PRINCIPLES OF INTEGRATED DESIGNYoav Shapira / May 2016

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?Yoav Shapira / May 2016

OBLIGATORY BACKGROUND• Software engineer -> product + eng ->

company builder

• Started in Big Consulting, then medium-size pharma

• Serial entrepreneur: built and ran product/engineering @CarGurus, @HubSpot, @Happier, @Jana

• Advisor / investor in numerous companies

• Occasional slow runner, weird sports enthusiast

• Get in touch: www.YoavShapira.com

PLEASE INTERRUPT.

I don’t like hearing myself talk.

STARTUP1, DAY 1

• Imagine a nice late winter morning in the Harvard Square Starbucks

• Me: “I’m excited, let’s go to the office!”

• CEO: “Great idea! We need an office! Where would you like to work?”

CLEAN CANVAS• I quickly learned about commercial

real estate, leases, insurance.

• Bought and personally assembled a handful of IKEA desks.

• I don’t like assembling furniture. But I like starting companies from scratch because…

• You create the culture, the values, the norms from day 1.

• These matter more than product or go-to-market. They are your company.

SCRAPPINESS• A trait that I (and others) value highly.

• Equally important whether hiring colleagues or investing in founding teams.

• Scrappy does the best s/he can with limited resources (it’s a startup) without complaining.

• At scale, sometimes scrappy needs a new challenge or a replacement. This is a good problem to have.

• With an MIT (or similar) degree, you may need to prove you’re scrappy (still).

SUSTAINABLE ADVANTAGES• Remember that nearly

anything about a product can be copied, often quickly.

• Code, user interfaces are competitive advantages, maybe, but usually not sustainable.

• Speed of learning / iteration, however, is sustainable.

SPEED WINS

• Construct your culture, including every process, to minimize time through the loop.

• Learn about user research, split testing, etc, but also look hard at internal processes.

• Meetings, especially, are insidious time sucks.

WORTH THEIR OWN SLIDE• Time is the only true zero-sum game.

You can’t “grow the pie.”

• Be ruthless about it, but clear, consistent.

• Can you share knowledge asynchronously, e.g. via a wiki?

• Note: I’m talking about regular / recurring meetings. Ad-hoc time at a whiteboard / similar is excellent, encouraged.

• “Long twitch” vs “slow twitch” time

“I AM NOT A DESIGNER”• “I’m not a designer because I can’t draw

anything.” That’s overly simplistic, naive.

• Meetings, for instance, are designing people’s time, calendars, schedule.

• How do you react to a late Friday evening or early Monday morning meeting invitation?

• You will all be designing things at a startup: products, user experiences, etc.

• Just that the “user” might be a colleague, a job candidate, an external partner…

LEARN THE CRAFT• Spend time chatting with actual

designers and other specialists.

• Shadowing (or actual apprenticeship!) is under-rated in general.

• Take a support call, try to sell, do a user interview, build a screen, run a web split test, buy an ad…

• You don’t need to master the skill. Specialists still have value. But know enough to be credible, hire.

“LEVEL 5 LEADERSHIP”• Jim Collins “Good to Great”

concept. Maybe best part of book. (Much has aged poorly.)

• Read the whole definition, In particular :

• Set the target at building an enduring, world-class company

• When giving credit, look outside the window; when blaming, look in the mirror.

FIND YOUR TEAMMATES• I joined CarGurus and HubSpot for

people, not ideas.

• I’m OK with cars, OK with marketing people like, but neither was a passion or life-long interest

• I joined Happier and Jana for missions more than people.

• Missions don’t have bad days, but companies and people do.

• If I had to pick one, it’s people first.

TYPE II FUN?• Every single startup has many

days where it feels like it’s going to die.

• Some have wildly positive days, too.

• The rare successful one is a guaranteed rollercoaster.

• Don’t look for stability.

• Don’t do it because it’s this decade’s sexy job.

DATA FOR DEBATE, SUNSHINE

HIRING

• Everyone’s job & potential sustainable competitive advantage.

• Here, too, speed wins: pick target # total days per candidate, make it happen.

• Again data: track your funnel meticulously, split-test sources, ads.

• It’s hard, takes a long time.

• Religion, Pied Piper, etc.

RIDING THE ROCKETSHIP• If you’re lucky and the company

is growing, things will break often.

• Separate “high quality” or “good” problems from bad ones.

• Question conventional wisdom. Even old problems can be fixed in new ways.

• “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

SMALL, AUTONOMOUS TEAMS• As small and autonomous as possible, so

they can move forward unhindered.

• Avoid inter-team dependencies as much as you can. They shackle everyone.

• Don’t just have a designer, engineer, and “business person.”

• Include whoever is generating revenue (e.g. sales), whoever is marketing, whoever is supporting the product, etc.

• At scale: Spotify’s squads maybe?

• Avoid “conventional” shared service teams

AUTONOMY, MASTERY, PURPOSE

• Watch Daniel Pink’s TED Talk or short video.

• This is the key to hiring and retaining the best people.

• Design your organization accordingly, be it a team, department, division, or entire company.

• Example: OKRs, budgets

SMALL, QUICK STEPS• Ship (software, processes,

and anything else you can) all the time.

• Continuous Delivery is magic.

• Forces the entire organization to have efficient processes and culture.

PAY IT FORWARD• The entrepreneurial

community is huge, active, and welcoming. Reach out!

• Help people however you can. It takes time, and it’s not always fun, but they remember.

• It’s also a small world. Reputation / karma matters.

FINALLY: BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

• Do what it takes to sleep well at night: a clear conscience is key.

• Don’t compromise on your values, be they personal or professional.

• When you do this consistently, you have zero regrets.

• This sounds cheesy, but it’s been crucial to me.

QUIKFORCE (THANKS @KEVIN)

• “Hiring movers has never been easier.”

• Simple site + app to describe your move, book movers quickly and easily.

• Rapid B2C growth, now receive B2B interest from corporate movers.

• Thoughts?

JANA (THANKS @KEVIN)• A current challenges: portal vs

constellation.

• Jana’s mission is to make the internet free for the next billion.

• Users in emerging markets, e.g. India, with (low end) smartphones.

• Browsing, messaging, photos, apps: make free in one place?

• “Chinese Mobile App UI Trends”