Founders

How to ship fast as a small company looking for product-market fit

1. Avoid side quests. If you aren't coding, selling or talking to users, it's a side quest. 

2. Eliminate process. Don't cargo cult your team into sprint planning, offsites or recurring 1:1s. Gather once a day, talk about what to ship and ship it.  

3. Hire people who love to ship fast all the time. Most people cannot do this correctly or do not enjoy doing it. 

4. Don't hire people who can't ship. It's temping to get an ea, bd rep or community manager to offload work. This usually just creates more work for you. 

5. Have a simple and fast tech stack. A new hire should be able to write a feature in a day and deploy it to users in 30 minutes.

Related: partnerships almost never work and especially harmful for moving fast.

1. If you're a fast-moving startup, most if not all companies will move slower than you. Waiting on another company to hold up their end of the deadline is de-motivating for your team. 

2. Coordinating a "big bang" launch takes a lot of work and usually doesn't make a huge impact.

Instead, a better way to do partnerships:

1. Tell the other party what your plans are and the deadline for being included. Be clear that you will ship whether ready or not.

2. If they miss the deadline but finish a few days / week later, just announce as a follow on.

Related: partnerships almost never work and especially harmful for moving fast.

1. If you're a fast-moving startup, most if not all companies will move slower than you. Waiting on another company to hold up their end of the deadline is de-motivating for your team. 

2. Coordinating a "big bang" launch takes a lot of work and usually doesn't make a huge impact.

Instead, a better way to do partnerships:

1. Tell the other party what your plans are and the deadline for being included. Be clear that you will ship whether ready or not.

2. If they miss the deadline but finish a few days / week later, just announce as a follow on.

https://warpcast.com/v/0x5f08d01e

Respectfully disagree.

First, not every partnership is product-focused and involves shipping something.

Second, even if it does include shipping, and they’re dragging their feet, then you have mismatched priorities.

Thats why you have people who specialize in partnerships. Their job is to vet the partnership, ensure synergies & alignment, and keep the train on the tracks.

CEO - Media3 Labs | Join us at /scoop3, an onchain podcast player | Host of The Blockchain Experience podcast /theblockexp | Ex-Samsung | Ex-Hewlett-Packard

Samsung Mobile when they unified launch date of their flagship handsets across all carriers in the US.

When the Galaxy S line launched, for all intents and purposes, it was a startup because in the US the OEMs and carriers have a different relationship than anywhere else in the world. It was carried on the backs of a few dozen employees.