Came across a great post on why getting to 1.0 is a company-defining step…and so damn difficult.
Where an existing company has default, a startup is making all decisions on the fly. The pitch is the heart and soul of the company, and literally has to be on point, as every other decision (people, process, and product) will emerge from this vision.
Get it wrong and you’re toast.
Get it right, and now its a balancing act as you add people and process to ensure that buildout stays on point, and providing appropriate pushes where the details start swerving too far away from the core, need to develop immediately, deliverable. Miss here and you have a flawed buildout that may never get to 1.0 before you run out of runway. Or, if you get to 1.0, its unlikely you’ll have the resources to go back and fix what everyone is already familiar with–and your current chassis leaves you with some fatal flaws. Taking the biology analogy, flawed DNA leaves you susceptible to future cancers.
Gives me new appreciation for the wisdom of Coach Wooden: Be Quick But Don’t Hurry. Its especially important when laying the foundations for a company. While you should 80/20 the product to get a semi-crappy (but live) v1.0 (see Don’t Worry, Be Crappy), you must absolutely nail down the culture (people and processes)–which tends to be an afterthought to product– rather than being treated as the building blocks of the company from which all else will be forged.
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