Hungry Artist Paints Way Better
When you are running a startup, it’s easy to imagine how great life is for the head honcho of the Microsoft Bing group. They have all the resources in the world available to them. The company is pouring money at them – BILLIONS every year! There are thousands of people working on the product! With that might, anything should be possible, right?..
You compare your tiny 20-person startup to Bing, and you feel inadequate. You’re worried about making payroll. Investors are holding you by the balls. You sort-of have market traction, and there are a lot of ideas, but you don’t have the resources to try most of them. Any mistake can be your last. You compare yourself to the giant Bing, that keeps pouring HUGE sums of money into every imaginable experiment, and are feeling like your constraints make you ineffective.
And here’s where I’ll jump in: Au Contraire. The constraints are making you MORE effective.
YOU are in a much better position. You’re a hungry artist, and you know that you have your butt on the line. Calculate your financial projections wrong, and you’ll run out of cash and won’t make payroll. The friends that you brought into your business – your *personal* friends – will not be able to pay their mortgage. Your *personal* reputation is on the line.
Since you’re desperate – hungry, constrained, call it whatever you want – you’ll become a maniac of perfectionism. You’ll POUR YOUR SOUL into every decision you make. The people on your team will do the same – if this company succeeds, each of you will be rich. If it doesn’t – and you’re on the clock here, seed money is running out – you all won’t be able to provide for your families. And will have a sad story to tell when interviewing for your next gig.
Let’s look at an example of what the lack of hunger can lead to.
First, it’s lack of commitment – when less is on the line, people tend to be less committed. Passionate people tend to do well and get better at their craft – and the lack of the passion often zeroes out all the other great qualities.
Second, it’s randomization. I’ll give you an example of what over-investing in product management will do. The core value of PM is to be the advocate for the user; they are the gatekeepers of end-to-end experiences. If you have too many PM’s for a product, then instead of owning large chunks and scenarios, you have each junior PM own a couple checkboxes. With this level of ownership, you get (a) zero motivation and (b) people start inventing work for themselves. And PM’s inventing work often leads to “running around with your heads cut off” for the entire organization – highly tactical efforts that don’t add up to a significant improvement in the end.
Third, it’s the famous Mythical Man Month effect. The larger an organization gets, the higher the communication costs. At some point, adding resources to a project makes it go SLOWER, not faster.
So the key phrase for me is “Strategic Under-Investment.” If you’re in a large organization with lots of resources, give people a little less resources than what they need. Force them to make tough choices.
So, rejoice and embrace your constraints. They are making you work harder, thus increasing the chance of your success. They are forcing you to make careful choices, all while facing accountability in the face of your personal friends. Just like with a hungry artist, your painting will be better.