There's this thing that happens on the internet, maybe you've seen it...
Someone makes a short video, an explainer with quick, punchy sentences, or maybe remixes a meme with big, expressive hand movements, and, just like that, a complex and nuanced topic becomes more accessible to a mass audience.
The most obvious version of this phenomenon can be seen in those short sidewalk or living room dance videos aimed at going viral on TikTok, with lots of cultural appropriation involved (if you need a reference, Khalil Greene breaks it down with examples).
As an art form, dancing has a whole history, context, and set of perspectives, and street dance is a subset that tends to be more improvisational. In a lot of ways, it creates culture which more formal dance than responds to.
There is something that stands out: when you look at these clips, particularly the ones that go viral, a big part of the job of these dancers is to fit their moves into a 9:16 frame, which is the standard vertical video size for TikTok and other mobile-focused video apps.
3 ways homogeneous VCs & founders incentivize capital inefficiency
Many venture-backed startups are capital inefficient, and while some of this is required for the model, the more homogeneous it is at the top (👨👋🏻), the higher the risk...
Here are three ways I saw this play out working across operations & marketing in startups from 2013-21:
1) Over-focus on revenue at the expense of real, sustainable, and specific customer/user acquisition
If you're paying any attention at all, one of the first lessons working in a startup is that revenue is a byproduct of growth, and growth means nothing if it's not segmented.
In many cases, the pressure of creating constant, impressive growth leads to up-and-to-the-right syndrome, where investors and founders essentially spend all their time figuring out how to corner the market & outmaneuver competitors rather than learning from and creating repeatable growth within specific segments.
Read MoreThe hockey stick growth slide is broken (here's a better one)
Without question, the most popular slide in a startup pitch deck is the one showing hockey stick growth.
When you find product/market fit and start seeing rapid customer acquisition, the theory goes, your basic X/Y axis of time and revenue will show exponential jumps. Your monthly revenue goes from $7,000 > $70,000 > $700,000, hence the hockey stick graphic.
Obviously, this is an extremely attractive slide to put in your pitch deck or financials. And while it’s clearly oriented toward venture capital investors, over the last decade hockey stick growth thinking has made its way into private equity and the broader marketplace as others learned from and emulated the growth of Facebook, Google, etc.
The slide does have value, but investors, companies, and founders still frequently mistake the hockey stick as a model for growth, rather than the consequence of it.
Read MoreWhat happens when you frame the work
One of the hardest parts of making the jump to being a manager, leader, or starting a company/org is learning to frame your work.
This is a brutal truth: most people don’t know how to frame the work they are doing.
It shows up all the time…
Two people schedule a meeting and spend the first 20 minutes telling a third person about a conversation they already had.
Someone with writing as a core part of their job delivers two projects. One is amazing and on-point, the other is ok but written for the wrong audience.
A partnership opportunity appears out of thin air but the company/org can’t move fast enough to leverage it.
The myth of only hiring high performers
One of the things that’s surprised me over the last few years: most people are coachable, but the majority of managers/leaders are looking for people they don’t have to coach.
This shows up in job descriptions regularly. Sometimes it’s arrogant, like when a founder or executive says “high performers only, we are not here to babysit you.” Other times, it’s more subtle, with a bullet point or two emphasizing the search for someone who is “highly autonomous.”
On the surface, this makes a manager or leader look/feel smart. You’re hiring someone who’s ready to go to work, they are motivated, and they will deliver results without needing much ( or any) support.
There are a few problems with optimizing this way…
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