The most popular and useful business advice of the 2014

Earlier last year, I sat in a cafeteria with Karn Maruni (Caryn Marooney) to exchange ideas about what startups should be paying attention to. What is the ineffable quality that separates the smooth-sailing media darlings from those Shing innovation companies?

Outcast agency, a former founder of the company, has now served as Maruni of the Facebook Technology Exchange Department, giving a very good answer. When I talk to Maruni, I can feel how valuable her advice is based on her real experiences, successes, failures and lessons.

Over the past year, I've had conversations with nearly 100 people like Maruni, who are good people in their industry--someone who hires designers, someone who is responsible for component technology, and someone who is responsible for increasing the happiness of their employees. Each of them holds a puzzle piece of entrepreneurial success. Through the Round Review, we are trying to assemble them for a growing audience.

The people we talked to included Pandora technical director Tom Conrad Tom Conrad, Spotify designer Tobias Sch Fan-Schneider (Tobias Van Schneider), vice president of Twitter engineering Chris Fries (Chris Fry), And the presidents and founders of many companies. Each of them has a goal in mind to share their experience: building the most powerful entrepreneurial community. Here are some of the most popular and useful business proposals we've collected for 2014 years:

First: Select "must"

Alli Luna (Elle Luna) gave up her dream job at the peak of her career. On the eve of Mailbox's Dropbox acquisition, she chose to leave the mailbox because she wanted to work as an artist. In the past year, the talented designer who has been involved in the design of Uber mobile apps, traveled to Bali, then founded Bulan Project, and started his own textile business. More importantly, she gave other entrepreneurs useful advice: "Life has two paths: it should and must." At the crossroads of our lives, we face the problem of two choices. Every time we have to make a choice. ' Ought ' to be what others expect us to show ourselves in this world, and it prescribes the way we think, what to say, what to do, what not to do. ' must ' is completely different. ' must ' be ourselves, our faith, what we will do when we are alone, the truest and most authentic self. "The choice" must be difficult where? It is the work that is practiced every day and repeats every day. Why is it easier to choose "must"? We are constantly confronted with choices at the crossroads and need to keep making choices. That's why Luna chose to start her own business.

Second: Stay stupid.

The life of Tobias Sch Fan-Schneider (Tobias van Schneider) is like a vice project.

Today, Van Schneider designs and develops new products for Spotify in New York, which he would never think of when he dropped out of school at the age of 15 and was rejected by several art schools. His career has sprung up with several pilot projects. But in order for these types of projects to succeed, you need to be stupid, says Van Schneider. "Only if people let themselves think, change their opinions and allow them to fail can they succeed," he said. That is to say, don't take the vice project too seriously. ”

When you think about things loosely, you will be fearless in trying new things, not thinking about product architecture and development, believing in yourself more and creating a culture of passion.

Third: 20-40-60 law

In Haiti Reusen's career as an entrepreneur, company executive and investor, she learned several lessons that enriched her life and career: the importance of morality, respect for one's intuition, and so on.

But Reusen learned the most detached, the most inspiring principle is: "When you are 20 years old, you are constantly worrying about what others think of you, and when you are 40 you wake up and say, ' I don't care what people say about me ', and when you're 60, you realize that nobody cares. ”

She said, "Is that the truth? No one will ever see you from the beginning. Your boss won't care about you, and your co-workers won't talk to you. You need to think for yourself. You need to be your own champion. It is impossible to think that others can take care of themselves as well as save time to work. ”

Four: To expand the size of the team, the need to constantly break the business model

When Aditea Agavar (Aditya Agarwal) came to Dropbox, the company had only 30 employees in its 50 million-user innovation enterprise. Today, Agarwal's team has more than 200 people, protecting data from more than 300 million users.

In the process, he has also become an expert on the expansion of the technical team. The key, says Agarwal, is to evolve continuously (recruiting people with expertise). You need a team that can learn faster, adapt to change, and move forward in blurring and accompanying.

If team members don't know what to do, let them learn. This is Dropbox from the original only 3, 4 for the iOS version of the code to develop to more than 30 human versions of iOS to provide code for the process. Agarwal said, "The expansion of the regiment will certainly lead to some internal controversy." But more importantly, it is no problem to tell everyone that there is some controversy. ”

Five: Don't be distracted by the opinions of a few

As Reddit's first community manager, Eric (Erik Martin) is a community of 5.5 billion-page, 100 million-month, independent users, and he leads only a small team.

Martin thinks it's important to know where to put the time. The best way, he says, is to not waste energy and time on a handful of angry users, a problem that almost all consumer-innovation companies have to deal with, which can seriously disrupt the development of innovative companies. "When things go bad, people express themselves too much," Martin said. But you have more ordinary users waiting for you to serve. ”

To keep the macro community moving in the right direction, Martin advises being humble and courteous in any communication, identifying various types of feedback and reacting quickly. In addition, it is clear that there are people who are dealing with users or customers concerns.

Sixth: Conduct ribs test

Karn Maruni (Caryn Marooney), a Facebook technology director, has done marketing for dozens of products. Successful PR, he argues, means that the information that companies deliver can be absorbed by the public. Winning media attention is only the beginning, and its benefits include getting financing, recruiting virtues, and getting mentors. So the quality of the media is not the goal, but for the next set of bigger chess. To make an attractive message, Maruni's recommendation is to use ribs testing, which represents four elements: relevance (relevant), inevitability (inevitable), trustworthiness (believable) and simplicity (simple).

Relevance refers to who is your target user? Is there any solution to their concerns? Where is the advantage of the solution, and what is worth the attention of others? Inevitability refers to the enterprise to make people feel, your product is the general trend; credibility means that the user believes that your company has enough power to turn the ideal into reality; simplicity refers to the understanding of product information, the function is written down, but to say the main points: which message do you want to let people remember? can only write one article.

Seventh: Digging up talents from worshipped products

Zhu Li Zhou (Julie Zhou), who started working on Facebook at the age of 22, is now directly responsible for product design work.

One of the important responsibilities of this post is to dig up the world's top design talent. Zhu Li Zhou's primary approach is to focus on products that she and her team prefer outside of Facebook. Her team will list the likes of applications and products, not just the commercially successful products, but also the very small applications or ideas that have the potential to succeed, and identify the people who need them.

Zhu Li Zhou said, "Find the elements that you like from the product's subsidiary rules, such as a particularly efficient user experience, innovative features, or excellent navigation systems, and then find the designers behind these products through Google (Weibo), LinkedIn and AngelList." The key to finding these designers is not to be shy about contacting them. People like to communicate with their fans no matter what kind of work they are doing. If you appreciate the way a company is marketed or sold, it means you want to be able to do the same.

Eighth: Build trusted products by credit

Lynn Perkins Perkins, chief executive of Urbansitter, has many ideas on how technology products can gain people's trust. But for innovative companies with limited resources, one of the easiest ways is to borrow the image of credit through other resources.

To make parents more comfortable in recruiting nannies on the internet, Urbansitter borrowed social maps of parents and people who had used urbansitter services around them to advertise. "When parents see the same community or their respected parents have hired a nanny, they are willing to hire her," Perkins said. This is a very compelling message. ”

Urbansitter also displays information about the nanny, such as a nanny training center or a member of a parent organization that can be trusted in a local institution. If innovative enterprises want to build user trust, they should consider the expected partnership and social mapping opportunities to build their credibility.

Nineth: Say no to the right way

The chief executive of partner, the Bill Tes of the Round, said the CEO of a technology company worked 14 hours a day on average 300 days a year. But they have spent almost two-thirds of their time in emails and meetings, which means they spend 70% of their time in things that aren't optimized.

To find a way to reverse the situation, Chad spoke to some of the most efficient CEOs of the tech industry and listened to their suggestions. What they keep mentioning is that there is a strict demarcation line between work and life. As companies grow larger, there will be more and more things to manage.

A lot of people are contacting each other through LinkedIn, emails, invitations, inviting you to a coffee shop or asking for your help, says Chad. This is like being sentenced to death. But it seems hard to refuse such a thing. This is the creation of a "Hotlong" for Chad to help him to reject other people's requests. The following is the template prototype:

Billy (Bill) Hello:

I am very glad to receive your letter, I hope you all well! Luckily, my company is starting to get a little bit more and I'm personally under a lot of pressure to deal with ambitious goals. I've been to a lot of social situations, but unfortunately, I can't get in touch with them right now.

Best!

Josh

Having such a template not only saves Chad a lot of time, but also relieves a lot of anxiety. Most importantly, this response closes the possibility of further communication. The best way to handle this is to honestly explain the current form, but don't leave the back door open for openness.

Tenth: Continuously upgrade the employment threshold

As general manager of Amazon Redshift and Aurora, Laghe Gupta (Anurag Gupta) has been responsible for recruiting technical personnel for the company. To achieve this goal, Gupta has been deliberately raising the standard of every recruitment.

Gupta suggested that the recruits should be included in the recruitment screening. Let them participate in every recruitment dialogue and interview process, giving them the right to determine whether the candidate can improve the existing talent team.

"Choose people with high standards and good judgment," says Gupta. Tell them ' your job is to make sure the new arrivals are 50% higher than the company's existing employees. ' You need to have a good understanding of who you are, don't use time to pressure them, don't influence their performance, let them make the right choices. ”
11th: Patch holes in the funnel

Tamara Stephanie (Tamara Steffens) has served as a path, color and other companies business development work. Recently, ACOMPLI, the innovative enterprise she is currently serving, has just been acquired by Microsoft. During his tenure, Stephanie's main job was to get users through all channels-including the user in the conversion funnel. Stephanie points out that innovative companies should pay special attention to two vulnerabilities.

The first is the first day. How many users did the innovation enterprise lose on the first day of the download application? If your product is really confusing or scary, chances are that the average user will uninstall it or use it after a short period of time.

Solution: If the user is not in the access to the application can provide what services will terminate the participation, pay close attention to the application of registration. If the user is lost because of the time it takes to register, you must consider modifying the registration link.

The second is a 6-week mark. How many users are still actively using apps after 6 weeks? If you lose a lot of users, you can only prove that your product is invalid or nothing new.

Solution: Focus on listening to what the customer wants from your product, and launch the next generation of products as quickly as possible based on this feedback.

12th: Respect People's time

Carlie Gesri (Carly Guthrie) has been facing the most challenging problems in human resources work for many years in the top chain Hotels group and many innovative enterprises. In her career, she was tired of seeing good people many times, leaving the company they had been able to succeed in.

One of the primary reasons people choose to leave is that they don't feel they have time for themselves. Guthrie said, "a really good CEO, the question should be more comprehensive, should recognize that staff are eating grains." The first option to avoid leaving employees is not to let them work in other companies. ”

Many companies require employees to hold a general Staff meeting after work in Friday or in the morning of Monday, and the absentee will have to take on some living. Guthrie said, "Between Friday 5 o'clock in the afternoon to Monday morning 9, this time, should belong to the staff's own time, not the company's time." "Employees should choose whether to work overtime on weekends." If this freedom is provided to employees, the likelihood of their choosing to leave will be lower.

13th: Pinpoint the initial success

When Aril Jackson (Arielle Jackson) began designing marketing and communications plans around vinyl, a Twitter-acquired Android app shortly after its release, she borrowed from Google's experience. She has been responsible for Google's Gmail, Docs, calendar and other products marketing work, has been responsible for mobile payment company Square's new hardware products marketing work.

In all of the above examples, there are significant differences in the development of a solid market position. "You have to locate the product in the user's heart," Jackson said. This requires taking into account potential users of the product, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the product, and taking into account competitive situations. ”

Jackson provided a simple formula to integrate all the factors:

• In order to (target customer)

• Who (stating needs or opportunities)

· (Product name) attribution (Product category)

• Because (stating main interests)

• Distinct from (alternative products that have competitive relationships)

· (Product name) (stating the main difference)

For example:

• For network users

• People who like to read books

• Amazon is a book retailer

• Offers immediate access to more than 1.1 million books

• Unlike traditional book retailers

• Amazon offers excellent combination of convenience, low price and comprehensive selection

14th: Creating an environment for "liquidity"

After 24 years of Scott Karablit in the software and gaming industry, Scott Crabtree decided to work on improving employee productivity through increased pleasure.

Today, Karablit has become the founder of Happy Brain Science, a body dedicated to investigating job satisfaction data. The biggest discovery of Karablit is that people can do the best when they enter an efficient "flow" state.

In order for employees to flow, Karablit recommends that organizations set goals through clear, measurable, achievable, relevant, and achievable (SMART) five standards to ensure that these goals are meaningful and to tailor goals to the strengths of their employees-not what their employees are good at, but what their employees naturally like.

If this can be achieved, Karablit believes, the ability to help employees reduce multitasking at the same time can motivate sound, pleasurable productivity.

15th: Tell the program to someone who has less information than you.

Peter Deng (Peter Deng) is one of Facebook's early employees. At the time, the company's procedures and structures were very limited, and everyone was focused on rapid change and sudden events. This experience also made him pay attention to when to need the program, when the need for a stroke.

Now, as Instagram's product director, Peter Deng has devised a plan to ensure that the problem does not get out of hand. This includes saying to all staff that when they are useless, they should cancel the regular meeting, understand that all the architectures and meetings should have a time limit, prohibit meetings at specific times, allow employees free time, and make regular changes to policies to ensure that policies do not become bottlenecks in business development.

16th: Investing in Marketing from the start

A lot of innovative companies--especially those that are deeply rooted in technology--are not optimized or invested in marketing until the product model has been completely molded.

Robbie Mitchell, the marketing and communications director of Knewton, an education innovation company, Robbie Michel. Michelle believes that the pace of marketing and product development should be synchronized. By letting Knewton's marketing team play alongside the company's technicians, designers, and product managers, Knewton's sales team has done a fantastic job of achieving sales goals.

"Unless you're trying to sell the product to the user first, how do you know if the product you're developing is acceptable to users? You have to prove as quickly as possible that the product-marketing is a fit, the only way to do that is to solve the value proposition while developing the product," Michelle said. Even if the product can do a lot of things, you have to tell users how their products can fit into their lives. ”

17th: Injecting rocket fuel into the recruitment process

Traditional recruiting typically employs a pattern in which the employee understands the position the company is recruiting and then recommends a more competent person through his or her personal network. But the discount system will also bring some surprising hiring. Why not take some incentive measures?

Peter Kazanjy, co-founder of Talentbin, an innovative company that has been bought by monster, is adept at exploiting this. The key, Cazaine believes, is to make it a full-time job:

• Proactive Mining Staff Network

• Extract influential information from the employee network

• Select potential candidates carefully

Cazaine's advice is to educate all staff and find the best talent for the company in their networking.

18th: Repair the internal communication channel before the interruption

At the beginning of last year, Urx was just a less-known innovation company-it was just a small team with a technology product. But this spring, when Urx announced 12 million dollars in the first round of funding, all this changed. Since then, Urx has had nearly 30 employees and is on the verge of explosive growth.

But what really made Urx chief executive John Milinovich (John Milinovich) sleepless night was to ensure that the company's internal communications were equally enlarged. In order to solve the problem ahead of time, he devised several flexible channels of communication: regular weekly conversations with employees in the office, employees who were able to raise any questions and concerns, and encourage staff to challenge. Because it's the 1:1 meeting, different teams see what other teams are doing every day, and Milinovich will take the initiative and stick to it.

"My most important job is to be a feedback loop – to form feedback loops between products and marketing outside and to form feedback loops between teams," Milinovich said. This allows us to build the right corporate culture and achieve our goals as quickly as possible. "As the team expands, the talks may change from one month to quarterly, but as CEO, I will still choose to have a separate conversation with my staff."

19th: The key to winning sales is to think like a buyer

The company's sales team struggled to seamless the start of the online ordering service. Their simple tactics did not work at the time. Wiley Cerilli, vice president of Willie Corelli Sales and services, recognized the need to consider new approaches.

What should the company's sales team do? They have established relationships with large companies and used the platform to order meals regularly. "If you follow the seller's mindset, you'll think ' It's a good thing to sign up with seamless," he said. Because that's the way it is, so it gets very scary ... '

"When you're in the mindset of buying a house, you say, ' We manage food orders for Goldman Sachs, and we consider adding your restaurant to our system," Corelli said. We still have some questions, can we arrange time for a meeting? You have to modify your assets to make the service the customer wants to buy.

20th: Giving severe love

"Tough love has to do with how to build trust at the fastest speed." "This is the essence of Kim Schattas (Kim Scotthas) in more than 20 years of management experience, which helped her to help companies like Dropbox and Twitter."

The worst thing to do is to have little or no clear feedback about the feelings of hurting employees. To give employees the ability to get better feedback, you can't think about whether or not an employee likes you. "Giving feedback is very emotional," Schattas said. Employees sometimes get out of control and sometimes cry splash, which are very, very difficult conversations. ”

"Don't try to intervene or control someone's emotions," says the tip of the Bronx. "Criticism is a part of life, and the later you criticize, the worse it gets." You should set an example and give rewards to your employees in good faith. Don't let this be a sloppy compliment--to be praised at the right moment.

21st: Creating experiences, not just products

This is the reason why FiftyThree's touchscreen brush pencil has become one of the most beautiful and innovative hardware in recent years. Adam MacBeth, a hardware designer who has developed the ipod and Jawbone Bracelet, said, "The complete experience should be finely crafted and naturally integrated into people's work." Adam Macbeth ”

"It is difficult for users to identify the quality of the product at the outset. So the opportunity for an enterprise is to add the most useful value to the user in this process. During this period, hardware and software must be tightly integrated. "Macbeth believes that the best hardware products rely on software to create great end-to-end experiences." Any hardware effort involves cooperation from a number of departments, including software-led.

22nd: The use of remote work to recruit the best talent

As the founder of Discourse and Stack exchange two companies, Jeff Atte (Jeff Atwood) found a fundamental breakpoint: the founders of each innovation company were advised to recruit the best talent, but if the talent was restricted by geography, Then innovation companies can only recruit the best local talent locally.

That's why Atwood makes telecommuting the core of its own company. "It's not because employees are in the office every day that they're working," Atwood said. This is a commercial, not a college physical education, and can not be given a pass because of high attendance. ”

So how do you make sure that the people who work remotely are working? The answer, Atwood, is to look at output. How many product features does an employee develop? How many holes have been fixed? How much is the code going? "Let employees write down what they have done that is useful," he said. Not the things that have to be done, but the things that have been done. ”

23rd: Early establishment of management system

Cory Andrica, Cory Ondrejka, a former vice-president of engineering at Facebook, said the early establishment of a management system might sound counterintuitive to the creation of an ecosystem, but it was the key to early resolution of some of the difficulties. The following three concepts can help small teams solve management problems:

• Establish a management and organizational structure for the strengths of the company's success.

• Discover and identify weaknesses in the structure and plan.

• Create good habits in communication and decision making while everyone understands each other.

The lack of a successful management and organizational structure will make innovation companies more visible in the development process. Create good management, train new managers, and now introduce a sustainable, scalable organizational structure. Don't wait for the necessary time to introduce world-class managers or radical restructurings to fix bad information flows or productivity problems, Andrica said.

24th: Make the financing bids memorable

Ollen Yas ToyTalk, founder and chief executive of the Oren, said you could not practice your speech over and over again with a minute, 10 minutes, or even an hour of financing. You also have to consider the situation at the time of presentation in the Conference room, read the body language of the investor, and make appropriate adjustments in a timely manner.

"In the face of a group of investors who can grasp your passion but don't know much about the company's actual skills, finances or business details, tell them in the speech that they can ask questions at any time," he said. Keep them interrupting your speech and you'll be able to pause and answer questions at all times. ”

25th: Choose the right advice

Fehn Barns (Phin Barnes), one of first round's partners, has offered advice to more than 20 innovation companies and has seen a common problem: startups have not fully leveraged their consultancy relationships. Many of them have chosen the wrong advisers for the wrong reasons.

"My advice," says Barnes, "is to choose a consultant as a co-founder--choose someone who can compensate for your weaknesses." "If you want to make sure that you find the right advisers, you should interview future advisers." Ms. Barnes said there should be some questions to be interrogated during the interview, such as "What kind of response does it take in a given situation?" What was the best moment of their consulting career? Will you be able to place your company or solve your company's previous problems in the course of your experience? Are there any relevant knowledge? " By answering these questions, you will be able to find the right consultant.

26th: Maintain team unity and build stability

"You want teams to not only be able to work together but also to learn from each other," said Chris Fry, a former VP of technology at Twitter, Chris Fries. "To achieve this level of mutual trust and flow, he suggested that the team should work together at least 6 months, ideally in a year or longer."

Building mutual respect among teams has several advantages. It can repair itself, and it corrects itself. When a stable team encounters a problem or does not meet the goal, it will be restructured, will carry out the project summary, the corresponding adjustment for the future.

27th: Force yourself to prioritize.

At the beginning of Pandora's creation, the company had wanted to develop hundreds of features, but the technical staff was extremely limited and was able to accomplish these development tasks. But Pandora's only 40-person technology team developed a product that could serve 70 million people.

To achieve this, Pandora, under the leadership of Technical director Tom Conrad Tom Conrad, developed a rigorous quarterly limited system based on the priorities of each task. After a collection of ideas from the entire company, after careful selection, the Pandora management team will put the selected items on the wall and devote a different amount to each project. Each technician has only a certain amount of money to allocate. After several rounds of discussion and controversy, 20 features that need to be implemented in the quarter are selected, and the remaining items will be cut off.

"Every day we need to do the most important things, and we can't afford the consequences of making a big mistake," Conrad said. "It is this priority system that makes this a reality."

28th: The question of remuneration is formulated as far as possible

When Morry Greheum (Molly Graham) joined Facebook, the company had 400 employees, but no formal performance or compensation system. To develop a system that works for Facebook, she learned the significance of standardization.

"It's really hard to predict an innovation company in the long run," Graham said. If you start early with a raise for a new employee or performer, you will be in a position where you are not expected to be in the future. ”

Now, as Quip's head of business operations, she has been reinforcing the idea. "We explain that employees are paid in a consistent way to achieve a certain length of work, and we also explain that we will never compromise on the remuneration issue and observe the employee's response to the problem," she said. ”

This will help you avoid one of the common failings of innovative companies: paying employees a high salary for underestimating the value of their equity. You just have to hire people who believe in the company and pay is not a priority.

29th: Pass the bar test

Nickel Karn (Nicole Kahn), who has long been the head of the project in Ideo, often finds himself showing customers slides about products, solutions and ideas, but most of her success stories come from telling a very good story.

The first piece of advice she gave was that the story must be able to pass the so-called "bar tests" (Bar test). "The bar is a very friendly social occasion," Mr. Strauss-Kahn said. But there are also some very important things that can happen in a pub conversation. You use direct language and make sure that your words are interesting and appealing, that you can't list huge amounts of data, and you can't use too many corporate languages. ”

In view of these factors, Mr. Strauss-Kahn suggested that the speaker in the formal communication with customers before the story to the total people who do not understand. Then watch them and see when they're focused, when they look, or they pull out their phones. Take 15 minutes to determine which content is receiving good feedback and then add that content to your presentation.

30th: More work through emotional energy

People's moods at a certain time are completely different, or excited, or anxious, or helpless. Katia Verresen, an innovative corporate executive trainer, Kedia Wirisen that emotions will determine half the behavior and decision-making. To help clients make the most of their time, she asked clients to record three days of emotional change.

The goal is not to make customers feel good about themselves and their work forever. Everyone is depressed. Entrepreneurship is like a big roller coaster. Wirisen's goal is to provide customers with the tools and language they need to get out of their lost shadows and start working energetically.

If you draw emotional changes at different times of the day, you have the right to choose different activities. You can change your mood by meeting an exciting moment or holding a small celebration. By mastering the changes in your emotions, you can optimize them.