Chris Drumgoole

Really enjoyed my chat with Matt Hinds, CEO of Sauce, where we talked about transforming product vision into company strategy, partnering with CEOs, and protecting teams against planning busy work that gets thrown away in Q1. As we head into company planning season, here’s the tl;dr on how to get planning right: 📝 Define the strategy — Create a 1-pager (ok, maybe a 2-pager) that includes: the mission, what that means for customers in 3 years time, and investment areas for the next 12-18 months. 👥 Design the org — Spend a lot of time on org design so your teams reflect that strategy. 🎯 Clarify the investment areas — What’s even more important than what you’re investing in, is what you’re not investing in. Make sure your teams know what to focus on and what falls away. 🔨 Empower teams — Let the what’s and how’s come from the team. As a leader, it’s not up to you to dictate what we need to build. You need to empower your teams to decide that based on their in depth understanding of your customers and business. Curious to know what others biggest learnings have been when it comes to planning? Drop me a comment below and let's compare notes 👇 #product #startups #productmanagement

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On fear of sharing too much, and giving away leverage to competition Some tech startups benefit from building in stealth mode, most tech startups that people around me have been building in Singapore and SF and elsewhere (including my own startup) are more likely to die due to being quiet than loud and revealing, before hitting $1mil in revenue (and/or 1mil returning MAUs), given a great product. Given a great product, when you start telling everyone about your product, you start building your top of funnel, your non-stop stream of feedback, your revenue and/or usage stream (depending on the nature of your product), your luck, essentially. People start recommending what you do. They start interacting with your posts and their friends see your posts and they sign up for your product. You get invited to random high-leverage places where other potential customers & investors may be present. If a competitor steals your idea, they will rarely damage your ability to get your first 1000 users/customers. Any tech company that has its first 1000 customers or returning users has serious leverage to grow it to a bigger pool. That gives us leverage to get more resources. Another angle is that most people building stuff are what I call "unserious unintentional pivoters". They pick ideas, try them for 3 weeks, pivot, and repeat. When you have a great product and conviction, just sticking around and trying to get to the first $X or Y number of users is your biggest superpower. Build in public (or in a curated public on somewhere like LearningLoop). Link in comments

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the biggest difference between San Francisco & Singapore for me is this. whether it's the population of experienced, ambitious series A-B founders that's low (they leave to SF/London for better network effects once they reach this level) or if they exist but the chance of meeting them is low because they're too busy to spend time with people outside of their team/customers/family (or they rather meet up other founders at their level or higher in private dinners) is worth being looked into. but regardless, this takes a massive toll on knowledge/wisdom transfer in an ecosystem. that's bad because startups are peak knowledge economy and insights and short cuts make all the difference in both life and death of startups, as well as in the rate at which they can grow and generate and capture value. singapore is way ahead of most countries. most countries don't even have that critical mass of early stage startups, or a critical mass of exited tech builders/investors. but this curve will create negative network affects, if not dealt with. not just singapore, any country that wants a healthy ecosystem for startups or any other important thing (scientific research etc.) needs a healthy knowledge/wisdom transfer pipeline. can't miss a few layers in between and expect the system to produce great output. Btw I think San Francisco is absolutely lucky to have the knowledge transfer pipeline that it has. It's not necessarily designed or intentionally set up. and I don't think it's sustainable either (smart people leaving their countries to go 1 place can be exciting for a few decades but then causes their home countries to get worse and worse, which makes the world worse and worse. no city can become/stay great if the world around it is burning). but this problem wont get solved by itself because humans have a natural tendency to hang out with people at their level of competence/consciousness or higher. elitism reinforces elitism. LearningLoop.com's global mission since day 1 has been, not to disrupt elitism, but to capture the wisdom of the elite, present it at different levels of abstraction to people who seek it but can't get it; because of their location, wealth, level competence, etc. make 1 billion elites we've started with 1 knowledge space that is startups. so at this scale, we define success as making sure San Francisco's startup network and knowledge/wisdom pipeline and discourse not just available but accessible globally. availability = being able to see/read/hear about it vs accessibility = being able to participate in it and get value from it. P.S: we're hosting an event in singapore this wednesday, if you're a founder you should drop by. the RSVP list looks amazing and you'll love the people and conversation. link in comments

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My three-year-old daughter loves playing strategy board games (Dominion, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Lords of Waterdeep, etc...) with us. She can execute the tactics of all of these games. She knows what to do for her turn once we explain the rules once. In Catan, she can build a road or development card. In Dominion, she knows how much treasure she has and can buy cards for that amount. She's playAing these games, and she loves it. She doesn't know the strategy to win these games, however. She asking for guidance on which tactic to execute next. She could never wjn without a friendly parent over her shoulder guiding her on the next step. That business podcast you’re listening to or the LinkedIn post you’re reading is as good as a toddler is at playing a board game. It can do something, but you may go in the wrong direction without much guidance. It's missing strategy. So, instead of scrolling through LinkedIn, take out your favorite board game. What's your strat for Catan, and why is it longest road? (picture: an ai generated child playing Catan)

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Insights from #LVDebt: Start of a new financial year. FY23-24 was rough - for the ecosystem, and for us. This was probably the hardest year for me as a founder too (the challenges calls for a separate post) At LetsVenture, while we knew there needs to be an integrated solution on fundraise (between equity and debt), we also knew that equity and debt are very different categories, with different evaluation criteria, and different team skill set needed. As a #founder, I strongly believe that founders should be focusing on building the business, and meeting customers rather than solve for capital and fundraise from different players. Hence #LVDebt. The traction we have seen has surprised us. We have already disbursed 10cr, and are on track to go to 3x/month by June. This shows that in spite of all the players, this space still needs more transparency, and founders still need more help. However while the business is seeing momentum, I see gaps in founders' understanding of how to plan for Debt ahead, such that it truly delivers the value it is supposed to create for the business. Our rejections are still high at LV. (we do have a stringent criteria) Key Insights: 1. Short runway: Businesses don’t have enough runway when they start looking for Debt. Founders come to us when they have 2-3 months of runway. Ideal is 8-9 m. If you accepted in spite of short runway, please know as a founder that Debt is the RISKIEST instrument. Take debt when you dont have runway, or the confidence to build the business, and you could end up losing all the IP built. Default on Debt could end up eroding all the value built. A finer nuance that gets missed out. 2. Lack of financial discipline: This shows up in bad CIBIL or delayed payments (even if you have been a day late in the past) This impacts your business profile and you will pay higher rates of interest. Get this metric monitored by your CFO on a continuous basis. 3. Over leverage on debt: You can’t pay off one debt with another debt and cycle the capital. This is bad planning and this will catch up sooner than you would like it to. This is just the beginning of our understanding of how #founders should think of Debt. We will dive deeper and create playbooks that you could follow. Ideally use the playbook to hold your CFO / or finance accountable. If you are looking for someone to talk to for your Debt needs, reach out to Pramod Lamba, Sabah Mehkeri. We are setting ourselves the target of reverting back with a yes or no within 48 hours. Our ticket size is 30L to 2cr (subject to revenue) with a preferred rate of interest for your founders.  We are sector agnostic, with financing that includes working capital, supply chain financing, asset financing, invoice discounting and line of credit. As always, we want to solve for your problem the right way. Our vision of making fundraise easy stays - irrespective of the instrument.

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You can’t stay out of politics these days. This is my #8 and final lesson learnt from my 3 decades in public policy. When I first started working in the early 90s, things were simpler. China was opening up. The US wanted to engage it both for the market access and also with the hope that political reforms will come from the engagement. Back then, we were focused on capacity building, knowledge transfers and sharing of best practices. As long as you are linguistically competent and/or culturally savvy across the different global economies, you could already do well in public policy. Politics didn’t really come into our calculus when deciding whether to invest in or trade with any economy. The buzzword then was “globalization”. Unfortunately, things have become a lot more complicated on the geo-political level and also on the domestic front in the US. These days, business leaders are expected to take sides. The politicians and even the customers expect businesses to stand for something. Unless you own the company you are running, I think CEOs must still take into account what their shareholders, employees and customers think about any political position they might take publicly. And that’s where public policy professionals must step up to provide the best advice they can give on what’s in the best interest of the company. Policy making is not done in vacuum. Politics has become a big part of policy making. It’s time we get politically savvier to render the best advice for our employers and clients. #publicpolicy #governmentrelations #geopolitics #politics #governmentaffairs

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