Hey All

As a junior manager, one of the biggest challenges I faced was not focusing on what was important, but rather what was urgent. This often resulted in feelings of frustration, negativity towards others, and low self-esteem. So, I decided to find answers to the question, "what does it take to manage effectively?" and I found the best answers in Peter Drucker's 1967 book "The Effective Executive". The first piece of advice he offered was to "Know Thy Time". This is something I would highly recommend to any startup founder, especially since time is a crucial asset in disrupting the market.

One of the traits of large companies is "big thinking". By this, I mean they plan on a grand scale, measuring their progress in months, quarters, and years. This can be a dangerous habit for a startup founder, since they should be thinking and acting on a daily, weekly basis. So how can one learn to unlearn this?

There is this concept of production possibility frontier (PPF) in Economics. It is often visualized as a curve that represents the optimal allocation of resources between producing two different products - see PPF1 curve on the diagram above. Point A is one such possible optimal allocation achieved by, say, Company A. However, you will realize that this curve is not always a perfect representation of reality. In fact, most companies do not operate on the optimal curve (point B), and there are often ways to increase efficiency through various ideas and techniques. This is exactly what we were doing in our consulting practice.

My colleague reminded me of a funny story. I had converted the cost of a pair of jeans to the number of users we could acquire, and I picked the new users option so that we could grow a couple of percent faster. At the time, I had no idea if my choice was right, but years later I became confident that the relentless focus and preference of growth over other things was instrumental to our success.

My college department head, Marshev Vadim, taught me the importance of researching the history of an industry, including the key players, their assumptions, past failures, and current challenges(btw I strongly recommend his book on the history of management). At App in the Air, I wrote a blog called "Travel 101" and held strategy talks to share what I learned about the industry with my colleagues.

What is the difference between a startup and a small business? I believe the main difference is the potential for rapid scaling. When I think of startups, I think of businesses that have the ability to scale quickly and expand beyond a specific local market. Many people assume that startups are focused on creating IT products, but that's not always the case. A startup can be any business that has the potential for fast growth.

I believe that when assembling a startup team, the "Who, then Where" approach is the best. This means that I prioritize finding the right people first, and then figuring out what we will be building together, not the other way around.

I've learned that one of the important things in the early stages of starting my own business is changing my social circle. It may sound harsh, but it's necessary. When I was working for someone else, my social circle was made up of people with stable incomes and we would talk about things like the stock market, vacations in Europe and so on, often while dining at fancy restaurants.