Having started his first business at 23 years old, Brad Magrath has had over two decades of experience as a Founder and working in Founder-led businesses. Knowing well the challenges and rewards of life in a Startup, he shares some key tips and insights on launching a career in this exhilarating world. Whether you’re trying to decide if it’s the right fit for you or wanting to know how to add value once you’ve joined the team, read on to discover how to not only survive, but thrive at a Startup.
First off, let’s get clarity on what a Startup is….
- Steve Blank: “A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”
- Peter Thiel: The least number of people possible to gain product-market fit.
- Steve Blank: A series of untested hypotheses.
- Josh Romisher: A race against time between product-market fit and runway.
Essentially, Startups are focused on trying to understand a customer problem and searching for a business model to solve that problem. The business model must become scalable and repeatable to become a business.
A viable and sustainable Startup venture lives in the intersection of 3 key elements:
Business Model — Is it possible to create the underlying model necessary to solve the customer problem?
Customer Value — Even if we create the model and delivery, does anyone value it enough to pay for it?
Financial Sustainability — Even if we create the solution and someone pays us for it, will they pay us enough that we can cover all of our expenses and have enough left over to pay wages and reinvest back into the business?
It’s all about getting the maximum amount of customer info and market learning at the lowest possible cost (time and money) to make a profit.
You do not criticize the plane in flight; just be in awe that it took off in the first place!
Joining a Startup and Adding Value
With all the hats I have worn in Startups, these are some of my biggest learnings:
Founders are rocket fuel
Good founders have an absolute conviction that they can do the impossible and are confident and brave enough to make big bets and take implausible leaps of faith on this path. Working with them to co-create and empower their vision starts with “Yes, and” rather than “No, but” conversations. Great founders listen, learn and evolve through new realities, learnings and voices at the table. But on the path from Good to Great, the requisite leaps of faith are often without data, and may not make sense to anyone except the founder. As team members, you have to not just be okay with this, you have to embrace it. And if you disagree, you need to “agree to disagree” and commit to moving forward. Founder Startups are rarely — if ever — a democracy, mainly because a lot of the time, the only person who sees the company’s future is the founder — and no Startup has the time or money to sit around debating the big bets. In light of this, you need to be able to trust the founder and take giant leaps together into the unknown murky waters; then you can start learning and working towards what needs to be understood to keep going or pivot.
In this world, it is not your knowledge that brings value, but your capacity to learn and evolve.
Seek to understand before being understood
Coming into a new Startup, you need to focus on listening to understand and seeking out both the “known and unknown” ways of working and company culture. Anyone can come into a Startup and find fault, but you are not being employed to point fingers; rather, you’ve come on board to help fix and improve. I always take the approach that you do not criticize the plane in flight; just be in awe that it took off in the first place! Whenever you join a Startup, truly embrace having a Beginner’s mindset. And if you feel you are fighting the culture, step off the bus, as that journey never ends well.
You know nothing, Jon Snow
Across many walks of life, your knowledge is what is valued most. In school and in the workplace, it’s often what you know that separates you from others. If you think about it, large companies execute known business models (known customers, known products, known competitors — if you do X the likely outcome is Y). Startups, however, are not “mini-corporates”. In this world, it is not your knowledge that brings value, but your capacity to learn and evolve. Your ability to embrace a growth mindset that can exponentially accelerate learning is what counts.
Live away from the office
In current times, this statement needs clarification! What I’m referring to here is that solutions won’t materialise at your desk unless you are speaking to customers and trying to understand their pain points, and the customer problem you are trying to solve. Constantly find time to connect with the underlying customer opportunity and search for product-market fit. You want to make sure you are building what the customer wants and needs, not what you think they want and need — so always help the business test their assumptions: test, learn, improve, repeat. Customer data is the one thing that can help a Startup (and a founder) not to “drink their own kool aid”. To take on the impossible, you need to be an optimist — but you also don’t want to fool yourself. Test everything and shift expectations to hypotheses. No Startup wants to suddenly find itself with a product no one wants to pay for, or a business model that does not work. Get the voice of the customer in the room — with data.
Startups are all about learning — and to learn you must do. So do more to learn more.
Be more (by being less) than Picture Perfect
Startups thrive when everyone is comfortable and confident to be their authentic selves. Right from the start, do not try to live up to the picture perfect LinkedIn snap. Be yourself, and be vulnerable; I am always open and upfront when I am doing something for the first time and feeling nervous. Given the nature and scale of Startups, most people are doing things for the first time. So rather than fake it, call it out — then everyone can band around the “newness” and bravery required to step into the unknown.
Relentlessly focus and prioritize
Startups can sometimes be super busy — and unproductive. When you join, do not be a sponge and take more and more on. Rather, try to understand what matters most. A lot of Startups get lost in the tyranny of the urgency of the now, so focus on understanding what matters most and what can turn the dial fast (and with maximum impact). Once you identify these big wins, relentlessly execute them and SHIP. In a Startup, if you can get big ticket items across the line soon after you arrive, your credibility and trust within the team will amplify fast. You want to be that go-to person who reliably delivers. In bigger ecosystems, stuff can go wrong and the ship still sails. In a startup, if you are flakey and cannot deliver on executional commitments, you will be seen as part of the problem, not the solution.
Relentlessly execute on what matters most
Startups are all about learning — and to learn you must do. So do more to learn more. Execute. Get clarity on what matters and run with it. Startups lose momentum when team members get stuck in the planning and not the doing. Startups lose momentum when people need total clarity or perfection to move forward. Startups lose momentum when people get stuck unless they have visibility on all strategic elements. Momentum in a Startup is either your best friend or worst enemy — and Startups need momentum to be their friend. Startups need executioners and doers, as they are all about outcomes and not activities.
Constraints are often a key driver of innovation.
Good Startups are not Peter Pan
Startups are searching for a replicable model, so they have to grow and evolve and get better as a functioning ecosystem. This is a crucial and sometimes missing step. Always look to build out processes that enhance customer experience, support replication and consistent delivery, and codify operations, making it easier for the next person that walks through the door to do your or any other job. Getting things working right is critical to maintain speed — you can start manually and then look to automate. This is not a document filed away on Google Sheets; these are living and breathing operational playbooks in teammates hands.
Don’t be ‘that person’
Office politics and water cooler chats are kryptonite to a Startup. Do not CC your boss on communications to teammates when it’s not necessary, or try to play games that make you look good. The most important people around you in a Startup — even more than the Founder — are those in the team you work closely with. Share the credit with others and take the blame on yourself; working to make your peers shine is better than you shining. Startups are often small and informal enough that channels of communication get to the top quickly, so if you’re adding value to your peers, you’re creating a currency of value. If you step on others, it’s a small enough village that people will know.
Innovation in scarcity
Startups are in a race against time, and constraints are often a key driver of innovation. Whether it is time, money, resources or capacity, no one in a Startup should get a blank cheque. When you join, always try to embrace this scarcity; the easiest answer might be that you need more time, more money, or more people to get the job done, but it might not always be the best one, for you or the business.
Embrace the squiggle; Startups by their nature are bound to change.
Skeletons in the cupboard
All startups have some form of operational or technical debt. This is part of doing business, but it cannot be swept under the carpet forever or in entirety. You do not have to solve all of it, and certainly not right away, but if you have the ability to fix something that’s slowing down the ecosystem’s ability to perform and do it in a way that empowers the team’s ability to accelerate — that is a piece of work worth shipping.
Know your numbers
Get up to speed with the business metrics that matter most: the company’s North Star and key value drivers. Know them, understand them, work out how you can positively impact them. Any activities and outcomes that you can connect to the business drivers will add direct value to them; being able to measure and manage this enables solid value creation, and provides clear proof of what you bring to the table.
Embrace the Squiggle
Often in Startups, you hear of “change fatigue”, where people feel that change needs to slow down. Going back to the words of Steve Blank, Peter Thiel and Josh Romisher, Startups by their nature are bound to change. Sure, leadership can always improve clarification, communication and alignment — that is a given in any business. But I also think that team members who lean into and embrace the “searching” element of a Startup can help to sustain a culture of constant change and innovation in the company’s evolution. This is not a known ecosystem with any level of predictability.
Leave your ego at the door
It’s critical that you leave your ego at the door. This is an all-hands-on-deck world, where job titles and reporting lines come second to so many more important things.
Three reasons I still love working at Startups
All of the above being said, there’s nothing I love more than working at a Startup. Why?
- You get to work with talented and diverse teams — it’s been a long time since I was the smartest person in the room.
- You get to experience exponential growth — both personally and professionally.
- You get to have an impact and make a difference — in most cases, in service of a vision that matters.
Co-Founder and former CEO of Pan African Fintech, Zoona, Brad Magrath is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence in The Room. With more than 20 years’ experience and learnings at the coal face of starting and scaling businesses, and pivoting and executing turnarounds of underperforming businesses in emerging markets, he has cultivated a proven reputation and track record in the African Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.
