Building a Company Goes in Phases

In my experience, and particularly these days, when it comes to building a technology or product company, things tend to go in phases. The first phase is the product building phase. This is where you actually build something that works, hopefully. This phase also includes some really good thinking about what problem your solving, how you’ll make money, who the market is, how you’re going to reach them,; all that stuff. In this phase you’re not really building a company just yet. Once you get a product out there,  and you can clearly demonstrate how you can get from point A to point B (from a revenue or user traction standpoint), and you’ve got some data to support it… well then you’ve got traction and you can start building your company.

When you’re building a company, you’re still building your product, really you’re iterating at this point with features and functions that are in response to what the market is telling you. Customers want this; partners want that; and competitors are doing this and that. So you need to respond. But more than that, now your building out operations, maybe you need a sales team, you have a marketing budget, you need to start tracking metrics big time (don’t get me started here, if you don’t have your top key metrics identified and you have a dashboard of some sort tracking them daily, just stop reading now). You may even need HR or someone to oversee culture, although that should be a big part of what you’re doing too.

Finally, if you’re fortunate enough to get past this stage, you’ve got more than traction, you’ve got sustained growth, and that feels damn good; for a while anyway. Now you need to start hiring specialists not generalists. You need people to support people and then some. It’s ok because you’re growing despite your ever-increasing dysfunctions. It’s here where you end up making a decision. Are you a builder or a grower? Seriously, ask yourself that question. If you’re really a builder like me, then consider building something else because sooner or later you’re going to get bored. And that’s totally cool. There are many highly talented, smarter than you, people that want to grow, and maybe you can even get them to keep growing your company for you and you can do something else. That’s what I did. Once I got over the feeling of “less than”, which wasn’t real, I realized I was real visionary. I basically built a company to a point where I wasn’t needed and I could go do something else, but still have the same upside as if I was there… WTF, that’s sick.

No doubt, I rely on others now and you will too, but that’s why you want to bring on the smartest, most talented, out of this world superstars when you’re building and give them a lot of upside potential. Then, when you’re gone, everyone wins.