Avoid Distractions and Remain Focused
Building a startup is exciting. Every day you are working to create something that will shake up an industry, perhaps even change the world.
When building on your product, there are distractions. Drink Ups, Networking Events, hack-a-thons, developing, conferences, speaking engagements, recruiting, payroll, taxes, fundraising, customer development, investor updates, reading hackernews, and writing blog posts.
Each of them, at different points in time, seem fundamental to the success of your startup.
There are so many things occupying your time it can be challenging to prioritize and remain focused on what can benefit your startup the most. Everyday it seems there is another fire or priority that becomes the number one task.
But what should a startup be focused on? Is the focus for every startup different? Does the focus change over the life of the startup?
Stay Focused On Delivering Value
As a startup the most fundamental thing is delivering value. As an employee or founder of a startup this should be your single point of focus. Every thing that you do should easily map to delivering value. Nothing else should take priority over that single goal.
Working out doesn’t matter. Dating doesn’t matter. Eating nice meals doesn’t matter. Sleeping doesn’t matter. Being “seen” doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is delivering value.
But, what value should you deliver? This is determined by your customer.
Initial Value And Pivot
When you begin working on your startup, even before building product, you assume what your customers will care about. Once you begin gathering customers and engaging with them you will change your value add.
What value you deliver can take multiple forms. But remember your customers will define it, not you.
Always Be Measuring and Incrementing
A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing.
To be a successful startup you need to have your metric. This is the hockey stick that everyone talks about. The item the metric is measuring should tie directly to how successful you will be.
The right metric to measure yourself should be tied to the value you are providing. I have seen many startups use the wrong metric to measure their success. Don’t be one of these startups.
What single metric demonstrates how you provide value to your customers?
Facebook’s metric is how many daily users they have. Facebook is a social network. In order to provide value to their users, they need to interact or be social with the site on a daily basis.
At SourceNinja our metric is how many packages are under management. The more packages we manage the more value our customers get from using our product.
Don’t Burn Out
It’s better to burn out, than to fade away.
- Neil Young
Although it is fundamentally important to your startup that you remain focused on providing value and not being distracted, there is one exception. Don’t burn out.
You need to find some time, ever day, to do something that reminds you why you are working on the startup in the first place. This time should be limited and focused. It should also be as far removed from what you work on as possible and hopefully avoid technology.
For instance, if your burn out avoider is playing basketball. Limit playing to 3 games a week. If it is working out, limit it to 5 (1 hour) sessions a week. Please note: playing video games should not be an outlet. Get away from technology, you are working with it everyday.
TLDR
- Remain focused on what value you deliver
- Don’t do things that aren’t easily mapped to your value add.
- Only Exception: Don’t Burn Out