Years ago my two co-workers at StackAdapt did half-Ironman, which greatly inspired me. This year, I finally achieved a milestone of my own by completing my first Olympic Triathlon. During my preparation, I went online seeking advice for enhancing running speed and endurance, I stumbled upon a video featuring a runner.
This is the 7th year I’ve written on my birthday. Every year the format of my birthday article changes, and this year is no exception. In the past, I've focused on lessons learned, but this year I will just share things that are on my mind.
A few weeks ago, after almost a decade of pitching, the tables turned, and I was on the other side of a pitch competition – judging the founders sharing their ideas. Eight companies gave presentations, and I’ve decided to provide unified feedback to all of them in the form of this article.
PMF is not guaranteed. Many companies (or shall I say, most startup companies) never find it.
When we started StackAdapt four years ago, our onboarding process was much like many other startups’: Bring your own laptop… Here is your desk… Please shadow this guy.” It wasn’t until a couple of years in that we realized we were doing it wrong. Of course, employee onboarding, like many things, is always work-in-progress, but here are some tips for avoiding the mistakes we made in the early days of welcoming and educating new staff.
Finding product-market fit should be #1 priority for every startup. It's a race against time to find it before you run out of money. Pivots are an inevitable part of it, and as a founder, you should get comfortable with changing and moving very fast. Surprisingly, aside from Andreessen Horowitz, very few people talk about these topics. That's what makes this video so special.
It all started four years ago in my kitchen. Fast forward five (five!) offices later and we occupy a 9,000 sq. ft. office in the heart of Toronto’s startup hub. And, believe it or not, we are moving into a 16,000 sq. ft. space in 3 months. What have I learned from moving offices six times? A lot. In the spirit of paying it forward, here is everything I’ve learned about business real estate.
Some things change, some things stay the same. This simple idea can help you build your startup into something that will stick. At StackAdapt, two fundamental concepts help us uncover opportunities and decide our company’s direction. Differentiating between and acknowledging finite trends and universal truths will impact how you view your product, industry, and customers and help decided the direction of your business.
If you are anything like me, you probably have 5 tubs of vitamins hanging out in your cupboard, many of which expired years ago. No matter how often I am told that taking vitamins is good for my long term health, it is just too easy to forget to take them. Why? There are simply no immediate consequences for my not taking them.
On the other hand, if one is suffering from jetlag, the flu, a wild night… no one forgets to cure their splitting headache with an ibuprofen. Unlike vitamins, painkillers are more than “nice to have”, they are an urgent necessity.
Today, I wanted to share the first video interview with Rajesh Uttamchandani, Managing Director and CPO at Zafin. Overseeing an organisation of well over 500 people in size, he provided some amazing insights on what it means to run a company of this calibre and what startups can start doing today to scale their talent strategies.
Thank you for stopping by!
I hope you learned something new. If you want to get updated next time I post content, you can follow me on LinkedIn here.
Cheers!
