via continuations

“I have had the privilege of observing a number of founders grow their companies from just a few people to over a hundred employees. Leaving all the other growth challenges aside, I have come to conclude that personal scaling is the most important issue. By personal scaling I mean figuring out how…”

I’m going through this now and it’s really hard. For years I’ve read about how hard it is for founders to ‘give up control’ but man, it’s difficult! It’s such a weird feeling to have people working for you, not really knowing exactly what they are doing, only knowing the high level goals they’re trying to achieve, not knowing how they’ll implement something, realizing it will always be different than how I’d implement it, etc. Basically realizing you’ll never know everything, and no matter what you have to trust them that they’re doing the right thing, learning on their own, asking the right questions, etc. I could go on and on, maybe I’ll write some posts about this.

What makes the problem a bit easier, and reminds me I absolutely have to figure it out, is the advice is universal. Everyone says you have to give up control to grow and take it to the next level. There’s not a lot of startup advice that’s universal, so when it is, you better listen up!

Have you gone through this process already? Would love to hear your thoughts, leave a comment please!

Super interesting article in general, but really peaked my interest because Dropbox is selling a solution to a problem people don’t even know exists. This is similar to SwagLove, people don’t know there is a company that will do all of the work for you, they have no idea. But then there’s the “ah ha” moment when they find out.

Also, similar to our company:

“Dropbox stayed lean, which enabled it to sail through the meltdown. In 2008 it had nine employees and 200,000 customers. Two and a half years later it had added five workers. Users rose tenfold. Houston and Ferdowsi moved offices again and often just slept at work. They were getting every customer service e-mail and ignoring messages from their VCs. They toyed with advertising. “That’s what you’re supposed to do: hire a marketing guy, buy Google AdWords,” says Houston. “We sucked at it.” It was costing them $300 to hook one sign-up. Their challenge was marketing a product to solve a problem people didn’t realize they had and weren’t searching for. Ferdowsi from the start insisted Dropbox’s home page be a simple stick-figure video showing what the product does. No table of features and pricing; instead, a story about a guy who loses stuff and goes on a trip to Africa. So rather than advertise, they turned their small but loyal customer base into salespeople, giving away 250 megabytes of free storage in exchange for a referral. One-quarter of all new customers still come to Dropbox this way. Within two and a half years the snowball had rolled into a $4 billion valuation.”

Classic success story, great inspiration for building a revolutionary product and marketing it differently.

And this is classic… my favorite comment from the article:

“My kid loves computers and programming… I work hard on keeping him away from computers to raise him as normal and socially fit (Whatever that means!!!) After reading this article, I will let him pursue his passion and interests!”

Great article from Brian Clark of Copyblogger Media. Highlights:

The Internet:

• - Allows for two-way communication (dialogue);
• - Facilitates anytime access to information and continuous learning;
• - Promotes community.

The Internet is a relationship medium. And it’s a perfect medium for promoting the relationship between those who can teach and those who need to learn for the rest of their lives by necessity (and that’s just about everyone).

You can’t pick up a book from the last 10 years written by a marketing consultant, economist, or futurist who isn’t talking about the transition from a focus on products to a focus on marketing.

What this means is a shift away from simply making sales and towards forming long term relationships with customers.

Nike doesn’t make shoes, because manufacturing shoes is not where the money is. They instead create vivid imagery that leads to loyal customer relationships.

Those of us in Western societies now operate in a knowledge and creative economy. And the business of knowledge transfer (also known as teaching) is one of the biggest and most vital aspects of what will allow us to remain economically viable.

(Source: teachingsells.com)

Originally published in the New York Times, an amazingly well-written and moving piece about Steve’s life from his biological sister. An acclaimed novelist, Mona Simpson writes about his life, his illness, and his death. His last words were “Oh, Wow. Oh, Wow. Oh, Wow” - looking at his family and his wife.