Move Fast. Be Agile. Stay Focused.

By Frank Addante

I realize that I have not made a new posting in a few weeks. My apologies for the sporadic activity… I am in the process of relocating back from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, so things are a bit hectic at the moment. I hope to resume my weekly posting schedule as soon as possible.

I had some time to put together this post over the weekend… This is probably one of the biggest lessons I have learned throughout my past 5 companies.


Move Fast. Be Agile. Stay Focused.

I believe that a startup's biggest assets are speed and agility. The ability to execute at faster speeds and to rapidly adapt their course is what enables them to compete and to protect themselves from the big companies.

This can be both a strength and a weakness. Moving fast without focus can be dangerous. It can quickly move you off course.

"Getting Big"
Some of my companies have moved faster as they grow, some have moved slower. The tendancy is for companies to move slower as they get bigger; they add more processes, they have to keep more people "on the same page," there is less tolerance for "scrapiness" and real-time, active communication is a great challenge.

It all comes down to company culture and the team that you build. Moving fast definitely requires a team that has the "entrepreneurial spirit." The team must be empowered, must have flexibility to experiment and it should be "OK" to make mistakes. A culture where it is not "OK" to make mistakes puts everyone in CYA (cover your a**) mode, limiting their potential and speed of execution. I've found that people will allocate bigger buffers for setting expectations, they over-hire to make sure they have more then enough resources, they over-perfect things, they have more frequent and longer time-wasting meetings, they concentrate too much on the methods instead of the results and they over-process things. I always say if you aren't making mistakes, you aren't moving fast enough.

"If you want to double your rate of success, quadruple your rate of failure" (-- Thomas Watson, IBM Founder )

As a leader, encouraging this kind of behavior requires a lot of discipline and extreme trust in your team.

At L90 (Startup 3.0), an online advertising technology company, we moved faster and became more agile as we grew in size. The team was like lightning. Our meetings were quick and infrequent (if we were in meetings, we weren't producing). I would describe them better as "touchpoints" and "rallies" as opposed to "meetings." The focus was so clear that there was never a question as to what it was. It didn't require a detailed definition or a plan. In fact, I don't even think anyone ever had to ask what it was, it was just ingrained in our culture. There wasn't a new-hire orientation or weekly staff meetings that said L90's focus was X. Everyone was just running so fast towards it that it was hard to avoid the focus or the momentum heading towards it. It was an amazing thing to be caught in the middle of.

On the flip-side, at Zondigo (Startup 4.0), a wireless and voice applications company, we had a team of people that were running fast, however, we had a severe lack of focus. This was the first (and only) company that I had started with outside capital from day one. I believe this factor caused us to behave differently than my previous startups. It's like the clock started ticking from day one and we had to rush to find the "right" answer. Zondigo was an idea, a team and capital in search of a business plan. We were afraid to make mistakes. Meetings, meetings, more meetings... longer meetings... more debates... "what if..." "that won't work because..." We spent more time "talking" than "doing"... If something didn't work immediately the first time, we would try something new and switch our focus rather than staying the course and finding an alternative solution. It seemed as though we decided to change our focus every other week. Part of this was due to rapidly changing market dynamics (2001, dot-com crash), however, most of it was due to lack of confidence in our own plan. Interestingly enough, if we had stuck with our original plan, I believe we would have been much more successful. This lack of focus was my fault, I was not an effective leader for my team and we did not start the business on a solid foundation (vision, mission, goal, focus). Unfortunately, I didn't learn this lesson until years after Zondigo's exit.

There was a brief period of time at my current company, StrongMail Systems (Startup 5.0), that we went through a similar phase; lack of confidence in our plan, vision, focus. We had tried to change it multiple times and every time that we did, it would take us further and further away from our goals. Fortunately, this time I recognized the pattern and we were quick to correct it. We reverted back to our original business plan and it turns out that it has been, by far, the most successful for us.


So, what I have learned: Believe in your plan, let loose, stay confident and go go go!