The best laid plans
Startups, by their nature, are designed to be an uncontainable, uncontrollable and unstructured mess.
I’m Rob.
I’ve been starting, running, and occasionally saving companies for over 30 years… Now I’m co-founder and COO of Trexity. We’ve done over 2 million deliveries. I’ve personally done more of them than I’d like to admit.
Brand new to the site? I suggest you start here
Should you say yes?
How often do you say “yes” to customer requests?
The Startup Culture
Lots has been written about the importance of company culture and how to encourage it to develop and flourish in the right way.
What do you do for a living?
This is the hardest question to answer for founders.
Politics is a dirty word
As the US and potentially Canada gear up for elections, the ideological divisions are obviously quite deep. Each side feels that theirs is the righteous one and their party alone is the one that speaks the truth.
From anarchy to…less anarchy?
“Just f@cking do it.”
Identity
Title or outcome.
High effort or none at all
What gives a startup the highest chance for success?
Embrace the silence
Great interviewers know that silence is a tool. They don’t feel the need to fill the space left by a question or an answer. They soak in it and keep their mouths shut.
Is your story better than your product?
“We need you to remove your product right away. It is hurting our business.”
You can’t aim to sell
It is every startup team’s hope — that they are building something that puts them in front of someone else that wants to buy their company.
THE decision-making framework
Some of us have a hard time making decisions. Period. We like to analyze options until we’ve backed ourselves into a corner and all of them have expired.
The secret to scaling is stopping
Why myself and my co-founders of a delivery company spent months doing deliveries ourselves, and how that’s the opposite of what most scaling advice tells you.
Your Situation Room
After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 — attributed to a lack of up-to-date information — President Kennedy ordered the creation of the Situation Room in the basement of the White House. Its sole purpose was to bring together the right people and information at the right time, mostly during a crisis, to make the most right decision available.
How patient is too patient
How much patience should you have with employees in an early stage startup?
Pull the future forward
Adult Mayflies live for 2 days. They spend a year as larvae, burst onto the scene with the sole purpose of mating and then, 2 days later, dead.
Real VCs make decisions and move on
The all-too-common knock against venture capitalists is that they never make up their mind. They lead founders on, always asking for more proof points only to disappear or finally say no months too late.
How startups can save $100,000
Early days in startup life feels like David Allen’s GTD on amphetamines.
Fighting Fiefdoms
This happens all too often in early stage companies.
Options in tandem
The answer will be no.
Earn your views
I love the simplicity of this statement: Earn your views. Views can mean something different to everyone but it’s the “earn” part that hits for me.
The alignment meeting
Remember that old adage that to assume makes an ass out of you and me? That’s cute but in startups, assumptions derail initiatives and kill momentum. Nothing cute about that.
I’ve actually spent my last penny
The story of the Christmas I wrote a cheque I couldn’t cash — and what it taught me about the difference between “tight” and “broke.”
When do you add an operations lead
This is a question that not enough founders ask. The simple answer is right now.
Why you aren’t growing
This is a quick reminder of the simple principles that govern startup business life.