Happy problems ☺️
It's time for builders #44
We set what we thought was an ambitious revenue goal for this month, not even 3 weeks ago.
I remember talking to my cofounder, Matte, about how hard it was going to be.
Well, we blasted through it; I don’t even remember what day this week.
4 new deals between Tuesday and Thursday, and I wasn’t involved in a single one.
This is great, obviously.
But it comes with challenges.
Happy problems are still problems.
In particular, we have two:
more clients → more account management work (position open for a few more days)
bigger team → more complexity
How are we handling it?
1) Fun
Most important of all, I like these challenges, even thrive in them.
As Poliferie grew, I spent my Saturdays on back-to-back calls from 9 am until late afternoon.
I remember doing it even during weekends in DC and Singapore.
The “proxy for the office” on Saturdays (we were fully remote before Covid) was not popular with everyone, as you can imagine, so I had to lead by example - no matter what.
At Plug and Play, too, I enjoyed tackling the complexity of a bigger organization.
In an AI software, the acceleration is even stronger.
Plus, the business-product roadmap is much harder to get right.
But that’s better.
It keeps things new and interesting.
2) Doubling down
Some things are working.
Andre M. knows where to get leads (>90% upon cold outreach are ICPs)
The SDR team, Matte M. and Saul know how to book 20+ demos per week through emails and calls
Then Andre M is very skilful at demos and closing deals
Plus, the tech team has built a product full of wow effects
Feedback is often great on the first call from people who have been working in tender teams for years, if not decades.
The main reason why this is working is focus.
The ICP is well-defined, so sales should focus on it.
The product already delivers a lot, so tech’s priority should be to refine and consolidate.
3) Leaving space for experimentation
The team has lots of ownership and autonomy, but within a rather clear path (at least for the standards of a pre-seed startup).
Matte and I have lots of ideas for new things.
Marketing tactics, the feature that everyone wants, great people to hire, OpenClaw agents to deploy.
Matteo has been banging on about the latter for a while 😅
These are highly uncertain.
Their impact will be felt in months.
And if they work out, they are big.
If we wanted to play it safe, we would cut all of these bets.
But every time the question comes up, we know we want to swing for the fences.
4) One priority when waking up
This is a trick I relied on over the last couple of years at Plug and Play.
It’s easy to become a mere manager:
attending meetings
responding to emails
putting out fires
taking care of endless admin tasks
These things must be dealt with.
But they alone would mean being reactive.
The hardest tasks require a lot of proactive energy:
closing deals
hiring people
sorting out product priorities
building our brand identity
Instead of doing all of them equally at once, I focus on one for some days, even a week.
Complete it as much as possible, then move on to the next one.
If I wake up and don’t know what the 1 thing I need to get done asap is, it’s a red flag that I’m not prioritising well.