lessons

Everything Starts Small

It’s a situation founders know well: the agonizing wait to see if the product/service they’ve launched will take off. The reality is, it takes months and even years to find product-market-fit. And once that happens, the struggle doesn’t really end because there’s always another, more complex problem to solve. It can begin with product-market-fit then morph into customer/user acquisition and engagement and then shift to monetization. For entrepreneurs, building a business can feel like a never-ending cycle of wait-and-see. 

When we launched Wattpad 13 years ago, my co-founder Ivan and I immediately started monetizing with ads. And when I say we “immediately monetized” the site, I really mean we earned $2 in monthly ad revenue a full year later. A minuscule amount. 

When we first launched our Android app, we saw about 10 downloads in the first month. Even in 2011 when Android really started to take off our download numbers were still puny. 

Today, we see more than 60,000 Android users sign up every day and half of our daily usage comes from Android users. Our monthly advertising revenue is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’re no longer talking about trivial amounts. It’s been a long road that had to start somewhere. 

‘Everything starts small’ is a valuable mantra for any entrepreneur. Look at Spotify: When it first launched in the US in 2010 it had 100,000 paid subscribers. Today, Spotify’s number of paid subscribers is about to cross the 100 million mark.

Not too long ago, we launched Paid Stories and we also introduced a subscription model called Premium at Wattpad. The numbers are still small. But they won’t stay that way forever (especially since we’ve rolled out these programs globally). As long as we keep improving, keep optimizing and keep promoting — basically, if we continue to hustle and grind as all great entrepreneurs do — the numbers will go up.

But we can’t expect a silver bullet. No single feature or no single promo or no single country launch will 10x these numbers overnight. While it’s not impossible to find a 10x growth hack, the reality is that it’s probably better to find 100 little things to grow 10%.  

My fellow entrepreneurs, please remember: Tomorrow will be better than today. The day after tomorrow will be better than tomorrow. Everything starts small.

Strategic Partners Turn Your Vision Into Reality Faster Than You Can

A few months ago, Wattpad announced a partnership with Anvil Publishing in the Philippines. Together, we’re launching Bliss Books, a new Young Adult imprint that’ll bring some of the biggest Wattpad stories and authors to bookshelves across the country. 

The news means Wattpad can realize the vision I laid out in the Master Plan much, much faster. But really, speed is just one of the values a strategic partner brings to the table.

Anvil also has deeper insights into local purchasing habits and consumer behaviour than we do. The first part of the Master Plan is to “Discover more great stories,” and we do this by leveraging our Story DNA machine learning technology and a passionate community to find unique voices and amazing stories that are validated in Tagalog. With their local insights, Anvil can corroborate our insights using their local knowledge to guarantee a successful adaptation. 

The best strategic partners also have a reputation you can piggy-back off of. Another element of the Master Plan is ‘Turn these stories into great movies, TV shows, print books, etc.,” Anvil has a reputation for publishing high-quality books, and that’s exactly what we want to do. 

Anvil is the publishing arm of the National Book Store with hundreds of bookstores. It’s established presence means we – through NBS – have the ability to distribute Wattpad books to every practically every part of the country tying into another key part of the Master Plan to “Distribute and monetize content on and off Wattpad and earn money for storytellers.” 

The Philippines is one of Wattpad’s largest markets and a very important one since its home to some of our most passionate users. Plus, when you factor in the expertise and reach of Anvil, it was an easy decision to partner with this local company who can help us continue to celebrate and reward Filipino authors and their fans. 

Entrepreneurs: if you have the ability to form a partnership with another complementary company, seize it. The strategic upside is great and may help you realize your vision faster than you ever could alone.  

How to make meetings suck less

About a year ago I read an article about Jeff Bezos’ approach to meetings at Amazon that really resonated with me. Specifically, there were three things that make meetings more effective and efficient that really stood out to me.

  1. The Two-Pizza Team Rule – According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon tries to “create teams that are no larger than can be fed by two pizzas”
  2. No PowerPoint – “No PowerPoints are used inside of Amazon,” Bezos proudly declares. “Somebody for the meeting has prepared a six-page…narratively structured memo. It has real sentences, and topic sentences, and verbs, and nouns–it’s not just bullet points.”
  3. Start with Silence – “We read those memos, silently, during the meeting,” says Bezos. “It’s like a study hall. Everybody sits around the table, and we read silently, for usually about half an hour, however long it takes us to read the document. And then we discuss it.”

Like Bezos, I’m a big believer in small group meetings. Based on my experience, it’s too difficult to have a conversation that’s relevant to most if there are more than eight people in the room.

I don’t necessarily 100% agree with no PowerPoint, though. Yes, there are times when having a narrative works better, but in some cases, bullet points can be more effective. One can’t replace the other. Use the right tool at the right time for the right people.

What I found really interesting is the study hall format. Since learning about, I’ve tried it out in multiple meetings by allocating the first 5-10 minutes (not 30 minutes as Bezos suggests) so everyone can go through the document or deck and add their questions and comments in advance of the discussion. Here’s what I observed:

The Pros

  • It ensures everyone has read the materials and the context is fresh in people’s mind (and yes, I know meeting organizers can always send materials in advance as pre-reading, but people still have to carve out time in their schedule to get it done. This is especially difficult for people who attend lots of back-to-back meetings).
  • It provides dedicated time for pre-reading that is already built into the meeting (similar to the point above)
  • It helps reduce the amount of context switching so the quality of the conversation goes up noticeably because the context is so fresh in everyone’s mind.
  • The quality of the questions improves because people don’t have to multi-task in the meeting, i.e. listen, read, absorb AND ask at the same time.

The Cons

  • It means less time to talk, especially when meetings are only 30 minutes long (but IMO, we get this time back in a way because we might have wasted those 5-10 minutes getting attendees up to speed anyway).

As you can tell, I become a fan of the study hall format, and while I recognize it doesn’t work for every type of meeting, it’s helpful when teams need to be on the same page with specific background information. That’s when spending 5-10 minutes to make sure everyone is “in the zone” is well worth it.

Incorporating the Study Hall format to your next meeting gives you time: Time for understanding; Time for extended reflection; Time for focused thinking; All of which leads to better and more effective meetings.

Attitude > Skill

The Wattpad team is growing and we’re hiring for many roles. Recently, the team was in the position of having to choose between two highly qualified candidates for a single role (a great problem to have). One applicant had more experience or skill but the other one had a better attitude.

So who did we pick? Well here’s what I told the team:

“All things equal, always choose attitude over skill and experience. Skills can be learned, but it is hard to change one’s attitude.”

Of course, all candidates need to meet certain skill-based criteria, whatever that may be. It’s hard to hire someone in finance if ‘spreadsheet’ is an unfamiliar term. It doesn’t make sense to hire an engineer who has never written a line of code before. These are somewhat facetious examples and IRL the bar would be set much, much higher, but you get the point.

Hiring a person who may be less experienced but possess the right attitude can be a worthwhile investment and a risk worth taking if you believe you can get the candidate 80% up to speed in 3 months and 100% up to speed in 6 months.

With the right attitude one can overcome any obstacles, but when people have the wrong attitude, getting them to fit into the company can be mission impossible because of the inevitable cultural clashes and teamwork disruption. It can drag down the performance of the entire team. People with positive attitudes can solve problems proactively rather than reactively. While it’s hard to quantify, they can greatly increase business velocity and team performance.

Choosing attitude over skill is a guiding principle that I have been using for many years and has served me really well!

The next time a candidate walks through your door and doesn’t exactly have the right skills or experience, ask yourself if they have the right attitude.

It’s Your Decision, Don’t Dodge

When you work at a startup, seeking advice and gaining buy-in from the broader team can help you move faster … until it becomes a crutch.

Recently, I bumped into an entrepreneur I invested in. He’s making some changes to the direction of his company and after explaining them to me I pointed out some of the potential issues. He immediately asked me: “So, do you want me to revert to the old plan?”

It was the wrong question to ask.

I explained to him that it doesn’t matter what I want. As CEO with all the context, he’s the only one who can make the decision. As an investor, I’m not thinking about his business 24/7 but he is. It’s his company and it’s his decision what he does with it (and only his decision). Investors should share their experiences and opinions but they shouldn’t make decisions that affect the business.

Not long after, I had an investor friend contact me about one of his portfolio companies that’s going through a pretty rough patch. My friend said: “The CEO now blames the board of directors for making the wrong decision.” My ears perked up. This was a red flag and I told my friend as much.

A company’s board of directors only has one decision to make: Hire and fire the CEO. Inexperienced CEOs have a tendency to defer difficult decisions to the board or even other people in the company. It’s not uncommon to hear a newbie (or unconfident) CEO say something like “My recommendation to the board is …” This isn’t helpful. All this does is enable inexperienced board members to jump in and make decisions out of context. It’s tragic really.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that there is no value to be gained from consulting with your board: Every CEO has blind spots and can benefit from another perspective. But in the end, what happens in the business is always the CEOs call.

And it doesn’t always have to be the CEO who holds the ultimate decision making ability (nor should it). I remember speaking with a senior leader at Wattpad and the person said: “I would advise we do this …” I quickly reminded this person that they are the head of the business unit and the only person accountable for it. It was an important decision with huge implications across the company, so of course, I expected this person would engage with the broader team to think through the different scenarios and make sure all the bases were covered, but at the end of the day, the person was the leader, not an advisor.

These three conversations illustrate one critical point. Whether you’re a co-founder, CEO, technical lead, department manager or even individual contributor, you are the presumed expert in your role so don’t dodge making tough decisions. Remember: You are not an advisor to your own job.

Don’t Be a Parasite If You Want To Be A Disruptor

I spoke with an entrepreneur whose company is building a new, disruptive product for the education sector. One of the challenges he’s facing is that none of the company’s co-founders have worked in the education sector before. He wondered if he should hire someone with some relevant experience.

Another entrepreneur friend of mine is building a tool that is catered to the public sector. The company is struggling to scale as a business. The sales process is too slow. The product is becoming too specific for one sector.

In both cases when these entrepreneurs asked for my advice, I told them: Don’t be a parasite if you want to be a disruptor.

There are so many verticals out there that still have not been fully transformed by the Internet — education, public sector, book publishing, the list goes one. But it’s extremely hard to transform any industry if you have a lot of dependencies with the old systems. You can’t think out of the box. Your sales cycle is too long. And often you end up with a product or a service that is incremental at best rather than revolutionary.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, a lot of people have built great businesses by providing incremental solutions like consulting services to the government. But, if you want to build something truly transformative and net-native, then you have to stay as far away from the traditional systems as possible and draw closer to your end users or customers.

If you want to create something truly game-changing and be a disruptor, you can’t begin the journey as a parasite.

Embrace tension to move even faster

As a startup scales, it’s natural for tension to creep up among different teams who are working on disparate objectives. Either of these conversations sound familiar?

“Showing users more ads can help generate more revenue, but it could also hurt engagement. Do we optimize for revenue or engagement?”

“We have a limited budget. If we spend it on A, B, and C we won’t be able to pay for X, Y, Z. What should we choose?”

The best way entrepreneurs can embrace and then ease tension among their teams is to establish a set of principles. Principles can help teams avoid indecision and move fast.

In the example above about serving ads at the expense of user engagement for instance, if the team has previously established that ad experiments can’t impact engagement by more than X%, it becomes easier for them to test different combinations of ads to drive the most revenue without negatively impacting engagement.

Establishing principles streamlines decision making, eliminates unnecessary meetings and propels the company forward. Everyone knows what to do and understands how much (or how little) leeway the team has.

Of course, there will be times when you may not have a principle to fall back on. That’s when the teams representing the conflicting priorities need to escalate the matter further and involve an arbitrator. Most times decisions are reversible and having an arbitrator can resolve issues quickly. In the world of startups, a quick decision always trumps a slow decision (or worse, no decision at all).  

Tension is natural and a sign your company is growing. But as your business grows and becomes more complex, decisions aren’t as straightforward as they used to. Creating a set of ground rules that inform your team’s priorities and outcomes can help avoid unnecessary confusion and conflict.

The other thing managers should remember

When I first became a manager, one thing that was extremely difficult for me to get used to was delegation. When an employee gets promoted to manager, and even after they realize they now have a different and distinct role, it can be hard to let go of the day-to-day work.

Why? In many cases, the person who gets promoted to a leadership or a manager position is someone who is an awesome individual contributor. To be an awesome IC, you need to be very good at getting stuff done.

But as a leader or a manager, you need to focus on asking other people to get stuff done.

You need to make sure your team is working on the right stuff to achieve desired outcomes. As a manager, you can’t do the work of other ICs – it no longer in your job description.

This is counter-intuitive and crazy hard because it is the polar opposite of what awesome ICs know so well.

Speaking from experience, when a leader does the work of an IC it can be very demotivating and become counterproductive. On the other hand, when a manager delegates the work and trusts individuals to get the job done it can be very motivating.

As a leader, you should remember that it is far better for you to focus on figuring out what your ICs should do (and why), and let the ICs figure out how to get the job done (and then, do it).

The one thing new managers forget

I first started managing people when I was 26. Four years later, I was managing a team of 30 developers. On paper, I was fantastically successful; in reality I should have fired myself.

At the time, I thought that in order to lead a team of awesome developers, I had to be an even more awesome developer. I worked frantically to write more code than anyone else not realizing that I accepted a new job the moment I was promoted – and writing code wasn’t it.

It’s something that almost all new managers forget. Being a manager isn’t a glorified version of your old job: it’s a brand new and completely different role. It requires a different skill set and attitude. As a manager, your responsibility is to ensure your team works on the right things at the right pace to deliver the right outcomes.

In my 30s, without any management or leadership training under my belt, I didn’t have a clue how to direct such a sizeable team. As a newbie manager I made mistakes and added further complexity to an already chaotic organization. It was only years later when I truly realized how my lack of leadership contributed to the chaos. I still cringe thinking about it.

I’m not proud of those mistakes, but I learned a lot from them. My biggest takeaway was that being a manager isn’t about rolling up your sleeves and working alongside your team (although there are times when this matters); it’s about understanding where your organization wants to go and deploying your team and resources to get you there.

If you’re a new manager who’s still doing the same work as before, step back and delegate. And, congratulations on your new job.