Today marks exactly one year since we launched the very first version of billFLO.  So, its time to take stock again and see what we’ve learned.

In preparation for this post I looked back at the post I made 42 days after our first launch . Suprisingly, the 4 points I made back then are all still valid, albeit I have a much deeper understanding of each. To the original lessons, here are a couple more things I’ve learned running a startup for a year.

1. Customers don’t tell you what they want

With all the metrics, real time data and customer discussions you would think it would be easy to know what people want. Its not.  It doesnt matter if you’re talking to a supplier, an investor or a customer; people just dont say what they really want. Its mainly because they arent quite sure. I now realise the converstation is the first step in a long process of working out what people want. Step 2 is ruminating, digesting, analyzing the information I’m hearing and Step 3 is deciding what you *think* you’re being told.

I dont think there is any fix for this, other than understanding this is the way it works.

2. Remember your company values

This one really suprised me. At the very start of billFLO we sat down and spent some time discussing how we wanted to run our own business. A lot of it was around culture and treating customers right. I honestly felt it wasn’t worth starting the business if we weren’t going to do our damndest to have happy customers.

However, in the heat of the battle I’ve seen us slip, trip and stumble in this regard. It usually happens late at night around some feature and goes like this “Oh, that’ll be a pain to develop and we dont have time to test it. How many people will have this problem anyway? Lets put it in the next build”. The problem is the discussion is from our perspective rather than our customer’s.

There isn’t a quick fix for this. In the cauldron of rapid innovation some things cant be completed to the exacting standards we want.  But, I’ve resolved to make sure we get better at this.  The fix is probably somewhere inside of process and re-inforcing our customer focused culture. Stay tuned to see how we get better at this!

3. Startups are a f*cking roller coaster

I had definetly been told this and read it many times before. What I didn’t really understand is the extent to which it is an emotional, physical and mental roller-coaster. It’s compounded by the fact that you are so close to the details that its hard to get perspective.

The best way I can describe it is through my love of racing. My dad raced before me and many of my closest friends are car racers, so its something I understand intimately.   Strapped to a hulk of speeding metal and fibreglass, a single lap contains the range of emotions from real fear for your life when something goes wrong, to self-recrimination at not doing a corner well, to anger over another competitors actions, to pure joy at winning. All of this happens in a minute or two and when its over its hard to rationalize it. Startups have that same density of emotions and it’s tough to deal with.

The fix (or at least a salve) for this one is simple - have a group of peers in the same role as you. For me, I have group of CEOs I can call or meet up with at a moments notice when I need support. I think of it as my entrepreneurs anonymous group!

(P.S. for more on this topic, check out this great post by Mark Dowds, CEO of Brainpark)

4. Biases are dangerous

When you’re a small operation, you dont get the luxury of being a specialist. This means there is no chance to indulge a bias towards spreadsheets, copy-writing, usability-testing, customer visits or whatever it is you enjoy most.

The good news is that there is a long list of things to do and your favorite activity is on there. The bad news is you will gravitate to these activities and the scary stuff will get deferred. This becomes really dangerous in the context of strategic activities. As an exagerated example, not many of us like direct sales.  If your bias is to avoid having to do direct sales, you could convince yourself the business can achieve its objectives through online advertising. Its sounds silly I know, but it happens.

I’ve also seen this play out in terms of what people are comfortable with. It can play out as always wanting to do things a certain way or always leaning towards a particular technology or even favoring a particular individual.

The fix: Know your own and your team’s biases. Then watch for them showing up in the decision making process.

(P.S. Ironically I’m reading a book about this very subject right now: The E-Myth by Michael Gerber )

To wrap-up, I hope all the lessons above prove helpful to other entrepreneurs starting out. Please remember though, these are the things *I* think will ultimately drive our success. I could be very wrong.

In the meantime, I invite you to follow along with us and find out!

Your thoughts?

billFLO Ian

Last week I watched the Corporation, a movie about the evolution of the concept of the corporation. Anoowa is  structured as a corporation and even though we’re young, the film was relevant and thought provoking. Especially the interview with Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former Chairman of Shell where he remembers befriending a group of protesters in his front garden and how they ultimately shared many of the same concerns. What he didn’t say, but I inferred, is he didn’t have the freedom to act on those concerns due to the constraints on modern companies. 

Maybe its time for some tweaking of the corporation to give CEOs the freedom to inject some of societies values into business? Here’s one such idea I came across on  youtube, which proposes a code of ethics for CEOs. Interesting.

Your thoughts?

P.S. Back in billFLO world, we’re really knuckling down here and looking forward to showing you all something very exciting in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

Running a startup is one of the best tests around for one’s decision making ability. Every decision might be your last as a business.  So, I have this theory, or maybe its a framework, for decision making that I’m putting to the test right now. (Caveat – I have no empirical proof this works, its just a pattern I’ve recognised)

While I don’t think its possible to make the right decisions all the time, I think the probability of making the right decision goes up when you know what type of decision you are making. My theory is that there are three decision types; Data, Gut and Guess. Knowing which type of decision is being made, I think, increases the chances of making the right decision and catching the wrong one as early as possible.

A Guess decision is the one you don’t want to have to make. Most entrepreneurs make a Guess decision to do a startup that is totally new, like Tivo, Skype, etc.  The entreprenuer says, “I think this will work and people will love it”. There’s no data to support the vision (that gets fabricated later when they put their pitch slides together!), there’s no history or precedence. The entrepreneur just believes, irrationally. This type of decision is highly risky. Despite that, we make Guess decisions all the time; “I think I’ll like this movie, I’ll watch it”.  We make these decisions because even though the risk of being wrong is high, the stakes are low.

A Gut Decision, is based on what often feels right (Malcolm Gladwell goes into great detail about this phenomenon in his book Blink).  For example, I don’t have any data to support my decision framework, but I recognize a pattern. While I can’t put my finger on the data or rationale to support it, my gut tells me this is true. If you’ve got kids, you experience Gut decision making when you leave the picnic right before your kids have a melt-down. If you’re a good soccer player, you experience it when you stick a foot out to block a shot before the opposing player has even hit the ball. Both are decisions based on experience we’ve gained which plays out as pattern recognition. This type of decision making is powerful because its quick and often right.

A Data Decision is self-explanatory. Given the necessary time, having the data is nearly always the best (unless you’re going to buy stock or start a business!) because they are not as subjective. In society we recognise this decision type as superior and often call it an informed decision. Of course, if we’re not careful we can manipulate the data to support a Gut or Data decision.

The trick of this framework, is recognising where on the spectrum a decision is being made… “This is really a Guess decision, I don’t have enough experience for this to be pattern recognition”. Knowing the type of decision then helps you decide what to do – “there’s too much at stake, I need more data” or “I’ve seen this before it isnt going to end well, my Gut’s telling me”.

In practice, I can already look back at one big decision I made that was wrong for us (I’m not going to dish-the-dirt on it right now though!). Looking back, a bit more rigor in applying my own rules would have yielded better results.

I suppose the ultimate test of this theory is whether we’re around this time next year…stick around and find out!

Your thoughts?

billflo Ian