Finding your North Star Metric🌟- London start-ups calling🔮-Employee feedback is not enough❤️ - The key to building trust as a startup🔐 - Avoid bad meeting behavior🤯
Imagine a metric you pick, if you move it up, everything will follow.
Hi there 😊,
Episode #45. We are back to the takeaways format for this weeks’ episode, we hope you will learn a ton from those summaries. Give yourself some time to reflect and grow, it is just a few minutes of flow 👇
This week, I am sharing advices for start-ups about :
defining a North Star metric properly,
building trust with a prospect.
Some more widely applicable advice for the workplace about:
improving your employee feedback,
avoiding bad meeting behaviors.
And a selection of start-ups to watch in 2022 from London.
#1 Finding your North Star
From this video called Finding your North Star Metric (examples from the best SaaS companies) published by Dan Martell on January 18, 2021.
Imagine a metric you pick, if you move it up, everything will follow.
Important to find your North Star metric when a company struggles find its rythme.
When you deliver on this metric, both your customers and your business are getting value.
Important to figure out what game you are playing as a company.
Facebook> attention game,
Amazon> transaction game,
For most SaaS companies > productivity game (number of events).
Some examples.
AirBnB : nights booked,
Facebook/Meta : DAU (Daily Average Users) which is focused on increasing activation,
Quora : nb of questions answered by users,
Salesforce : average number of records created by account,
Adobe: number of engaged subscription owners.
Check the number % of your customers that are moving up or down on that metric.
Check if everybody in the company can move that number up.
Formula to check that your metric is the right one:
is my customer finding value?
And is this indicator leading to revenue?
Is it specific to my business?
#2 London start-ups calling
From this article The London Tech start-ups to watch in 2022 published in The Evening Standard on January 14, 2022.
Here is my top5 from the 10+ company selection made by the biggest VCs and investors:
HR startup Screenloop making sure appropriate questions are being asked and avoid unconscious bias in remote interviews.
Recruiting flexible roles with Flexa Careers. With the pandemic some people realize flexibility is key in their work life.
Omnipresent helps companies employ pay and support staff wherever they work around the world.
Incident.io helps companies facing an outage or data breach to get back online fast(er). Solution for software teams.
Hyperexponential, an insurance pricing platform or an actuarial tech for incumbents and newcomers.
#3 Positive Management 🎯
From Feedback is not enough to help your employees grow published in The Harvard Business Review, December 10, 2021. Curated by Patrick Kervern.
Employee feedback is not enough.
Telling people they are missing the mark is not the same as helping them hit the mark.
Negative feedback (“Here’s what you’re doing wrong”) reduces engagement in 360 feedback conversations and suppresses exploration of future goals and desires… And calling it “constructive” feedback doesn’t fool anyone.
What about positive feedback which highlights what they did well? It’s a form of criticism; if I can approve of your behavior here, I can also disapprove of your behavior there.
Focusing on positives won’t necessarily address weaknesses that are getting in the way of performance.
What does - really- help people up their Game:
1- Shift from critic to ally
2- Identify an energizing outcome.
3- Discover a hidden opportunity.
4- Create a level-10 plan.
#4 Building trust as a startup
From The Trust Paradox published in the newsletter First1000 on January 11, 2022. Written by Ali Abouelatta.
The author lists elements that would be some components for building trust with a enterprise customer when you are a small startup:
1- the startup has a high company value,
2- or has a large amount of time to invest in the relationship,
3- the startup is able to create valuable offline interactions,
4- the parties has been introduced by a third party company.
But how can we define trust? Trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to the intentions and actions of others.
What are the different types of trust?
Competence based: skills or experience giving you the ability to deliver,
Systemic based: processes or market references is what is referred as “institutional trust”,
Value based: shared vision of the world and where it is going,
Motive based: both companies share the same motivation with benefits serving best interests of both parties,
Impact based: ability to prove/measure the outcome of both companies working together.
“Trust is dynamic. Companies that reliably live up to the promises accrue customer trust over time. On the other hand, those that don’t erode “.
Valuable ways to start building trust:
1- Use a trust anchor (warm reference?),
2- Build offline relationships,
3- Fill an information gap starting by solving a minor customer problem for your customer.
#5 Bad meetings are bad
From Why are meetings so bad? published in Marginal Revolution on January 3, 2022. Curated by Patrick Kervern.
Why are meetings so bad ?
Boring Information,
Useless Muscle Flex,
Leading to no closing / action item / owner,
or low quality debates,
Appeal to median voter opinion.
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See you next Sunday!