Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your
business
Jonathon Southam, Business DevelopmentStartup 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 ‘****’ 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?
When you get started
# 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)
givemeicecream.com
George Berkowski, CEO, IceCream, Author 'How to build a billion dollar app', formally Head of Product at Hailo.
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)
"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/
OrganizationStructured teams, fluid responsibilities
ProcessExample: Code Review Process
When you are at scale
f(innovation) =(mechanisms * culture)
(org * arch)
customer obsession
ownership
invent and simplify
are right, a lothire 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 meetingsa scorecard for each service team
a graph for every metric that customers care abouteach graph has a line…fitness functionCorrection 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#1FAQ to answer any questions a customer might have#2
Press release to capture the customer perspective#1FAQ to answer any questions a customer might have#2Start finding the right ‘primitives’#3Launch, then iterate fast & often#4
Rate of Experimentation
11.6sAverage time between deployments (weekday)
1,079Max number of deployments in a single hour
(or approx every 3 seconds)
30,000Max number of
instances simultaneously
receiving a deployment
Speed of deployments at amazon.com
May 2011
CultureMechanismsOrganizationArchitecture
Startup DNA
Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your business
George Berkowski, CEO IceCream(Former Head of Product, Hailo)
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
George Berkowski, CEO, IceCream, Author 'How to build a billion dollar app', formally Head of Product at Hailo.
Location Name
Scaling Agile @ HAILO to 18 Cities
Company Building Keeping your startup DNA when you grow your
business
[email protected], @[email protected], @georgeberkowski
