Keeping Your Startup DNA - Startup Talks June 2015

Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your

business

Jonathon Southam, Business DevelopmentStartup Community, AWS

George Berkowski, CEO IceCream

Company Building

And yet…

Total # AirBnB Guests

Brian“What is the single most important

piece of advice for us?”

Peter“Don’t ‘****’ up the Culture”

https://medium.com/working-­life/597cde9ee9d4

“The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.”

Brian Chesky, Founder

https://medium.com/working-­life/597cde9ee9d4

“The product is the product. The culture is the next hundred products”

Phil Libin, CEO

www.fastcompany.com/3012870/dialed/evernotes-­quest-­to-­become-­a-­100-­year-­old-­startup

How do you keep Startup DNA??

How do you build it into your Culture as you scale your business?

When you get started

# 3 Investor Pitch Deck

Biggest Challenge = Finding People

# 1 Customer Pitch Deck

# 2 Employee Pitch Deck

ABH‘Always Be Hiring’

Location Name

A must read for anyone who wants to start a mobile app business’ RICCARDO ZACCONI, FOUNDER AND CEO KING DIGITAL (MAKER OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA)

givemeicecream.com

George Berkowski, CEO, IceCream, Author 'How to build a billion dollar app', formally Head of Product at Hailo.

Location Name

A must read for anyone who wants to start a mobile app business’ RICCARDO ZACCONI, FOUNDER AND CEO KING DIGITAL (MAKER OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA)

‘A must read for anyone who wants to start a mobile app business’

-­ CEO King Digital (maker of Candy Crush Saga)

‘A compulsively readable business book’

-­ Jeffrey Rayport(Harvard Business School)

"A company becomes the people it hires, not what it plans."

Vinod Khosla

When you are scaling

“Good culture creates an environment where people can do their best work”

Mike Curtis, VP Engineering, Airbnb

http://nerds.airbnb.com/engineering-­culture-­airbnb/

OrganizationStructured teams, fluid responsibilities

ProcessExample: Code Review Process

When you are at scale

f(innovation) =(mechanisms * culture)

(org * arch)

customer obsession

ownership

invent and simplify

are right, a lothire and develop the best

insist on highest standards

think bigbias for action

frugality

vocally self critical

earn trust

dive deep

have backbone;; disagree & commit

deliver results

amazon leadership principles

Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-­term value for short-­term results. They act on behalf of the entire company,

beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job."

DevOps

two pizza teams

dive deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, and audit frequently. No task is beneath them.

Weekly ops metric meetingsa scorecard for each service team

a graph for every metric that customers care abouteach graph has a line…fitness functionCorrection of Error (COE) process

Amazon has a very metrics-­driven culture

But then TJ gets an unexpected e-­mail from Amazon...

“We noticed that you experienced poor video playback. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and have issued you a refund for $3.99”

http://consumerist.com/2013/05/02/amazon-­notices-­our-­streaming-­video-­was-­glitchy-­proactively-­issues-­refund/

customer obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay

attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Press release to capture the customer perspective#1FAQ to answer any questions a customer might have#2

Press release to capture the customer perspective#1FAQ to answer any questions a customer might have#2Start finding the right ‘primitives’#3Launch, then iterate fast & often#4

Rate of Experimentation

11.6sAverage time between deployments (weekday)

1,079Max number of deployments in a single hour

(or approx every 3 seconds)

30,000Max number of

instances simultaneously

receiving a deployment

Speed of deployments at amazon.com

May 2011

CultureMechanismsOrganizationArchitecture

Startup DNA

Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your business

George Berkowski, CEO IceCream(Former Head of Product, Hailo)

Location Name

A must read for anyone who wants to start a mobile app business’ RICCARDO ZACCONI, FOUNDER AND CEO KING DIGITAL (MAKER OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA)

givemeicecream.com

George Berkowski, CEO, IceCream, Author 'How to build a billion dollar app', formally Head of Product at Hailo.

Location Name

Scaling Agile @ HAILO to 18 Cities

Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your

business

[email protected], @[email protected], @georgeberkowski