Successful Startup (Part 7)

Today's blog is about agility. Again from my own (recent) experience. I don't know if we still count as a startup (the company is 20 months old), but agility is that skill that helps startups survive. Even more, it is one of the most important ingredients of success.

December 31st, 2012 was Monday. This will probably be marked as the most important day in the history of our company. The day we redefined the strategy for 2013/2014. It all started the Friday before. I saw several very scattered and benign looking signs of new technology and product developments and started connecting the dots. Sorry I cannot describe here exactly what I mean, but I hope to be able to do this later in 2013. A light bulb above my head lit and I was all electrified. On Friday night I called Adam, my business partner and the co-founder. We talked for two hours. Then probably five hours on a phone on Saturday and even more on Sunday. Then we met on the New Year's Eve (Monday) in the office. And on Wednesday, January 2nd, I presented the new strategy / vision to the team. They started asking questions like it all had been in the works for months. The strategy and vision was already so clear and convincing and all of them (almost) were answered.

Now we are in the fifth week of the new journey. The excitement is even higher. The business prospects have never looked better. The beauty about the new direction is it builds on everything we have done so far. Nothing wasted. The maneuver was exactly just in time.

Friends keep on asking me if there will be others running the same path as we are. Of course. What we saw in the last days of 2012, others will finally realize too. Ultimately it will all come down to the execution (as always). Strategies and visions are nice, but in the end what counts is the result. But no doubt the swift turn has given us an advantage. Or even saved us. Now if we maintain the speed we already have (as I confessed in the part 3 of the series) and - more importantly - remain agile and vigilant, there is no way any of the fat and slow moving competitors will even come close.

Things are rolling fast these days. The business and product strategy has to be continuously reexamined, reevaluated, and adjusted. And do not be afraid of sharp turnabouts. Like a wind surfer, sense the wind changes and adjust your angle of attack, to keep the planing speed. It is all joy.