Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 16th April 2008
2 COMMENTS 
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Several people have asked me to turn the “After the Funding” posts into a document for offline reading. I thought this was a good idea and hope that the document will be a useful checklist for all startups having received funding recently and making plans for the next phase.
Here is a link to a PDF document that provides details on the following five crucial guidelines for recently funded startups:
- Base Decision-Making on Long-Term Strategy instead of Short-Term Constraints
- Set-up a Repeatable Sales Process First, Then Expand Sales Force
- Align Business and Technology around a Product Roadmap
- Establish a Product Heartbeat – a Continual Rapid-Fire Release Plan
- Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done
I will be back in May with more advice on how to unlock startup growth. In the meantime I would be quite curious to hear about what you consider the most significant challenges in the post-funding stage. Strategy? Sales expansion? Roadmap? Releases? Teams? What are the three challenges that keep you awake at night?
Written on 9th April 2008
2 COMMENTS
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Another Wednesday, another post in the series “After the Funding“. While previous posts have looked at strategy, sales, roadmap and releases, I will today look at people. At the end of the day it’s people that make or break startups. And you need to have the right team on board to succesfully unlock growth.
Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done
The early team is built up of founders and a close circle of trusted employees that have often worked together previously and that become close friends. The team has natural chemistry and complementing skills. You need few management skills and early employees wear many hats, filling in as office manager or accountant when needed.
To expand the business, the team needs to be expanded. Expansion means bringing in seniority as well as volume. The team of founders and early employees needs to determine which management roles can be assumed by the current team and which need to be brought in from the outside. And the founders need to create a recruitment process that consistently lands the startup additional talent.
The founders must realize that it is time to bring in the professionals when they are spending more time learning than leading and the staff starts losing confidence. At the same time, they must avoid bringing in too much senior staff with high salaries and low hunger for success. As for expanding the team, the key lies in hiring people that are smart and that get things done. Read and apply Joel Spolky’s “Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing” and never hire someone if there are any doubts or you are having a hard time make a “hire or no hire” decision.
After the Funding
In the first post of the series I explained that decision-making needs to be based on long-term strategy. Owners need to spend time defining a clear and concise strategy and enable others to make day-to-day decisions based on their roles in the company.
Then I cautioned about the risks of premature expansion of the sales force. Owners must set-up a repeatable sales process first and then expand the sales force.
Then followed a post about the importance of a product roadmap to create alignment between teams, to help business define its target market and to guide technology in setting priorities and allocating resources.
And last week I made the case for your product heartbeat – a continual rapid-fire release plan that provides customers with new features at short, predictable intervals and gives focus to the development team.
Interesting Reads
Here are some interesting articles and posts on hiring:
Written on 2nd April 2008
0 COMMENTS
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Welcome again to my weekly installment for startups “After the Funding“. Things are going well with your startup. Your dream is about to become reality. You built the prototype, launched the beta and got the funding! Time to sit back and think about the upcoming challenges you must master to unlock the growth of your post-funding startup.
This week I will look at release planning and advocate putting in place an aggressive yet predictable rollout schedule.
Establish a Product Heartbeat – a Continual Rapid-Fire Release Plan
Initially the majority of development resources went into the core product. A lot of time is spent researching, investigating and fine tuning, which keeps the code base small and manageable. There are few external deadlines and commitments and the release schedule is opportunity-driven. A multitude of different versions of the product are released in response to specific requests of a hot prospect or a brilliant idea of the founder.
As the company grows, the customer base expands and matures. It will soon become infeasible to maintain customer specific versions, each with their own features, defects, hot fixes and updates. And an expanding development team will create management challenges to keep everybody productive.
It is time to introduce your product heartbeat, a continual rapid-fire release program that will maximize productivity and flexibility. It will provide customers with new features and fixes at short, predictable intervals. It will shield the development team from disruptions by frequently alternating periods of focused production with periods of re-planning and re-prioritization. And it will stave off the temptation of short-notice customer-specific releases. To support the heartbeat you should invest in a solid development infrastructure early on.
After the Funding
In the first post of the series I explained that decision-making needs to be based on long-term strategy. In a rapidly growing company, the owners need to spend time defining a clear and concise strategy while day-to-day decision making shifts to others based on their roles in the company.
Then I cautioned about the risks of premature expansion of the sales force. Owners must set-up a repeatable sales process first and then expand the sales force.
And last week I talked about the importance of a product roadmap to create alignment between expanding departments. The roadmap will help business defining its target market and will provide guidance to technology in setting priorities and allocating resources.
Next week I will explain how to build a team of professionals that is smart and gets things done.
Further Reading
- Join the Agile Alliance or read the Agile Manifesto
- Participate in the Agile Commons community – blogs, forums and much more on anything agile!
- Download and start using agile web tools such as Basecamp for project collaboration, XPlanner for agile project tracking or JIRA for combined bug, issue and task tracking
Written on 26th March 2008
2 COMMENTS
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Welcome back to “After the Funding“, the series about key management challenges for startups that have secured funding and now must focus their energy on flawless execution.
Today I will talk about the importance of a product roadmap to create alignment between expanding departments.
Align Business and Technology around a Product Roadmap
Business and technology align easily for early startups. The team is small; business and technology work side by side, often in the same office. There is no standard product to sell and no history of successfully closed deals, so business will want to discuss every deal with technology. And the number of prospects and customers is low so technology will value being involved with many of them to get necessary feedback. All in all, communication lines are direct, there are few opportunities and commitments and hence few challenges to maintain alignment.
As business grows, the sales force will start focusing on volume and there will be pressure to go after prospects that fit the product value proposition poorly. This is especially true when expanding geographically or selling indirectly through partners and resellers. And as technology advances, there will be less and less tacit market knowledge within the expanding development team. Communication will get more complex as more specialized roles such as marketing, support and consulting are created. From now on the company needs to work hard at maintaining focus and avoiding becoming a disoriented “jack of all trades, master of none”.
You will need to introduce a product roadmap to align business and technology. The roadmap will map out product direction over the following six to twelve months. It will help business defining its target market and get an early start at pitching future products and features. It will provide guidance to technology in setting priorities and allocating resources. The roadmap will assure consistent communication which is essential for survival as Steve Johnson explains convincingly by comparing it to NASA’s Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM), the single communication agent between space shuttle and mission control.
After the Funding
In the first post of the series I explained that decision-making needs to be based on long-term strategy. In a rapidly growing company, the owners need to spend time defining a clear and concise strategy while day-to-day decision making shifts to others based on their roles in the company.
And last week I cautioned about the risks of premature expansion of the sales force. Owners must set-up a repeatable sales process first and then expand the sales force.
Next week I will turn to release planning and explain how heartbeat release schedules improve productivity.
More on Product Roadmaps
Here are two good pointers to learn more about product roadmaps:
- The Pragmatic Marketing site with its hundreds of relevant articles is a good starting point. You can also follow their blog, sign up for webinars or subscribe to their newsletter.
- Or read about perspectives on the technical and commercial aspects of software at “Business of Software” – a conference cum blog like TheNextWeb. The conference features Joel Spolsky who I will write about in a future post about creating teams.
Written on 19th March 2008
2 COMMENTS
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
This is the second post in the series “After the Funding“. Each post identifies a pitfall you must avoid and tells you how to invest the funding wisely and how to successfully unlock growth of your recently funded startup.
Today’s post is about the right approach to expanding the sales force. It argues that you need to be well prepared before you can ramp up sales.
Set-up a Repeatable Sales Process First, Then Expand Sales Force
Many startup founders are highly charismatic, visionary and persuasive sales people with a great network. They know the product intimately. And they understand the market as well as the future product vision like no one else. This combination allows them to go to virtually any prospect and design a unique solution that at the same time solves the customer’s problem, brings in revenue and advances the product development.
Now you will want to aggressively accelerate sales by strengthening presence in your home market or expanding geographically. But before you start hiring top-notch sales talent and before you start pondering the most promising countries for expansion you need to think about how to enable others to sell as successfully as you did. Building a sales force before you are ready is the “second fastest way to burn cash after buying traffic for a new dot-com” according to Max Bleyleben.
You first need to set-up a repeatable and measurable sales process. Tacit knowledge used successfully by the founders and early-days sales champions needs to be unlocked, captured and made available to the to-be-built sales force. You need to identify the unique selling point, define an ideal prospect profile and make sure every sales person pitches the same, non-customer specific solution. You must invest in sales training. And finally you need to have at least a simple sales process supported by a basic CRM system in place. See Andy Blackstone’s article “Ready for a Sales Force?” for more details.
After the Funding
In the first post of the series I explained that decision-making needs to be based on long-term strategy. In a rapidly growing company, the owners need to spend time defining a clear and concise strategy while day-to-day decision making shifts to others based on their roles in the company. Next week I will highlight the importance of aligning business and technology around a product roadmap.
Further Reading
Written on 12th March 2008
4 COMMENTS
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant
Things are going well with your startup. The risk you took is paying off. The blood, sweat and tears are being rewarded. Your dream is about to become reality.
You built the prototype. You launched the beta. You presented at TheNextWeb conference. And you got the funding. But how do you manage the next growth phase that will present radically different challenges from the previous one?
This is the first post in the series “After the Funding”. In each post I will outline a post-funding challenge, describe what worked previously, what changes are taking place and how to unlock startup growth. “After the Funding” is a reminder that no matter how brilliant your idea, execution is everything and relentless attention to detail will be needed to win big time!
Base Decision-Making on Long-Term Strategy instead of Short-Term Constraints
In the early days, the startup changed course frequently while the core team sharpened its vision. Many decisions were made based on resource constraints. Your idea was new and different and there were limited opportunities to pitch it and find allies. And you were working in a small, tightly-knit group where the founders were heavily involved in every decision.
Your team, your customer base and your partner network will grow quickly now. And with funding providing additional resources and plenty of exposure the startups needs to shift from a mode that is driven by limited resources to one where the right opportunities are selected and pursued for maximum gain. (more…)
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
