpinnings. That’s the secret sauce.

When I say losing sight of things, I mean the culture and the ingredients for product innovation and velocity. Those things generally tend to portend success. And people often say: “My product is flying off the shelf. I never had to focus on building a sales team. Now I’m going to amass A killer sales force with a CRO of XYZ background. And we’ll go out and ensure we’re getting our stuff out through the channels.” But in all of this, you forget about your product, right? The core product itself needs to keep innovating. 

You must consider how your company and customers are evolving with the market. How many times has your company, your product catalyzed behavioral change? Customers are never satisfied. They will grow their expectations, so can you keep up with that pace of delivering a magical user experience? 

And that is the key, right? If you focus too much on other stuff, you can get the best sales team and efficiency metrics in the world. But if you forget about making your product much better than anyone else, and if the innovation slows down, it’ll catch up with you over time.

Jonathan Siddharth

That’s excellent advice. Sometimes when you get too large, you look at many spreadsheets, dashboards, and metrics. And there is a risk that you may lose touch with the product, the roadmap, and your customers, right? 

This is something I think about a lot, and one of the things I love doing is I send emails to all our customers who sign up for the first two weeks of the product, and I just have a conversation with them about how their first how their experience with Turing has been.

And I find I’m blown away by how detailed their responses are. People send me these long emails about what they want to see in the product. 

And I’ve never written an email to a company CEO saying: “Hey, can you build this, can you do that?” But it’s incredible how responsive customers are if you just ask. So we take this as a crucial input source when considering what we put in our product roadmap. What do we build next? 

And some of our customers say: “I’d love to hop on a Zoom and share more thoughts in more detail.” I’m blown away because these are C-suite-type folks who are directors of engineering or heads of engineering who want to hire engineers.

David Zhang

You know precisely the spirit of what I’m saying! Right. So a lot of companies track NPS or CSAT. Those are the two scores to understand how customers are feeling. So, if there’s any drop in satisfaction or other negative trends, that’s a warning sign. 

So you just got to make sure they’re super happy. The hard part is getting to the minds of their minds and understanding their experience, how it’s evolving, and how there might be pockets of underserved needs that are emerging already exists that you can solve. If you don’t solve that today, or you don’t produce that surplus value, that becomes a lost opportunity. And if that grows over time, customers will want more. That’s just how the journey is. 

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, that’s right. And David, I have one final question. And then I’m going to ask Kat from our Chief of Staff team to ask a question. My last question is, execution is essential in this product-market market fit and scaling phase. So having a good cadence is important. I liked this phrase, “Step by step, ferociously.” And also someone who said his goal was to build an operationally fearsome company.

Board meetings are an excellent way to ensure the company execution marches to a very tight beat. How do you like to run board meetings? What is your TCB POV on board meetings for companies in that crucial post-product-market fit scaling stage? What topics do you tend to discuss for maximum impact? 

David Zhang 

That’s a great question. What we focus on is having a handle on the pulse on how you’re tracking execution. So execution is often an output of strategy as well as focus. 

You’re not going to succeed in everything you do, right? So, the first thing we always try to do, whether it is board members, investors, or even just friends, is to advise how that when they’re about to start something, they should also try to think about what success looks like. The best way to do this is to keep things as simple as possible and not complicate them. But, in addition, it’s crucial to have the discipline to reflect on that all the time. 

So I have launched a product for six months or even three months. The easy answer would be: “Okay, things seem to be going well. Let’s give it another year.” The good executors will say: “Yeah, we have enough data points from 6 months. If we don’t have enough data points, let’s find them and be critical of why we succeeded. And how does that affect the original Northstar? Whether it’s their KPIs or broad strokes qualitative outcomes. Whether it is a stop or a do more. And having that very disciplined but also frequent feedback loop is critical.

Jonathan Siddharth

That’s great insight, David. We think the same way. So, the first question we ask is: “What does success look like?” Sometimes you have a way to estimate it. Sometimes you don’t. So, it’s always good to have that benchmark baseline to know if we’ve succeeded or failed. 

I’m now going to invite Kat from our Chief of Staff team to ask you a question.

Kat Hu 

Hello, David. So you’ve touched on inflection points in the past. You mentioned it a bit here in terms of S curves. Could you share more about how you think about inflection points for companies in the scaling phase?

David Zhang

Yeah. So if you think of a company as a living, breathing creature, that’s how I like to describe companies. So, many times the metaphor for inflection points would probably be these crossroads in a person’s life, which precedes the change in opportunities, right? 

So, for example, physical growth spurts, new jobs, moving countries, and cities. So like those big moments. That’s the metaphor for inflection points for a company. I’ll give you two examples to bring this to life. 

I love using specific companies in our portfolio for a while now. So the first one is Netflix. Suppose you trace the history of Netflix, which we’ve invested in since 1999 and are still one of the largest shareholders. Netflix was originally a DVD mail-to-home business. I don’t remember the last time I saw a DVD, but that’s how they started. And then, in 2011, they announced this plan to split as mail and streaming services. And they required customers to pay for two subscriptions if they wanted both DVDs and streaming, hoping that people would move to streaming.

That was a strategic decision. Looking back on this, it would have also allowed Netflix to invest more heavily in content needed to drive the subscription business. At least that was the thinking. But customers weren’t happy. The churn rate increased, and then the stock plummeted by 70 percent. That’s an interesting inflection point in the company’s life. At least at TCV, we thought: “Hey, streaming is a potential form factor inflection that will fundamentally alter consumer behavior.”

That’s very clear today. It wasn’t apparent at that point. That was our chance to invest. So we added $200 million of fresh capital to Netflix and its vision to double down on streaming. And so that’s one example of inflection.

I’ll go to the bank which we talked about before. They started with a credit card product. Their second product was this company banking account with savings and checking. When we invested in it, this product had just launched. So we spend a lot of time understanding the product. We thought, gosh, this is a super significant development. We felt that even though it’s not being monetized today, it had the potential to be the center of gravity of workflow. 

We believed this thing would be able to unlock a multi-product distribution and really strengthen the business mode. So, we looked at this product and said: “This is an inflection point for the company. It will go to multi-product because of this, or it has that potential.”

People thought at that time were like: “Gosh. $10 billion.” But that was the price we were paying because we understood this inflection point.

Kat Hu

Both were fascinating examples. Do you have any books, podcasts, or blog posts that you recommend to CEOs thinking about growth in their startup?

David Zhang

Yeah, too many. Some of these are victims of recency bias. Frank Slootman’s Amp It Up is an excellent book. It’s not just not growth, but it’s also leadership. There is an audio podcast called ‘Invest Like the Best.’ I think many people follow, at least in my echo chambers. 

There are blogs that I read. So Stratechery by Ben Thompson is pretty good. Pedro Franceschi, the co-founder of Brex, has a Medium blog, where he writes about the company and its products along with his journey with mental health. He also shares profound thoughts on how people scale. 

And yeah, there’s probably a list of 50 others, and I can share that with you via email.

Jonathan Siddharth

Thank you, David. I enjoyed this conversation. 

Watch the complete interview.

The post Turing Distinguished Leader Series: With Partner David Zhang, TVC appeared first on ReadWrite.

Thank you for the phenomenal response to Turing Distinguished Leader Series. Looking at the success of our sessions, we’ve come up with an exciting after-show format. In the after-show, we will discuss the main takeaways from our most recent TDLS episode.

You may enjoy watching this After-Show episode here. As always, the full text of the discussion is below.

Jonathan Siddharth

Welcome, everybody. So this is our after-show to our podcast on scaling unicorns in a remote-first world. I have with me Kat Hu from our Chief of Staff team. I’m Jonathan Siddharth, CEO, and founder of Turing, and we’re going to reflect on today’s conversation with Sandesh Patnam from Premji Invest on scaling unicorns in a remote-first world.

Kat, what stood out to you in the chat with Sandesh today?

Kat Hu

Yeah, I’m excited to get started! But, first, Sandesh was so insightful and gave a lot of wisdom for scaling startups from his vantage point with about a decade of experience in venture capital. One thing that stood out was how he emphasized that culture is essential for leadership as startups get scaled.

And then Jonathan, turning it back to you. I know culture is also very important at Turing. How have you thought about the culture at Turing, especially with it being a remote-first company?

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah. Sandesh’s point on culture resonated with me. And the first thing I thought about was the need to write things down in terms of your culture or what you’d like your culture to be. For a high-growth company like Turing, there’s so much culture we import relative to the size of the company. I feel like if you don’t write down the kind of company you want to build, sometimes things get set by accident. So then I think a lot about when it comes to cultures.

Step one is thinking through the culture, core values, and how you want people in the company to work, make decisions, and write them down. Step two, the harder part, is to communicate and ensure that the culture you want is the culture being lived in the company.

For example, at Turing, we have a culture of moving fast, working only on big needle-moving things, not incremental things, and being very data-driven in our decision-making. So I think a lot about how we reinforce that in our hiring, firing, and promoting. Do we live those values? Or is it just a doc that lives somewhere the CEO wrote a long time back that people just read, and that’s it?

I’m curious about how you see the second piece of the puzzle? Do you think we live those values at Turing today? What do you see as things that we could do better?

Kat Hu

So I do think that culture does come from leadership, and something that I’ve seen that works well at Turing; hopefully, this advice can help other companies as well, is that you host the CEO roundtables. And this is, for many of the team’s leadership, where we transparently talk about this culture.

And I think another thing that is strange here is you’ve asked everyone to bring in the best of somewhere else that they’ve worked and see how we can make it Turing. So not only are we living out our core culture, but we’re also very open-minded to find the best culture and continuously improve and grow with the team’s diversity worldwide.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yep, that’s right, Kat. I was speaking with our head of recruiting this week. And I’d shared with her that a passing grade is when somebody fits the culture we want. We have a four-point scale of strong reject, weak reject, weak accept, and strong accept. So three out of four is like you fit our culture, but we want more than that. Ideally, we want somebody who’s bringing something amazing to our culture that we can imbibe and become even stronger. That’s when you go above three.

And I think reinforcing those values in hiring is also important to ensure that your team has the values you care about. Value alignment is particularly critical for leaders because when you hire a leader, you will have many clones of this person. Whatever strengths or weaknesses they have, it’s going to be magnified and massively leveraged and amplified.

So I am much more careful about cultural fit, being more strict about holding the line on culture fit, and not hiring people who don’t fit our culture.

Kat Hu

So that relates to something else that stood out to me in our talks with Sandesh. He mentioned that at each level of scale, oftentimes, as a founder, you need to up-level or transition the leadership group. When I heard it, I thought it was a bit of a taboo or a sensitive, emotionally fraught topic. What do you think about this?

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, and it’s definitely a taboo topic, and Sandesh alluded to it too. CEOs tend to be loyal to the team that brought them here. And that’s a bias to be aware of.

For this particular topic, we are primarily talking about the exec team, i.e., a CEO’s directs in a company. And typically, I hear from many people that an exec’s success rate is pretty low. For example, people tell me that 50 percent of the time, you should assume an exec doesn’t work out in the first six months. I’ve heard this from multiple people and multiple VCs in the past. And it’s always an unsettling and uncomfortable stat to hear.

And the way I think about this change is there are a few mental models you can have.

One mental model I have is to do what creates business value, to ensure that the company’s value grows with the steepest possible slope. So do what’s best for the business. A high-level director ensures the company’s value increases over time. And to do that, one question to ask yourself at some time is: “If you were hiring for this role today, would you still hire this person?” That’s one way to think about it and to check whether this would work or not.

The second is that with every exec, I think about their strengths and areas for improvement and everybody has areas for improvement. Are they aware of their weakness? Are they receptive to feedback? Are they coachable?

Are they either working on it by changing the way they work or are they open to fixing it with the right kind of hiring to complement their blind spots or weaknesses, maybe? When that is not true, when the person is unaware of the gap that exists and cannot change that, I would think about either layering that person or changing the responsibilities. It’s rare that you would have to fire that person because they’ve clearly been good enough to get the company to this particular stage. Hopefully, there is a way to find another role for them that could still be value-generating for the company.

Although realistically, I imagine in most of these cases, the person would probably choose to leave if that happened. In those cases, too, the CEO needs to be grateful for all this person’s contributions to help the company get to the stage. If I were doing this with someone, I would ensure that this person has a great next job opportunity lined up, and I will do everything I could to set them up there because it is the case that some people are probably better suited. Someone could be a superstar at the zero to 50 million revenue stage, but maybe the 50 to 500 million stage is not their sweet spot because it is a different job.

Your responsibilities change. Sandesh referred to people, processes, and repeatability. And this is a different type of job. You can’t be as hands-on as you were in the zero to 50 stage, and some people may not enjoy it as much. Maybe they like the zero-to-one phase more than the one-to-two. And it’s not that they are doing anything wrong. It’s just that their strengths are at that stage. And perhaps their strength is primarily in that stage one. And then a company would love to have them at that stage one phase. So by making a solid referral, we are finding the right fit where they are happy, and it’s also good for the company. So it’s a tricky conversation to have.

Kat Hu

I think it’s great to have a framework because it’s a topic that seems so hard to touch because of the emotional aspects. And I think, as you mentioned in the interview, you’re not only doing what’s best for the company but also helping the overall shareholders. You’re supporting the whole ecosystem and ensuring they’re set up for the best thing for them, which may not be the next level of scale.

Jonathan Siddharth

That’s right, Kat! And one of the things I think about when I have conversations with leaders in a high-growth startup, people should assume that their roles will evolve and change over time. Of course, when the company is growing, you expect your scope and responsibilities to grow too if you’re doing well. But I think it’s essential for the leaders to set expectations that roles will evolve, reporting structures will change, and will constantly be in a state of continuous improvement of the org itself, perhaps twice a year or once a year.

This is because, for a company that’s growing as fast as we are, something that worked a year back may not necessarily be the right structure now. So I think it’s essential to set that expectation early, so people are not surprised. It’s healthy when a company is continuously editing itself in the best possible structure for that next growth stage and the next business phase.

Kat Hu

And then, Jonathan, as the CEO and founder of Turing, I have a few questions about being a founder. The first is when Turing is growing and scaling rapidly as it has been in the last couple of years. How do you approach your personal change? And you mentioned the shift in roles and responsibilities and even mindsets, and so, how do you grow? How do you learn this with each stage?

Jonathan Siddharth

So I kind of work backward from where I would like the company to go in terms of scale growth, etc. And then, I work backward from all the risks to plan to get there and identify all the gaps. And then I map it to address those gaps. [I also think about] what are some areas where I need to uplevel myself, and then I seek out specific mentors. And, I read a lot, as you know.

I think about working on those specific areas of scale to make sure that I’m scaling at least a couple of years ahead of the phase for the company. It gets a little more challenging as you grow and scale. I think a lot of people can give and offer great advice to go from zero to 1 million, which is an important milestone or one to 10 million.

As you grow and reach a particular scale, it feels a little bit like doing a Ph.D. in a field where, after a while, you’ve gone pretty deep down the rabbit hole in one specific area.

For many PhDs, they might be the only people in the world who are exposed to that problem. So I tried to decouple a few areas, for example, leadership, management, scaling teams, culture, and many aspects of a CEO’s role.

How do you create a plan for the company? How do you ensure excellent execution? How do you recruit great execs, and how do you retain great execs? How do you work well with a board? How do you work with your investors in the right way?

So I seek out excellent mentors for each of them, and it’s almost like I have a Yoda for each specific skill, and occasionally I make my pilgrimage to Dagobah, this island where Luke meets Yoda. So I go there, and I try to learn from people who have done this at scale, and I try to absorb as much as I can and make the changes needed to apply that to Turing’s situation.

But it’s all about the mindset of being in a state of continuous learning and continuous growth. So it has its positives and negatives where I feel like on the negative side, it may feel like you’re constantly being self-critical. So you have to balance that with reminding yourself of all the good things that are also happening with the company.

But firstly, it’s about identifying areas you need to work on for this year, function-specific mentors, books, and other resources, and being in a state of continuous learning. Whenever I meet someone, I think about what I can learn from this person. So make sure you surround yourself with people you can learn from.

Kat Hu

Yeah, and I’ve seen that. But, again, I think being open-minded and surrounding myself with really good people, so I don’t make bad decisions within the company.

Jonathan Siddharth

For example, Kat, the superpower I want to steal from you is the excellence in structured communication and structured thinking. I feel like with you, when I have a meeting, there is very little that falls through the cracks, right? There is almost perfect information capture from a meeting, so that’s one of the many things I like about working with you.

Kat Hu

I appreciate it. And then the other question I had for you as a founder is the same question posed to Sandesh. What are the most important skills or traits to develop for future founders?

Jonathan Siddharth

I think Sandesh mentioned resilience, right? I believe resilience is a great trait.

As a founder, you need a strong bias for action and speed and to be unstoppable in finding your way around obstacles. I think it requires a lot of persistence. In my first company, I learned the value of persistence. I don’t know if it’s a feature or a bug. Whatever it is, I have it. And I was fortunate to work with a great co-founder, which has been phenomenal, and it’s been great partnering with him on two companies.

My first company took about nine years to get to a good acquisition. I think persistence is essential. I think it’s important to be in a continuous learning, continuous improvement mindset, where you’re always looking for ways to keep getting better daily and week after week. You kind of have to balance confidence with caution. You need a lot of self-confidence in your ability to execute and build a great company. But you also kind of have to be constantly scanning for your blind spots. My first company’s approach was primarily like: “Here’s what we need to build, and here’s how we’re going to build it. Let’s go build it.” It was a little more of what we needed to do.

Now, I think not just about what we need to do to execute and win the market and build an iconic company, but I also think about all the things that can go wrong. I think about all the ways we can fail and make sure we have a clear risk mitigation and contingency plan so that I’m never surprised.

So, I think a lot about redundancy and fail-safes for different plans. And it may seem pretty negative to think about all of that, but it actually gives me a lot of peace of mind when I know that: “Hey, here’s our plan A, but you know if something changes here, we have this plan B, and there’s a backup to this plan B which is Plan C.”

So there is no single point of failure for anything; it reflects in many other things. I always want to be in a situation I can walk away from if things are not good. And that means building sound backup systems in planning. So in terms of what’s a trait, maybe the trait is systems-level thinking, thinking in terms of contingency planning, and surrounding yourself with great people.

I think I am fortunate to work with a great exec team and a great co-founder. So maybe the trait there is being the kind of person that strong leaders want to work for. So those would be on my list, and it does take a lot of energy and work. It’s not easy. And it’s imperative to have an excellent personal support system. My wife, Emily, is amazing. I don’t think it’s very easy to be married to a founder CEO. And I think for everyone, it’s good to have a good personal support system outside of work. So that’s something that has helped me focus clearly on Turing and help the company get to where it needs to go.

I think it’s Paul Graham of Y Combinator, he has this phrase to describe founders, and he came up with “relentlessly resourceful.” So that was his phrasing of what it takes. But we all have blind spots, and I may be missing some stuff here too. This is from my experience so far. I’m sure if you ask me the same question a year or two from now, I will have a few more things that I want to add to this.

Kat Hu

That makes sense! Was there anything else from Sandesh’s interview that stuck out to you that you want to emphasize before we wrap up?

Jonathan Siddharth

There was one thing that I thought was interesting. I asked Sandesh: “What is different in a post-unicorn scaling stage that you want people to be mindful of?” He said: “In most markets, the first 20 percent is easy to get; the next 80 percent is tough. Although there won’t be a clear line that you cross where you’re like, ‘Oh, we have to do something different now.’ You have to continuously track what will help us unlock this next more challenging market segment. In the next 80 percent, is there something different in this customer segment? Are the objections different? Does the product need to change? Does the sales process need to change? Does the GTM need to change?

Recognizing that you may need to make some changes and again, what got you here may not be what brings you to that next stage and making sure that you make the right changes to attack that. So having this nuance to growth, it’s not for margins. It’s probably stage-wise.

That made me think about being aware of it, being open to it when it happens, and keeping an eye on it. Sandesh said you must first hear and sense it in the GTM function. So I’m going to keep my eyes and ears peeled to make sure that we see that and react to it optimally.

Kat Hu

Yeah, that’s excellent advice!

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah. Great. This was fun. This was our first after-show for these how-to-scale unicorns in a remote-first world. Do you think we should keep doing this?

Kat Hu

I enjoyed this, and I loved learning more about your perspective, diving deeper into suggestions, words, and wisdom, and making it more actionable.

Jonathan Siddharth

That sounds great! And for all founders, heads of engineering, and others listening, if you’d like to spin up your Engineering Dream Team in the cloud, hire pre-vetted engineers at the touch of a button, go to Turing.com, and that message was not sponsored, it was organic! Cool. Thank you, Kat, and we’ll continue this with our next segment.

Kat Hu

Thanks, Jonathan. Have a good one.

Jonathan Siddharth

Thanks. Bye.

The post Turing Distinguished Leader Series: After-Show Episode One appeared first on ReadWrite.

Legacy brands have the ability to do more than just survive. Thriving in this era of disruption is essential — here’s how.

There is a standard narrative that most of us have heard many times. One that has fueled the growth of upstart hubs and emerging brands worldwide. The anecdotal versions are about the digital startups offering products and services designed to disrupt and redefine legacy industries and their behemoth brands.

But as it turns out, Goliath doesn’t always fall so easily.

Take an Example From Banks in The Era of Disruption

Twenty years ago, for example, pundits were confidently predicting that large banks would be disrupted by decentralized bits and bytes. Of course, we now know that the financial services market expanded to accommodate the influx of would-be disruptors, rising the tide for everyone’s boat.

Take Disruption Threats Seriously

In fact, the most significant companies across financial services and tech have greatly accelerated their growth and profitability despite the threat of disruption – particularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But this doesn’t mean that large institutions shouldn’t take the threat of disruption seriously. On the contrary, it is genuine and will have detrimental consequences for those who remain complacent and don’t adapt.

Survival of Legacy Companies

With the exponential growth of disruptive technologies, there are plenty of notable examples across the last several decades of legacy companies that have not survived the arrival of smaller, nimbler competitors and digital-first technology.

Failure to Innovate is at Your Peril

When you think about brands like Blockbuster, PanAm, Kodak, and Nokia, they all have one major flaw in common. They failed to innovate for a future that today seems inevitable. The same can be said about the energy sector. The advent of disruptive smart grid technologies and the sector’s reliance on infrastructure from the dark ages have sealed the fate of an industry that once seemed impenetrable.

Rise to the Future You Deserve and Thrive

But it’s also important to remember that for every brand that has fallen into obscurity, there are numerous others who have risen to the challenge and found even greater growth trajectories. Many of these legacy brands enjoy the benefit of long-established strategies, customer bases, and sheer momentum that can help them turn the changing terrain to their advantage – but only if they act strategically, decisively, and quickly.

Banking on a digital future

Let’s take a look at Fintech. The traditional financial services industry has been hugely impacted by disruptors, from Zelle to Robinhood – and yet big banks like Barclays and JPMorgan Chase are still titans of industry.

Forward-thinking institutions have responded to the fintech boom by looking inward, focusing on disrupting their traditional models of servicing customers in favor of creating a more accessible and impactful experience.

If you’ve ever been to a Capital One Cafe, you know exactly what I’m talking about here. It doesn’t feel like a bank but rather a remote worker’s utopian vision of the future that combines the creature comforts of home, work, and your favorite coffee shop all in one destination. Oh, and it just so happens that you can do your banking there too.

Banks are moving faster than ever

So in an industry that has traditionally been slow to adapt and respond to change, we’re seeing many banks move much faster to adapt to evolving consumer and business needs while leaning into their existing strengths of scale and historical knowledge.

These strategies have helped to ensure the long-term survival of a variety of large legacy financial institutions.

Redefining the energy sector so it can start thriving in the era of disruption

In stark contrast to the continued growth path of the traditional financial services industry, the energy sector has reached a dead end following decades of complacency and self-inflicted wounds that have led to its imminent disruption and demise.

Alternate energy is the same ancient workings in a new wrapper

While there have been significant investments in driving the growth and availability of alternative energy sources, that progress has been primarily hindered — at least in the U.S.  — because even alternative energy feeds into the same ancient electric grid that we’ve been relying on for more than half a century. The U.S. government provides all kinds of information on the “what is renewable energy” while providing zero solutions.

What are utility companies doing to innovate?

This is an example of a sector that needs disruption, along with the utility companies that have helped to perpetuate the failure of an archaic and broken model. You don’t need to look much further than Texas’s massive electrical grid failure or California’s catastrophic wildfires for proof. The government blames the wildfires on climate change rather than outdated systems.

For Your Business to Thrive in The Era of Disruption — You Must Invest and Improve

For renewable energy to truly have a systemic and lasting impact, there must be a fundamental shift toward investment in improving the infrastructure of the existing grid.

The good news is that advances in smart grid technologies are paving the road for an energy model that actually meets the needs and demands of the 21st century and well beyond.

Smart grids have the ability to drive the more efficient distribution of electricity to broader areas and reduce the overall cost of operations and management.

What can legacy brands learn?

With all of this in mind, here are three time-tested areas that companies should be focusing on in order to ensure longevity despite the threat of disruption.

• Focus on people

  Companies need to build teams with a wide range of thought and perspectives to quickly adapt to changing market dynamics and break free from “business as usual.” Creativity and innovation take the biggest hit when everyone looks, thinks, and acts the same within an organization, severely limiting growth potential.

• Focus on process Most legacy companies need to rewire the corporate brain to think and act more like the emerging brands that are driving disruption, rather than falling into a state of complacency. Organizations need to think proactively about elements like how they develop new products, how they manage order fulfillment, how they allocate scarce resources, and most importantly, how they engage with their customers.
• Focus on technologyLegacy organizations need to invest in their technology stack to keep pace in the digital era, and they need to do it quickly. Many are leveraging their scale to successfully tackle digital transformation by realizing which traditional products and services in their offering are being commoditized and then building those into foundational, utilitarian services to customers.

Conclusion

While it’s clear that the disruption of industry behemoths is exaggerated in many cases, it will most certainly become a harsh reality for those who don’t take an outside-in view of their markets.

At this point, it’s essential to learn from peer brands that have faced the wave of disruption and ridden it to even greater heights. Pay attention to emerging brands that seek to disrupt your business.

Image Credit: by Olia Danilevich; Pexels; Thank you!

The post Thriving in The Era of Disruption appeared first on ReadWrite.

Hello, everyone! Thank you for the fantastic response to the Turing Distinguished Leader Series. In this episode, we have Sandesh Patnam. Sandesh is the Lead Partner anchoring both the private and listed equities investing practice at Premji Invest (PI) in the US. Premji Invest is the primary investment office for Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Technologies.

Engineering leaders discuss hyper-growth post the unicorn phase. CEOs and their companies must be open to continuous change.

*Read the Scaling Unicorn’s interview here — or if you prefer to listen — the live interview is included at the bottom of the page.

Jonathan Siddharth 

Welcome to Turing Distinguished Leader Series. I am Jonathan Siddharth, founder and CEO of Turing. Today we’re talking about how to scale unicorns in a remote-first world. 

And we have with us an extraordinary guest, Sandesh Patnam, VC at Premji Invest. Sandesh will share more about what he’s observed with companies going through this exciting growth stage. 

Sandesh, you have a decade of experience as a Managing Partner at Premji Invest. You’ve guided several companies through this hyper-growth phase, i.e., the post-unicorn growth phase. And before we get started with specific questions, I’d love to hear more about how you got into VC. What excites you to stay in the industry for as long as you have?

Sandesh Patnam

Hi Jon. It’s good to be here, and thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure speaking with you. I’d say I’m an investor by chance, not by design. And if I go back to my early days in the mid-90s, doing engineering work, I was an architect thinking about high-end microprocessor design and looking at cutting-edge next-generation systems. I was at Stanford, doing my master’s and running a group called BASIS, the Business Association for Stanford for Engineering Students, and trying to recruit VCs to be the leaders in business plan competitions. 

One thing led to another. So I tried to recruit a couple of VCs, and the interaction was great. Also, I was called upon to do diligence on a bunch of calm, focused IC companies. And then I did a startup that eventually got acquired at the peak of the first bubble to a company called KMC, Sierra in Canada. So I was trying to figure out what to do next. And one of the VCs that I interacted with said: “Look, we enjoy how you think about technology. Why don’t you try this for a few years and see how you like it?” 

My company was around only for about two years, and we had a quick exit, and this was back in the day. So I thought: “Hey, this is kind of easy.” We would go in and define the idea and get a few customers. And everything that we did after I became an investor for the first year for investments had the same playbook. We made the investment, defined the architecture, and within maybe about 15 to 18 months, these companies got acquired. 

So we never really experienced the scaling journey like what you have experienced today. And then the second bit would be the hard part of the next decade, of really building companies. So you learn venture in a way that I don’t think you would learn otherwise if you don’t go through a significant downside. So for me, the journey to venture was more happenstance at the end of the day, not by design. But once I got into it, I loved the entire journey. 

I’ve had the opportunity of doing early, mid and late-stage ventures and then running public markets at scale on a long-biased fund and in a market-neutral format for many years before joining Premji Invest to build out a crossover strategy. 

But look, I think the journey is phenomenal. I love the excitement of the entrepreneurs, new ideas, the scaling. I think you hit upon a great topic. I mean, people think about getting to become a unicorn, but what after, right? I believe that is the more challenging part. And to me, it’s phenomenal to kind of go through that scale piece.

Jonathan Siddharth 

That sounds great! And Sandesh, so let’s assume a company has reached the unicorn status, and now they are in that post-unicorn scaling phase. What do you find as the primary shift in the way companies that you advise? 

And what do the founders and CEOs have to change in that post-unicorn phase versus the earlier stages of company building? 

Sandesh Patnam 

It’s a great question. There are so many elements. These are not in a specific order, but I’ll sort of walk through a few things in my observation that I’ve seen people do well. And I think the other side of the same coin is if you don’t do it. It is not the end of the road, but you have to pivot and move things around to get back on track. 

So, what I would say is, valuation aside, the scaling journey has two elements to it. So, if you think about your market sizes as the first aspect, there’s a specific segment of the market that you’re good at. And let’s just hypothetically say, from the 100% of the market, the first 15 or 20 percent has specific exit criteria, right? 

So you build a product that works for the first 10%, and you are prosecuting that path. And if it’s a large enough market, you’ve got tons of runway to access that market. 

But generally, the remaining 70 or 80, or 90% of the market has some other issues. So whether it’s tied up in some fashion it’s attached to something else, it’s not easily accessible with this product suite. So your go-to-market motion needs to shift, and you have to start thinking about how you have to change the company on all of its elements: Product, go-to-market, and all of the other things you have to do to address the perks that are locked in some way, right? And so this could be price elasticity, it could be the scale economics, thinking about how you have to move up market or down market or side market. 

You have to think about that. I find very few management teams and entrepreneurs who can prosecute these things nearly simultaneously. And you have to do it nearly simultaneously because when it hits you, you won’t realize it’s hitting you. 

These challenges are not atypical, right? So you’ll go to the board meeting or have discussions with the team. And they’re like: “You know, our sales efficiency has come down. We probably hired the wrong people.” Or something like: “We had to respond to an RFP, and we have to change a few things in the product.” And it looks pretty linear, but it’s linear because you haven’t thought through what the other side needs to look like. 

And then you’re trying to connect the dots, and you’re always a step behind. And the result is this: The margins profile breaks down, or your growth slows down for some reason because you have introduced this new product. So then, if your founders don’t see the vision on the other side, they start thinking about an exit. 

So I feel like that journey of understanding what parts of the market you are addressing, being very maniacally focused on the understanding that and where the next segment lies, is important. So I think bridging those two things is something very few management teams do well. 

And if you can do that near-simultaneously, you can have this growth rate that allows you to forget about evaluation. You get to the 100, then the 200, and the 500 or the billion. You can only sustain that growth rate if you think about both elements. 

That’s one aspect of it, and I know it’s a very broad way of describing it. But if you double click on it, there are so many elements, right? It’s the people, the processes, the culture, how data-focused you are, and all these subtle things at the outset. 

But in many cases, the processes and the people that get you to the first 100 typically are not the people who get to the next 200 or the next 500. 

When do you feel like you’ve hired the guy that gets you to a billion or hired the guy that gets you to 500? And the answer to that question was you never hire that guy because you are always recruiting. You’re always recruiting for that next layer, right? 

So the A-team is the A-team for now, and the A-team for the future is different. And you can do that in many different ways. The one thing I would tease out mostly is [thinking about] people, processes, and that next unlock.

Jonathan Siddharth

Sandesh, that was super insightful. So [as you mentioned], continuous change is required. And whenever you have to make a change, what metrics would you look at [for that]? 

Sandesh Patnam

It’s always in the go-to-market function, right? The first line of distress comes when your product and vision meet the customer. You have to pay very detailed attention to this feedback. 

You will see many discussions [on this feedback] at the board level everywhere. When you hit this first kid, these are the questions you get asked. 

But nobody asks the fundamental question: Is there something changing in your customer base? Is there something changing in the market? Are you moving upmarket? Are you moving into a new vertical? Are you going to new geo? What does that unlock? Does that require something else? 

And so, you need to have an excellent understanding of what that next unlock is. If this first 20 percent gets you something, what does the next 50 percent look like? And I think drawing those two things in parallel will allow you to make those decisions much more pronounced. 

Jonathan Siddharth 

That sounds good. What advice do you give to CEOs as they think through whether they have the right team and whether they need to make changes to that team? How to manage the shift during those phases when somebody needs to be layered or replaced? 

Sandesh Patnam 

This way of thinking may sound too capitalistic or too brutal. A lot of CEOs tend to be very loyal to that initial team. And I think there is no fault in that. That’s what engenders so much success and value. But you need to be very brutal about your thinking about scale, right? 

So it’s always a hard decision because it’s the same thing in products and processes. It’s all about the people at the end of the day. So the first thing you may think about is coaching the existing team member. In some cases, I would say yes, it works. 

But you know, you have so many battles, and startups are hard to do. It’s a lonely journey for a lot of founders and CEOs. So having that equal thought partner and the person who can do the execution at that scale is necessary. So if you are doing their job or have to think about it, you’re not thinking about something else. 

Many CEOs say that they should have probably let that person go a year or six months earlier when they first had that thought. And so, I’d say that it is most important to make sure when to let go. So be a little more brutal about that. 

In this pivot from early to late in the growth journey, you don’t think about processes as much as you do in the early journey. You’re trying to break things, and you have to have a fast-moving situation. But when you have $100 million or $200 of revenue, when you try to double or triple that, the kind of person who can do that is slightly different. They do focus on people development, they do focus on processes, and they do focus on repeatability. And I think those are the metrics. 

I think that allows you to get to that next phase because you can’t have what worked in the first 20 or 30 and the first 50 customers work for the next 1000.

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah, and for me, one clarifying part is to remind myself of my primary job to grow business value. It’s my primary job to make sure the value of the business is maximized. And if I do that, I’m able to help everyone who has access to equity in the company, like employees, shareholders, and investors. 

Sandesh Patnam 

That’s great. I agree with that. There’s a book that I recommend sometimes. It’s a book called Seven Powers by Hamilton Helmer. And it talks about the potential value, market scale, and power, along with these seven things that one needs to think about. 

It lays out the dynamic between strategy and power and how you can continue to think about potential value. It’s a book that is interesting. It’s a little dated, maybe five or six years ago, but it’s worth reading.

Jonathan Siddharth

And are there any other books, blog posts, or videos that you consistently recommend to your CEOs? 

Sandesh Patnam 

There are lots! I listen to your podcasts. But, I think it depends as a lot has been written about culture, an owner’s mindset, or things of that nature. But I think this type of thinking about the built culture is critical. 

Jonathan Siddharth 

I find myself recommending High Output Management by Andy Grove, Zero to One by Peter Thiel, and Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman to a lot of my exec team.

Sandesh Patnam 

Yeah, all great books. 

Jonathan Siddharth 

That’s great! And for the next question, what are some common mistakes that you see companies make at this scaling stage? Any pitfalls to avoid for the management team and CEOs?

Sandesh Patnam 

I think it’s sort of the same thing. But I would say something that I alluded to earlier. I think the business supports certain organic, linear motions. 

There is no shortcut in terms of time, people, and process. So if you are trying to shortcut it in some ways and trying to fast forward things, that always creates holes within the organization. And the product and the go-to-market will eventually come back to bite you. 

Often, you feel like you’ve arrived, and you’re already thinking about the next thing and trying to accelerate the process. And we’ve gone through the last two or three years where the speed with which we are doing rounds has led to what I would say no meaningful internal processes getting built or risks taken off the table in between rounds. 

So I’d say don’t over-index on that and focus on the organic next steps while knowing what that end goal is and watching out for these big inflection points where your customer base changes and look at what that means as opposed to trying to fix a sales problem or something like that.

Jonathan Siddharth

And could you share any examples of a shortcut that burnt you?

Sandesh Patnam 

I think this usually ends up in product in many cases, at least in my experience, and it’s the organic versus inorganic question. We’re talking about unicorns at scale. I’m not talking about the companies that are probably getting there.

When you reach that stage, you feel like you have the equity value to do that. And in a lot of cases, that comes with so much downside. And whether it’s people processes, product integration, go to market, and I’d say a common error in many cases is like: “Hey, this is something that we should have the equity to go buy. And we should do these 1234 things to get to that next milestone quicker. 

And I’m talking about a funding milestone, in this case, so I feel like the decision to do so has to be organic. 

I feel like that is more common than you would imagine. So the quicker shortcut I say is to really [get that] organic was inorganic, and it always stems from the product. 

Jonathan Siddharth 

Got it. So the mistake would be to make any aggressive acquisitions to beef up the product somehow, thinking that that will offer some inorganic growth acceleration. And more often than not, these types of purchases at this stage of the company don’t tend to move the needle positively. 

What’s the most common piece of advice that you see Sandesh offering the boards of these companies at this stage?

Sandesh Patnam 

I’d say culture. Culture is very, very important at this stage. You have to be very cognizant of pockets that may develop within the company. Maybe there’s this macro team like: “Hey, we’re doing this, and we’re this A-team, and we’re going to do that” And they do certain things that are different from the culture you are trying to build, and maybe they have success. And the hard thing to do is to understand that success comes at a cost. 

And recognizing that and fixing it early because it eventually always comes home to roost you, and you don’t want the headaches. And culture stands on its own. 

I think the type of people you bring into the organization, the learning aspects of it, matter a lot, and I think, for the ones that are sustainable and can build massive businesses, spend a lot of time thinking about that.

Jonathan Siddharth 

Yeah, thanks, Sandesh. We also have Kat from my Chief of Staff team here. So I’m going to invite Kat to ask you any questions about the state of company building.

Kat Hu 

Thanks, Jonathan. It’s great to meet you, Sandesh. So my question for you is, what traits or skills do you think are most important to develop for future founders who want to build successful startups?

Sandesh Patnam 

Gosh, I think that question should be addressed to Jonathan. I would say it’s incredibly lonely. But, the most crucial trait is resilience and being able to understand your vision truly and stick by it. And, in the face of many things in the market telling you otherwise, to be able to power through it. 

With some founders, we see that they’re willing to take on the challenge. And, for us, we’re looking at companies that can thrive in the public markets, not as a liquidity event, but mainly as a sense of quality and size of opportunity they’re pursuing. And we spent a lot of time listening to these great business leaders in the public markets that are creating tremendous value.

There are many subtle points, for example, how they talk about their business, the vision they portray, the delivery of that business model, and how they communicate that vision. So those are critical aspects. And the idea is to create that dot plot and potentially identify people who have that similar capability. 

Everybody has a nuance, right? So, that is how we would think about it. I believe resilience in those cases is a key attribute in my mind.

Jonathan Siddharth 

Thank you, Kat and Sandesh. So, could you tell us a little bit about Premji Invest? What types of companies do you look for, and what kinds of founders should come and speak with you? And what’s unique about Premji Invest, and what makes the firm a good partner for companies at this stage?

Sandesh Patnam 

The first thing is, as a firm, we are pretty mission-oriented, and we run a fund in the typical context of a broader crossover fund. We directly invest on behalf of an endowment or a foundation. The foundation focuses on enhancing primary education in developing countries, seeded initially by Azim Premji, the founder, and chairman of Wipro. 

And since then, our goal has been to create a corpus, an endowment of a size that can continue that vision of the foundation’s aspirations in perpetuity. So at a high level, it will have a mission orientation to it. 

That means that we want to partner with companies that have enduring value. So mission accomplished for Premji Invest, the fund that supports the endowment, is if we can hand back to the endowment, say 20 or 30 companies each worth many billion dollars each. 

What that means, then, is that we want to invest in companies that can create a significant market cap and thrive in the public markets for an extended period. And so, we run a crossover fund for public markets and private markets in some ways. So we understand what a company that thrives in the public market looks like. And the idea is to create the dot plot and identify companies with similar aspirations and business models, the whole bit in the earliest stages, and partner with them through the entire journey. 

So that’s where we are focused on. If, through our diligence process, we conclude that this is more like an M&A event, it’s unlikely that we will invest in these companies. And so, largely, I’d say that is the broader vision of the firm. 

Thematically, we do everything tech, consumer healthcare, and fintech. And typically, I think the right stage for us is for companies that have achieved product-market fit and are going through that scaling journey that we just described. So the scaling journey is where we can be helpful, and the one distinguishing factor for us is we’re a very product-oriented firm. 

So early-stage venture has many people that have that orientation, data stages. You have people that think about public markets and models and valuations. We do that as well, just as well as anybody else. But we have a strong product orientation. And the idea is to think of the product at scale. 

What product gets you the first 100 million gets you the next 500 million? We’re thinking about that at scale. We’ve seen that journey now with a bunch of our companies. I believe that we’re singularly focused on that aspect, which is a differentiator for us.

Jonathan Siddharth 

Thank you, Sandesh, and if people want to learn more, how do they reach you or Premji Invest? 

Sandesh Patnam 

By design, we are largely invisible, but I think, you know, anybody can drop me an email at sandesh@premjiinvest.com. 

Jonathan Siddharth 

Yeah, that sounds great, Sandesh. It’s been great having you. Thank you for sharing your lessons on scaling unicorns. 

Watch the complete video.

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Using scheduling software improves time management. But not everyone is making use of this new technology. When you don’t utilize your time management software — i’s similar to having a new Ferrari, but driving it barely five miles under the speed limit.

To unlock a sports car’s ultimate speed, you must understand its engine. You must learn software advantages and how to leverage the power it has to boost your productivity. You’re only getting surface value for your software if you’ve looked at it solely like the Ferrari above — and only been interested in the paint and leather seats. Change how you think about your scheduling software.

Anticipate What Your Software Can Do for Productivity

Living in the moment is exciting but not very productive when you’re thinking about software. So you need to plan if you want to maximize your time using the software. Ask any industry leader or successful entrepreneur how much planning goes into their daily lives — and the same goes with using a piece of software.

You should plan daily, weekly, and monthly by changing your schedule program’s perspective. Above all, with daily planning, you may schedule challenging tasks at times when you know you are more productive. For example, plan all meetings and deadlines weekly. Monthly planning allows you to review your own KPIs and prepare for a more productive month. Meanwhile, your scheduling software lets you and others cooperate and plan together when you all have open times.

Leaders must juggle several jobs, duties, and deadlines. Your scheduling software will also assist in decreasing manager-team misunderstanding and miscommunication. For example, X’s new blog post is due tomorrow morning, with editing by an in-house editor at the end of the day — is that on the editing schedule? You need to have a spot to manage your team’s metrics for your scheduling software. He says the metrics help team leads and managers plan their time for each development cycle.

Personal-Professional Balance

Even if your profession is vital to your lifestyle, your family and yourself should always come first. According to a Deloitte study,  organizations that promote work-life balance see double the employee productivity. Therefore, the most excellent scheduling software encourages work-life balance.

Set aside time for family. Schedule dates with your spouse and your children’s athletic events and recitals. These events should be non-negotiable, and you may arrange them using the same tools you use for your business.

The balance between work and life is much easier to accomplish. Use scheduling strategies that help you maximize your productivity while on the clock. For example, the Pomodoro technique divides work into little blocks with brief pauses in between. Using this scheduling strategy will help you focus better during the day, do more things in less time, and take less work home.

Color Coding for Geeks — Great at-a-Glance Scheduling

A unique color-coding system helps you to comprehend your itinerary quickly. Each item on your timetable can be assigned a different color. Red can be used to highlight important client meetings. For example, yellow can represent longer-term tasks like planning or reporting. Blue may stand for family time, personal obligations, etc. To complete activities faster, you’ll want to establish your schedule’s priority. There are many ways to accomplish this.

Visual cues can help people understand information faster, so go ahead and be colorful. Once you learn your color code, your daily schedule will inform you where and when you need to be. For example, a red light indicates a board meeting that you must prepare for. Consequently, no matter what the event is, a sliver of blue at the end of your schedule will remind you that you can’t work late tonight because you have a family event.

Set Alerts on Scheduling Software

Scheduling an event isn’t always enough — you’re not using scheduling software to its full potential if you don’t set reminders for important events. Therefore, setting up reminders for each meeting or appointment will help you keep track of your schedule. Remember to set an alarm for your travel time as well.

Your reminders will serve as a backup if you forget something or misplace your paper notes. There’s nothing worse than missing a critical meeting or giving the incorrect impression — these types of things damage careers. Use your scheduling program to avoid this.

Reminders can also help you prepare for upcoming occasions. Consequently, a half-hour notice before a big presentation provides you time to gather your thoughts and organize your materials. You should know yourself well enough to see if you need more time than a half hour. That’s all you will need if you have prepared the night before and have everything ready to go for that meeting.

Others to Contact in Scheduling Software

Preparing and attending a meeting where the other party does not show is counterproductive. Both parties must agree on a schedule. Even if you do everything perfectly —  there are times when someone may be late or not show up for a meeting. All your planning and organizing will be for naught.

To avoid this, send reminders to folks with whom you have made plans. Most scheduling software allows you to set up reminder messages.

Leaders can create the perfect reminder once and use it for all future engagements for everyone on their team.

People won’t have to worry about colleagues or clients skipping meetings or writing personalized emails every time. They may also share a meeting agenda or a scheduling link to improve collaboration — and the same process and work while managing your hybrid teams’ hybrid work schedules.

We need to cease utilizing our scheduling software for only the basics. Instead, leaders should use this software tool’s array of valuable features to boost productivity companywide.

Start today to make the most of your time. Remember that using your scheduling software — “now” — spelled backward means you’ve “won.”

Image Credit: Andrea Piacquadio; Pexels; Thank you!

This article was originally published here.

Try Out Productivity Tools We Are Using

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Imagine you’re a new employee at a time when many people are starting their careers remotely. Where is the remote work playbook? Are employees ready for remote work routines? How do they feel about their remote working routines?

Maybe you felt a little uneasy and didn’t know how to blend in when you started your first job. Perhaps you didn’t know who to ask questions from or seek support — or even how or what to ask, in the first place? After a while, you gained a feel for how things operated in the business you were in and whom you could turn to ask questions within the organization.

Where is the Teams Remote Working Playbook?

Imagine you’re a new employee at a time when many people are starting their careers remotely. Your first coding, writing, or new internship is your job. How do you handle your schedule with college, study, and work? Who’s going to help you navigate this new form of time management? Hopefully, if you are an employer, parent, or mentor you will know how-to guide this new person.

But as a young new employee — how will you understand office culture if you’d never worked?

Interpersonal issues

It’s difficult for first-time remote workers to stay motivated, especially if their boss only occasionally calls but rarely meets them. Their superiors and coworkers aren’t as accessible as they would be if you were in the office each day — or if you had had a relationship in the past (before COVID) as a full-time employee.

Finding the knowledge these new workers need will take more effort and time than has previously been addressed.

Many firm policies, procedures, and onboarding programs provide guidance but lack cultural awareness. New remote employees may be overwhelmed and have questions, but are hesitant to ask. New employees and their employers often believe an individual should resolve matters independently and avoid drawing attention to themselves. Some businesses don’t realize that everything has changed over the last couple of years and new protocols need to be in place.

Changing channels to remote work

Managers should explore daily check-ins with remote new employees.

An onslaught of messages and responsibilities throughout the day may not offer a new hire a sense of belonging. Consider combining emails, phone conversations, video meetings, and online collaboration portals.

Encourage questions and use blunders as learning opportunities. Consider providing a “virtual buddy” who will furnish informal support to your new team member along with virtual coaching. Always think about the career growth of your new employee — and specify possible career routes and milestones. Teaching a career path and the acquired learning helps the new team member feel a ray of hope.

Prescribe working part-time at the office or on the job site if your less experienced employees can accommodate the schedule. One-third of workers aged 18-24 preferred working offsite only one day a week, according to PwC, and only a fifth of those polled agreed.

Onboarding and rapport development are great — but organizational knowledge is likely best shared by more senior teams.

Working it with remote work

As an example, consider the case of Emily who started as an IT apprentice for an international horticultural company during the pandemic. She initially shadowed her mentor online and his calls and team meetings helped her master IT troubleshooting. She spent a few days in the office before Covid-19 forced its closure.

Emily admits she was initially intimidated. “I was afraid I’d make a mistake or remove a file from the company but my team is fantastic. If I have questions, I can easily reach someone remotely.”

Within four months, she was working solo, more confident, and well-versed in the process of helping staff with IT challenges. Emily excels in her work due to her management and team’s support, continual IT studies, and her personal drive to grow.

But this type of achievement may not be shared by others who work remotely for the first time.

Perceptions and Health with remote work

During Covid-19, researchers studied teleworking to see how it influenced employees’ job performance, job happiness, and physical and mental health. The researchers found exciting data. You can find their comments in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The research plan Implementation was thorough. The main thing that the subjects said helped them to adjust to their new work schedule was how widely people embraced them. Remote work isolation and conflicts with family and work commitments were the main issues that stopped the new team members’ growth and adaptation.

Those new employees who were the best at adjusting were the ones who had prior remote working experience and thus expertise. Those who were starting their first full-time job and had never worked remotely were not as successful.

Recommendations for making remote work less stressful for new hires: Improve teamwork by teaching everyone at the same level and the same time — and supply a mentor.

Helps for the new employee for remote work — especially if they are young

Discuss communication with all coworkers and superiors together. Teach employees how to use databases to manage tasks and address fundamental IT issues.

Include remote workers in the creation of remote work schedules and the schedules of the in-office staff — review remote work initiatives and have your onboarding team help.

Look for “charge agents'” who will mentor and coach new remote workers. Collaborate with other organizations in your network or sector to share best practices.

In terms of mentorship, the trend toward virtual will likely continue even after all employees return to the office. Virtual mentoring can help employees feel valued, acknowledged, and empowered to perform at their best. Some of the practices of the past for office protocol will never be the same again — so get used to and encourage innovation in your teams.

Making your work programs accessible requires learning communities, communities of practice, and staff resource groups. To provide these services remotely was practically unheard of in the past and has been a challenge. But these practices are becoming normalized in many businesses and institutions since the pandemic.

Rewards and recognition in remote work

Consider rewarding and recognizing remote workers who show initiative and inventiveness. Also, explicitly nurture soft skills in new hires by understanding the need for human interaction to develop these talents.

Giving a new employee some early wins can help develop confidence. Let them co-chair a meeting or deliver a topic of interest to the company. Any leadership opportunities you provide will begin to build trust and credibility among the new employees’ peers.

As you work with your new employee or team member — especially if they are at university, or part-time — your scheduling conflicts will become much less common.

Your current new employees will help you rewrite the playbook for your future remote employees.

Take the awkwardness out of the scenario by using Covid-19’s two years of experience to greet new employees from anywhere — and help them become creative and productive.

Image Credit: Cottonbro; Pexels; Thank you!

This article was originally published here.

The post Did We Forget to Give Teams a Remote Working Playbook? appeared first on ReadWrite.

In this Turing Distinguished Leader Series session, we conversed with Ashu Garg, General Partner at Foundation Capital. Ashu is an early investor in several unicorns, including Turing.

Jonathan Siddharth

Welcome to Turing Distinguished Leader Series. Today, we have a special guest, Ashu Garg, General Partner at Foundation Capital and Turing’s founding investor, with us. So Ashu, could you please introduce yourself?

Ashu Garg

Absolutely! Thank you for having me here today. Here’s a very quick introduction—I’m a general partner at Foundation Capital.

I’ve been at Foundation for 14 years. And before Foundation, I started my career as an engineer graduating from IIT Delhi. After that, I spent 15 years in various operating roles, primarily in technology companies, [that culminated] in two stints at Microsoft—leading the machine learning and AI work, and before that, leading field marketing for the software businesses.

And coming to the topic of today’s discussion: What’s the secret behind building unicorns? 

Great companies always start with some unique insight into a customer problem and solve it. In any recipe, the salt makes all the difference. The ingredient [in the case of companies] is founders. 

I think they are what make a difference when everything else is equal. Founders who have persistence and are willing to do what it takes to cross the hurdles every day are game-changers.

Jonathan Siddharth 

Yeah, that’s right. You said to pick a big customer problem and have a unique insight. But there’s a lot of work to validate the problem and the feasibility of your solution. How do you know if this is a unicorn-sized problem?

Ashu Garg

You’ve said it well. I think in most B2B problem spaces, especially at the application layer, the hardest part is identifying a problem that deserves your attention and time and identifying a point of entry through which you can create your wedge. 

It takes a lot of contact with customers and other people participating in that market to figure out that one thing people will buy. What is that thing that will reduce friction for them? What’s the compelling customer value proposition?

And in most cases, if you spend too much time coding, you miss the forest for the trees. Because now, you lock yourself into whatever features you’ve built without really understanding what the market wants. Now, that’s not necessarily always true. To be fair, I think there are situations, especially as you go lower down the stack, where the technical innovation matters. And very often, you have to follow the technology and see where it leads you. 

Let’s return to your broader question of how do you decide that a market is large enough? At some level, you never know. But I think about this from the first-principles point of view. 

Let’s take Turing as an example. If you ask yourself: How many engineers are there today? What do you think that market will be three or four or five years from now? In the case of Turing, the market is massive. It’s a multi-trillion dollar TAM. Now, not all of that market will be applicable on day one. And so, you have to slice and dice that and think: What engineering will people outsource? Who will be willing to outsource remotely? 

Some of those are judgment calls. But in general, my instinct is if you’re solving a huge problem and thinking

about the market broadly enough, you have a much higher probability of building unicorns than if you start with a very narrow view of the market.

Jonathan Siddharth

That sounds great. What things does a company need to do differently as it transitions from a scrappy startup phase to a unicorn phase?

Ashu Garg

That’s a great question. In some ways, it’s a paradox. What makes you successful at the scrappy startup stage can hinder you in some ways later, but you have to find the right balance. 

One: I would say the first thing that exceptional startups in the scrappy stage do well is they have an incredible level of focus on a customer problem on a set of customers.

I would say that’s something you don’t want to lose. And so the balance for founders and companies is [focusing on] innovating on the product without getting distracted by new shiny objects that come along, especially as they get more cash. Cash, in some ways, is the biggest distraction. It allows you to start thinking about doing different things. And you want to leverage the cash to strengthen your value propositions, but you don’t want to get distracted by trying too many new things. So focus while innovating. 

Two: In a small, scrappy startup, the founder / CEO does almost every job in the company. And as you start making the transition, you have to step away and build a leadership team. You need executives in each key role to build and scale those functions. But attracting, recruiting, and managing executives take a lot of time and energy. It is more than a full-time job for most CEOs. 

And so, how do you balance the things you’re doing today? Because you need to keep growing the company every day while building your leadership. That’s hard. I encourage people to start doing this early. 

Because if you suddenly get to the point where you need to hire six executives simultaneously,  you’ll hire zero. And so you need [to hire] one every quarter, and you need to plan through that. So I think that’s a big transition. 

Three: The third big transition is about putting systems and processes in place and keeping them lightweight. Now that you’re no longer managing every function yourself, you want to have some indication of how the pipeline looks. And so you need some tracking tool or some process [in place.] But, at the same time, you want to keep that lightweight because you don’t want to build too much bureaucracy and silos in the organization. 

So those are the three things to think about as you go from a scrappy startup to a unicorn and beyond.

If I had to pick the one thing that is most likely the barrier to becoming a unicorn or a decacorn is how much time and energy people spend on building a leadership team. Because this process is never complete. As soon as you think you have the right leadership team, another hole will emerge. So you just have to make it part of what you do every day.

Jonathan Siddharth

And I think unbilled recruiting is one part of it. Another aspect is making sure that your executive team is successful, building the right relationships with their peers, and integrating well with the company. 

And that takes quite a bit of work because, at each stage in the company, the kind of people you hire are slightly different. It’s almost like driving a car. There’s first gear, second gear, third gear, and when people come into different gear ratios, there’s a little bit of constructive friction from time to time. 

And there’s merit in both sides.  There is no blanket area to match this culture. The company’s DNA changes with these new ingredients [new members] that you add into the gene pool.

Ashu Garg

Yeah. And most founders have to realize that great executives bring a ton to the company, but they are still executives. They’re not founders. Many of them have worked in a siloed environment. They’re used to working in silos and creating silos. Many of them have worked in more political settings, and even if they’re not usually political themselves, some of that rubs off. 

So how do you create an environment where they work well together? If you focus on their gaps, there will always be friction. But if you focus on their strengths and help each of them realize what they are exceptional at, that’s when a team goes into gear four, and you start to see an acceleration in speed.

However, you have to decide when someone’s weaknesses have gotten to the point where they are a barrier to the next growth phase. And at that point, you have to have the difficult conversation and have them step aside. 

In the first phase of a company’s growth, you want a sales leader that leads from the front. They’re still a manager of salespeople, but they’re often the best salesperson in the team. They’re the ones you go to when you want to close the big deal. Sometimes those people are also very good at the process, but they’re often not. 

And in the early days of getting to the unicorn stage, you can supplement them with process people. But as you start to go from unicorn to decacorn, it’s almost entirely about the process. So sales must become a system at that scale. And you need someone who can design and run that system. 

Going from a team of 10 to 100 plus salespersons often takes a different leader. Not always – some people can do both. But if you don’t have that person, you have to make a change.

Jonathan Siddharth

Awesome. What are some common pitfalls that companies run into at the unicorn stage? 

Ashu Garg

That’s a great question. But, just like there’s no one formula for success, there’s no one reason why companies struggle or fail. In many situations, luck is a big part of it. 

But if you put that aside, the first reason companies fail is because the value proposition is just not compelling enough. So listening to the customers and thinking: “Is this [value proposition] really important enough?” is vital. 

The second thing is a lot of founders underestimate the friction to buy and adopt new technology. Most founders have a very optimistic, risk-taking outlook. But if you look at the society at large, that’s a tiny subset of people. Customers don’t have that personality. 

So most customers are thinking about: “What if this doesn’t work? What is it going to take for me to integrate this technology? How am I going to migrate data? How am I going to manage my downside risk?” 

So you have to think through the adoption issues. And even if you have a compelling value proposition, it is crucial to think through how you get people to adopt. I’ve seen companies with incredible technology that never closed a sale because of adoption issues. 

The third thing is challenges around founder dynamics. The initial phases are challenging. There are some fantastic days. There are tough days, too. If you have only one founder, they have challenges because there’s no one to talk to. If you have multiple founders, then you’ll run into fingerpointing situations.

So I would say those are some factors companies should look out for. I’ve never seen a company fail because of the lack of cash. If you have the right team and customer momentum, you’ll always raise money, in my opinion. If nothing else, I’m a firm believer that once we’re in for a penny, in for a pound.

Jonathan Siddharth

That sounds good. Can you talk a little about how companies plan when they reach this unicorn stage? What’s the process? Do they look one year ahead or three? What do they get right or wrong as part of the planning process?

Ashu Garg

It’s a great question, Jonathan. The lack of planning is hugely problematic. And at the same time, too much planning early on is also problematic because you’re essentially throwing darts blindfolded. And so at the unicorn stage, I think about a company as having a solid product-market fit, having absolute clarity around the unit economics, their sales cycle, sales, productivity, etc., 

First of all, you have to start with a top-down view. If you let every executive build a bottom-up plan, then you get into a dozen strategies that you’re trying to reconcile with different assumptions. 

So you need to create an envelope for the plan that is top-down. The envelope needs to have a lot of clarity. For most companies, it is four quarters out. In some cases, where you have very short sales cycles, you can put two quarters out. 

In some cases where sales cycles are more than six months, you need a six to eight-quarter plan. This duration is necessary because the planning window depends on how far ahead you have to hire salespeople. And if you have a 12-month sales cycle, then a 12-month plan doesn’t tell you much. So, in that case, you need a 24-month plan. 

You then put some basic structural constraints in place. You put some basic assumptions around productivity, resourcing, etc. Be very careful not to make too many aggressive assumptions. One of the most significant risks of planning is assuming an improvement in every metric. Individually, those improvements seem reasonable. But cumulatively, it is not very likely it’s going to happen. 

Start with a basic plan. You want to get every executive team member to participate in the planning process. And there is a combination of buying and negotiation there. 

And during that process, the most challenging part for a CEO is listening and distinguishing where an executive is merely negotiating and where they just don’t believe the plan is doable. Because if it’s the latter, you have to change the plan. 

There’s no point in having a plan that your exec team doesn’t embrace. Your senior team doesn’t have to have 100 percent confidence, but your people have to believe it’s possible. So if I try to pick a number, I would say 80 85 percent confidence level [is vital.] So I think that process of going back and forth and fleshing out the assumptions is a critical step in the path. 

This planning process and the process of articulating the assumptions help you understand what the drivers and warnings of the business are at that point.

Once you have that plan with that envelope, I recommend reviewing that plan. Let’s assume it’s a four-week plan for a typical sales cycle where a company has a three to six-month sales cycle. You should review that plan with a lot of detail every two quarters and revise it because every six months, you’ll have a lot more information every six months. 

And you should do a very lightweight review quarterly and start tweaking the assumptions quarterly. But most of the update happens every two quarters, and every time you update the plan, you want to do a rolling four-quarter plan. So you then have planned out the next two quarters. This is because you need to start building capacity for the subsequent year at that point.

Jonathan Siddharth

And typically, how long have you seen companies do this process?

Ashu Garg

Once you have 10 million in revenues, somewhere between 50 and 100 customers, and ten plus salespeople, planning becomes critical. Otherwise, a lot of uncertainty starts to creep into the system. 

But generally, I would say if you do a rolling four-quarter plan every six months, that should take you through to a billion dollars in revenues.

Jonathan Siddharth

Right. And at a unicorn stage, what do you see typically getting discussed at board meetings?

Ashu Garg

So I think board meetings have two dimensions to them. There is a dimension around operational and financial metrics reporting at the unicorn stage. At this point, you have a plan and an understanding of why you are deviating from the plan. And so, it’s essential to define the key metrics that you’re going to focus on. There should be one metric for revenue, one metric for cash, one metric for gross margin, and you need to have a shared understanding of how those are defined. 

Getting that set of metrics agreed upon and digging in at the start of every board meeting is critical. Ideally, you want to circulate the metrics in advance. So the board meeting is focused on a discussion around ‘why’ not ‘what’ the metrics are. I would say that’s a third of a board meeting. 

The second third of the board meeting is an opportunity to dig into one or two strategic topics. Again, you can pick a topic that you do a regular cadence around maybe twice a year. So if a metric isn’t going well, that’s an obvious topic to dive into. So pick a couple of topics that you can go deeper into and have a more substantive conversation. 

The trick is to know where you’re looking for input and help from the board versus where you’re trying to drive to a decision because those are three different things. And you want to be explicit about which of the three sets of objectives you’re chasing. So that’s the second third of the board meeting. 

The last third of the board meeting is a closed session, which provides a safe environment for the CEO to talk about the people dynamics in the business. But most of the closed sessions focus on the people dynamics because that’s a top area where founders have almost nobody to talk to very often, not even their co-founder.

So I would structure the board meeting as three thirds.

Jonathan Siddharth 

I’d love to dig into the second portion regarding the topics to discuss. Are there any patterns in what issues typically come while discussing metrics? Or is it particular to individuals or companies?

Ashu Garg

So I think there are some patterns. I don’t think they apply all the time. But most of the time, one of the pitfalls for companies transitioning from unicorn to decacorn is customer satisfaction or customer advocacy. 

[In this stage] the product-market fit is not static. And when a company has five or 10 or 20 or 50 customers, the founders and key leaders know every customer and their issues. As you start scaling, some distance builds up between the day-to-day product usage by customers and the key leaders in the company. 

And I think that that’s where the risks of product-market fit getting compromised are the most. So at that stage, having a handle on what is going on with your customer base and creating the proper instrumentation is essential. 

That instrumentation can include everything from CSAT scores to other product usage and adoption metrics. So that’s the number one topic at that stage because it requires structure.

The second topic at this stage that becomes critical is starting to instrument productivity metrics for the organization because you now have many layers of leadership. 

You need to figure out your engineering productivity. But, then, you need to find a way to have that discussion. Because very often, as you’re increasing the size of the engineering team, engineering productivity is falling. And that shows up over time, either in the form of technical debt or slowing innovation. And so, having the conversation around engineering productivity is an important deep dive topic to have.

Very often, in these cases, in the case of engineering directly, you may not get a lot of input from the board. So you are not looking to the board to make a decision. But it forces the team to rally around that topic and make a conscious decision. 

Sales productivity is so much easier to measure that people focus only on that. But I’ve often seen that the lack of discussion around engineering productivity is what drives a decline in value creation. 

Jonathan Siddharth

Yeah. That’s right. And speaking of boards, what advice do you have for founders as they add board members for companies at this unicorn stage? Who’s a good board member for the company at this stage in the company’s journey?

Ashu Garg

There are three things to think about when you add a board member at this stage.

First, you want to have someone adding value where you are looking for good advice. You want a board member that adds to the conversation around the most important strategic topics for the next few years. 

Second, you want to find a board member with whom you have chemistry. Ensure they have chemistry with the rest of the board, too. The most important thing about a board is the board dynamics. If the board works well together, is collaborative, can drive to a decision, is effective in communicating with each other, then that’s a superpower for a company because most boards aren’t like that. 

Most boards have inherent friction. People are not talking to each other. Everyone’s multitasking all the time. Nothing gets done. So ensuring every board member improves the dynamics are the second critical thing. 

The third thing is you want a board member who brings a different and diverse perspective. Sometimes, that perspective comes from gender diversity, racial diversity, functional diversity, etc. So it’s unique to the specific situation. But a board’s job is to help open your eyes to new things and guide you in situations you haven’t encountered before. And so that’s why diversity matters so much.

Jonathan Siddharth

Okay, got it. And typically, at this unicorn stage, do you see companies do board meetings quarterly?

Ashu Garg

So I recommend companies have a formal board meeting every quarter at this stage and then have a board check-in between board meetings. So you’ll end up having eight meetings a year, and you’ll use the check-ins to focus on the tactical topics. But even in the check-ins, try to discuss whatever is on top of your mind. And I would suggest having the quarterly meetings in-person as far as possible.

Jonathan Siddharth

That sounds great. And the final question as we wrap up is, what should companies look for in terms of their investing partners in the unicorn stage? I’m sure it’s different from the early stage.

Ashu Garg 

The unicorn stage is very different from the early stage. First of all, you have to separate [the investors.]

Are you bringing on board an investor who has no board role? Are you bringing in an investor that has a board role? And I think there’s a lot of overlap, but there are some differences. The most important criteria at this stage are ‘do no harm.’ Typically, board members have some marginal upside in a company from unicorn to decacorn. 

So I’m very focused on downside risks because the companies are still very fragile at the unicorn to decacorn stage. You’re playing soccer with a ball of glass. You want to hit hard, but you don’t want to hit too hard. So I think that’s the number one criteria to me. 

Then comes some of the other stuff we’ve talked about, like how they would add value? What are the things you want help with? And can they help you with those topics? I think you’re still too early to worry about the public market experience at this stage. I think it’s the decacorn stage that you start thinking about how they can help you go public. 

At the unicorn stage, focus on the basics. Focus on ‘do no harm,’ consider if they can help or be thoughtful about the strategic issues? Can they introduce you to great executives? Remember, great executives have the most impact on the company.

Jonathan Siddharth

That sounds great, Ashu! And for everyone reading, Ashu and Foundation Capital have been phenomenal partners right from day zero. So if you’re building a company that’s looking for its first round of capital, you should definitely talk to Ashu. 

I highly recommend working with Ashu and Foundation if you’re either at the unicorn stage or have ambitions to be a unicorn someday.

Ashu Garg

Thank you so much, Jonathan. I appreciate that. It’s been an extraordinary journey together, and we’re just getting started. All the founders out there, if you have more questions, feel free to reach out to me, but also check out my podcast, B2B CEO, on the Foundation website, where I’ve interviewed many decacorn CEOs, including Eric Yuan, George Kurtz, Dan Springer, and others. Thank you. 

Watch the complete video.

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