Tag: agentdesks

Posted on in Agentdesks

Learning to lead a team (Part 1)

As a founder, one of the first questions that popped up in my head was – “What kinda leader should I be?”  Then I started reading about how good leaders talk, behave, do things.  Read quotes about leadership.  Research Steve Jobs, Sir Alex Ferguson, Elon Musk…..the list never ends.  And of course, listen to Ted talks about it as well.  Simon Sanek has multiple 15 min monologues about this.  Some common basic tips are:

  • Hire well.  It’s important to have a good team to be a good leader.
  • Define the vision of the company clearly to everyone.
  • Break down the vision into actionable items.
  • Empower your team.  Actively engage them in team discussions.

Some things I picked up with experience

  • Stay healthy and create more mind space.  Stay away from distractions.
  • Prepare for the week every Sunday.  Have a clear plan of action.
  • Be detailed about everything.  Success is truly in the details
  • Be the hardest working member of the team.  Your team will respond to it.
  • Make it a personal mission to make everyone at work an expert at what they do.

But, one of the biggest takeaway for me is that there is no recipe to be a good leader or a successful leader.  There cannot be.  We all have different personalities.  We are all unique in our background, our experiences and the way we do things.  So, there is an element of personalization that’s unique to you while answering the question – “What kinda leader are you?”

For me, I’d like to know what’s happening with everyone in the team.  I like people taking ownership of discussed responsibilities and most importantly, making sure it’s done.  I take a lot of parallels from football (soccer).  I am a firm believer in everyone doing their bit to make the team successful instead of having a few rockstars in the team.  On a particular day, the opposition/competition can get the better of you but a strong defense can make you win the league.  In our case, a strong defense is having a team with a well structured plan chasing a big vision.

Posted on in Uncategorized

How Uber is helping startup founders and they don’t even know about it

that $15 is worth it
that $15 is worth it

I just moved to San Francisco and obviously I am dependent on buses, trains and Uber for the last mile.  Almost every uber driver I have met so far has had a deep understanding of the technology scene in San Francisco.  One of them even told me that they have read about Agentdesks somewhere and was gracious enough to recommend features that we might implement.

Here are some amazing ways in which they help Founders

1)  Recruiting

One driver in the city (his name was Alex) said he meets at least 10 software engineers every day.  When they are going to office in the morning, out for lunch, getting to late night parties.  He just rambled on names of tech giants and how each of these engineers hated working there and are looking for new jobs.  So, I asked him recommend Agentdesks to the next iOS developer who comes in and gave my card.  He said, he will do it.  What if all the drivers were recruiting officers for startups.  Think about it!

2)  Client acquisition

Another driver in San Mateo, has a lot of real estate agent friends.  He took 10 of my business cards so that he can pass it on to his friends.  Perfect, right?  Context – I run Agentdesks.  Agentdesks is a sales application for real estate agents.

3)  Ideas

When you discuss with San Francisco drivers, it’s usually productive.  Some great ideas came out of a conversation I had with a driver this week.  He said, I should think about providing our agents with insurance plans and make that part of their lives easy.  That will create loyalty as well.  And many more ideas!

4)  Fund raising

You pick an uber driver in Menlo park.  Rest assured, he has dropped 2 other founders in the same day at different VCs.  You can expect questions like “what’s your cap?” / “what are your biggest costs?”  /  “who is your target audience” from your driver.  Great practice!  Also, they recommend more VCs that you can meet.

5)   Uber pool

When you are in the city, always Uber pool.  9/10 you will meet another software engineer.  He/She could be your next engineer.

So, do it.  Uber everywhere.  Don’t buy a car.

Posted on in Uncategorized

Rowing towards that “MVP” island

MVP3So, this is what I have realized in the last couple of months.  I don’t know if it’s true for everyone who have started SaaS products or is it just me.

1)  Customers want something else:  Whenever you think of starting a SaaS Product, your natural tendency is to come up with a list of features which you think is right for your customers and for the product.  Certain features excite you so much that it automatically becomes highest on your priority list.  If you wait to develop all these features to launch your product, you are probably wasting twice the amount of time because your customers probably think otherwise.  They want something else.

Lesson:  It’s best to pick one main feature and launch the product with that one main feature.  Give away a bunch of free trials.  Get feedback.  Sometimes, your customers will be nice about it and most of the times, not so much.  But, listen and note complaints.  If your goal is to come up with a Minimum Viable Product, it’s a long way to that island.

2)  Customers wont pay for your experiments:  When we launched, we launched with a pricing structure.  Looking back, this is the most crazy decision we have made.  Who is going to pay us when they know this product is not fully done.  Luckily, we realized this almost immediately and kept a free trial and extended it whenever necessary.

Lesson:  Don’t come up with pricing even before you know what your customers need.  Pricing is a gradual process.

3)  Design is key but not the way you think:  We learnt this lesson from our previous venture.  We spent lots on exceptional design.  We soon realized that customers, like yourself, get bored very soon.  The more they see in design, more things they can get bored of soon.  Customers will only see what they want to see, how much ever you try to push all your capabilities on them.

Lesson: we believe that design should be simple with less components in each page.  There should only 2-3 main call to action options for every user in every page.

4)  Bless them initial adopters:  There will be a few customers who take extra efforts in letting you know what they really think of the product.  These people are God sent.  Their feedback and suggestions are extremely important and it’s also equally important for you to give them special attention.

Lesson:  Look for these customers.  Make sure you keep them in a separate database.  Talk to them whenever you launch a new feature.  They are as important as your team.  MVP1

5)  Team, Team, Team:  Success of any product boils down to your team.  Initial success boils down to 4 departments: Developers, Support, Testers, BD.  These 4 need to work together and keep each other updated at all times.

Lesson: I realize that this is one of my most important roles in the organization.  Keep everyone updated on the proceedings.

If there are any successful SaaS product leaders reading this post, I would love your thoughts and if you have learnt anything more in your longer journey towards success.