company building - amazon s3...company building keeping your startup dna when you grow your business...
TRANSCRIPT
Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your
business
Jonathon Southam, Business Development
Startup Community, AWS
George Berkowski, CEO IceCream
Company Building
And yet…
Total # AirBnB Guests
Brian
“What is the single most important
piece of advice for us?”
Peter“Don’t ‘mess’ up the Culture”
https://medium.com/working-life/597cde9ee9d4
“The culture is what creates the
foundation for all future innovation. If
you break the culture, you break the
machine that creates your products.”
Brian Chesky, Founder
https://medium.com/working-life/597cde9ee9d4
“The product is the product.
The culture is the next hundred products” Phil Libin, CEO
www.fastcompany.com/3012870/dialed/evernotes-quest-to-become-a-100-year-old-startup
How do you keep Startup DNA?
How do you build it into your Culture
as you scale your business?
# 3 Investor Pitch Deck
Biggest Challenge = Finding People
# 1 Customer Pitch Deck
# 2 Employee Pitch Deck
ABH‘Always Be Hiring’
Location Name
A must read for anyone who wants to start a mobile app business’ RICCARDO
ZACCONI, FOUNDER AND CEO KING DIGITAL (MAKER OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA)
‘A must read for anyone
who wants to start a
mobile app business’
- CEO King Digital
(maker of Candy Crush Saga)
‘A compulsively
readable business book’
- Jeffrey Rayport
(Harvard Business School)
Location Name
A must read for anyone who wants to start a mobile app business’ RICCARDO
ZACCONI, FOUNDER AND CEO KING DIGITAL (MAKER OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA)
givemeicecream.com
"A company becomes the people it hires,
not what it plans."
Vinod Khosla
When you are scaling
“Good culture creates an environment
where people can do their best work”
Mike Curtis, VP Engineering, Airbnb
http://nerds.airbnb.com/engineering-culture-airbnb/
Organization
Structured teams, fluid responsibilities
Process
Example: Code Review Process
When you are at scale
f(innovation) =
(mechanisms * culture)
(org * arch)
customer obsession
ownership
invent and simplify
are right, a lot
hire and develop the best
insist on highest standards
think bigbias for action
frugality
vocally self critical
earn trust
dive deep
have backbone; disagree & commit
deliver results
amazon leadership principles
Ownership
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term
value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company,
beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job."
DevOps
two pizza teams
dive deep
Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, and audit
frequently. No task is beneath them.
Weekly ops metric meetings
a scorecard for each service team
a graph for every metric that customers care about
each graph has a line…fitness function
Correction of Error (COE) process
Amazon has a very metrics-driven culture
But then TJ gets an unexpected
e-mail from Amazon...
“We noticed that you
experienced poor video
playback. We’re sorry for
the inconvenience and
have issued you a refund
for $3.99”
http://consumerist.com/2013/05/02/amazon-notices-our-streaming-video-was-glitchy-proactively-issues-refund/
customer obsession
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work
vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay
attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Press release to capture the customer
perspective#1
FAQ to answer any questions a customer
might have#2
Press release to capture the customer
perspective#1
FAQ to answer any questions a customer
might have#2
Start finding the right ‘primitives’#3
Launch, then iterate fast & often#4
Rate of Experimentation
11.6s
Average time
between
deployments
(weekday)
1,079
Max number of
deployments in a
single hour
(or approx every
3 seconds)
30,000
Max number of
instances
simultaneously
receiving a
deployment
Speed of deployments at amazon.com
May 2011
Culture
Mechanisms
Organization
Architecture
Startup DNA
Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your business
George Berkowski, CEO IceCream
(Former Head of Product, Hailo)
Location Name
Scaling Agile @ HAILO to 18 Cities
