#7: “Ideas aren’t cheap,” 💵 the missed nuance of “build vs. buy”, and more
Justin Jackson on why execution ISN’T everything, David Hart on 16 years of co-founding lessons, and Edith Harbaugh on why ‘build vs. buy’ decisions deserve more attention.
Hi there,
Welcome to the seventh edition of The Baton. A fortnightly newsletter that brings you three, select pieces of advice drawn from the thoughtful founder-to-founder exchanges and interviews taking place on Relay and the interwebz. So, stay tuned!
In this edition, you’ll find instructive and inspiring pickings from the brains of Transistor.fm’s co-founder Justin Jackson, ScreenCloud’s co-founder David Hart, and LaunchDarkly’s co-founder Edith Harbough.
But before we dive into it, a brief announcement: SparkToro’s (formerly Moz’s) co-founder, the inimitable Rand Fishkin will be joining us for a founders-only Relay AMA this October 29th. You can ask him all about alternative forms of funding and structuring companies, “why it’s better to be great than big”, the criticality of audience research, bettering diversity in startups, “why you should bring your emotions, values, politics, and whole self to work,” and pasta recipes among things. So, if you are a SaaS founder and aren’t already on Relay, reply to this email for an invite to the session! ✉️
All yours now!
#1. Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm, implores us to reconsider the perennially discounted yet incredibly weighty anchor of ideas and its significant role in setting a business’s “ceiling for success.” (Source: Justin’s blog)
John Doerr, a venture capitalist, is credited with saying:
“Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.”
I disagree. If ideas are so easy, why are most business ideas so bad?
Business ideas are observations paired with hunches.
Observation: “This is what people are doing. This is what people want. This is where the market is headed.”
Hunch: “Here’s a way we could help people to get the result they want (and do it better than what’s currently available).”
The results of your execution hinge on the strength of your original idea. How clear was your initial observation? How correct was your hunch? The market you choose, and the idea that you focus on are the most critical business decisions you’ll make. They determine your trajectory. Yes, how you execute is a part of that, but the idea itself sets your ceiling for success.
When an author says: “I have an idea for my next book,” the success of that book largely depends on the concept they’ve chosen. The same is true in business. The risk with overemphasizing “execution” is it deludes people into thinking that if they work hard enough, they can make any idea successful. It’s just not true.
If you don’t believe me, browse old listings on Product Hunt. You’ll see page after page of beautifully executed products that never achieved meaningful traction. There have been thousands of ideas posted; most failed.
Many folks in tech are skilled at building software but struggle to build good software businesses. The difference is in the quality of their ideas. We often compare ideas to seeds. But a bad seed can’t grow into a plant; only a good seed can.
Got a bad idea? Don’t spend lots of time fertilizing it, watering it, and trying to get it to grow. No! Throw it away. Focus on cultivating good ideas and helping them grow.
#2. David Hart, co-founder and COO of ScreenCloud, draws on 16 years of working together with his co-founders — through the highs and lows of multiple ventures — to share some frank and insightful tips on evolving this deep (and complex) relationship. (Source: Relay)
Yes, me, Mark, and Luke started our first business together in 2004 and since then we’ve launched and sold (and lost) several side projects/businesses. So we’ve been through the highs and the lows and what we’ve discovered is that we’re quite different in some ways: we have different appetites towards risk, we have different strengths and weaknesses and we often have differences of opinion, too. But we do all share two things: values and aspirations.
That means that we don’t spend a lot of time debating whether something is right or wrong, but more whether it gets us to where we want to be as efficiently as possible. It also means that if we disagree with each other, we know it’s not personal… we all want the same thing after all.
So my tips would be:
try and establish that you have shared values early on. If you aren’t aligned here: if one person thinks creating a great working culture is important and another thinks that it’s a waste of time and money, then you are going to spend too much time debating that every time it comes up
find consensus, even if that’s a compromise, then execute that plan. Don’t look back: decide on something as a group then just do it, even if you weren’t 100% in agreement.
talk all the time. If you are frustrated or worried, talk to your co-founders. Don’t let it linger and fester.
don’t make it all about work and understand that people have lives outside of work. We’re all human beings trying to do our best and we all have flaws.
then finally, play to your strengths and accept your weaknesses. In our business, I love metrics but I’m not as technical as I’d like to be. Mark hates numbers but is good at understanding the technical complexities. Luke is CTO so obviously gets the technology but traditionally hasn’t had much to do with sales and customers. We can’t all be good at everything.
#3. Edith Harbaugh, co-founder and CEO of LaunchDarkly, succinctly renders her love for build vs. buy decisions and the immense potential of examining WHY customers wish to build. (Source: GrowthHackers)
I actually love buy vs build because it means that the customer believes in what you’re doing. If they say “we don’t believe that we ever need that”, there’s no conversation, and no sale.
For LaunchDarkly, our customers have to believe that feature toggling is a best practice they want to use. If they’re not on board with feature toggling, they’ll never build in house (or buy our solution). For buy vs build, I try to understand WHY the customer wants to build:
Pride – “We can do it better”
Cost – “Why would I spend $299/month on that?”
Core - “This is too important to trust to a vendor”
Customization - “No off the shelf solution can meet our needs”
We actually love it when our customers try to build in house - after they’ve tried building it in house, they realize how much time/energy goes into maintaining a system like ours.
Hope you enjoyed reading this edition of The Baton. We are trying to bring you the most nuanced insights from SaaS founders across geographies. And we’d love to learn which SaaS subject would you want us to cover next/more of? Drop us a note? :)
Until next time,
Astha and Akash