SWLW #401: How to operate a SaaS startup, Growth without Goals, and more.

I hope that you and your family are doing well, and you are able to find a new rhythm in this hard situation.

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week -
 

This Week's Favorite

​​Independence, Autonomy, and Too Many Small Teams
5 minutes read.

Kislay Verma with one of my favorite blog posts to read when thinking about how to structure the team to achieve higher velocity at scale: "Somewhere along the line, we forgot about “reducing communication” just started fixating on assigning independent teams to problem statements that were essentially tiny slices of business problems.[...] The mission is diluted because most of the teams are now working on problems which are subsets of the original problem and as such not valuable in themselves. [...] The core idea behind autonomy is not arranging teams to maximize outputs of steps in the value chain, but defining value chains in such a way that a single, tight-knit team can be unleashed upon it."

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Culture

Live Shot of Every Startup Launch Ever
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time.

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The Last (Engineering) Dance
6 minutes read.

The philosophies different between Phil Jackson and Doug Collins that Shai Mendel points to is important: it needs to be sustainable, and talent needs to compound. Senior ICs can rarely make themselves X2 better every year. They can, however, influence others, help them, and sponsor them every year. Your team's talent will compound better over time.

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0/ Thread at Doist, We Have for 10+ Years Competed Against Google, Microsoft, and Apple in the Hyper-Competitive Market of Todo Apps. Some Thoughts Follow on How You Can Compete Against Trillion-Dollar Goliaths. I'll Start With Examples, and End With Core Principles. (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Amir Salihefendić shares his principles and strategies that made Doist stand out over time and become a huge success. It made me pause and think about my methods in many different hats - as a VP Eng in a well-established startup and as a maker of many side-projects.

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The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup
12 minutes read.

David Sacks (ex-CEO of Yammer, and ex-COO of Paypal) shares excellent lessons and a framework you can apply to create a cadence of progress. It's useful to read to gather context on how companies organize their execution units and create strong alignment.

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Peopleware

Growth Without Goals
6 minutes read.

Patrick O’Shaughnessy (I highly recommend his podcast) words came in the right time for me now. I don't think that goals are evil or wrong. They have downsides and many upsides. Our minds and our social surrounding push us towards a particular way of living. We look for goals and recipes to follow. We want to produce value to others. We want to feel relevant and useful. It brings a lot of anxiety and stress that I want to understand, analyze, and avoid looking at it as a disadvantage to be careful from (read The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal). We all set our own stories, and that too is okay. Maybe I should rebrand my goals to Happy Legacy Goals - goals that would make me enjoy what I do now and 50 years from now. Goals that average out my experiences to a happier version of myself.

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If You Learn to Write, You Can Change Your Life. The Secret Is in the Line.
5 minutes read.

Writing is such an important skill to develop if you want to increase your impact. Do you want to get some strong buy-in from others to promote your idea in the company? What about working on a new project and finding early beta-users to give it a try? I added "The Single Line mentality" Ali Mese suggests to my Anki Notes (iPhone app I use) to remind me of its power.

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If You See Everything, You'll Get Nothing 🎯
5 minutes read.

Building feedback loops, such as the framework Joseph Jude suggests, is incredibly useful for learning faster and appreciating your progress. It's so easy to let inertia lead the way for us. Be mindful of how you use your energy and time. It goes by fast.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@KateBour: Criticizing is easy. Creating is hard. Cheers to the creators.

@auren: Best advice I got in the last year: follow interesting people on Twitter. last year I started following everyone I thought was interesting. learned about them from a blog post or when they were a guest on a podcast. it has increased the breadth and pace of learning.



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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.