Awesome People - Ep 103
COO advisor, assumptions, a team exercise you should do now
Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
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Please meet Amanda, Your COO Advisor 🚀
I met Amanda as she was leaving PayPal after almost 10 years. At PayPal, she incubated, built, and scaled new businesses and functions. Her last act was doing bizops for blockchain, crypto, and Digital Currencies. She left PayPal to join Dapper Labs as their VP of Business Operations and Strategy. At Dapper, she stood up bizops, strategy, corp dev, and program management.
Now she helps startups, via Garden Labs, her strategy and ops advisory practice. She’s focused on early and growth-stage startups and works across web2 and web3.
One little-known fact about Amanda is that she started her career as a hip-hop promoter and music festival producer where she cut her teeth in large-scale program management!
You can hire her to help focus your team on actionable goals, test new growth opportunities, and provide an outside view on how to weather the bear market.
Want an intro to Amanda? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you!
She was gracious enough to share some pro-tips with us here ✨
Imagine this:
You're an incredible keyboardist and you join a new band. Strangely, this band doesn't believe in practice — they just show up to gigs, and start playing. The guitarist and lead singer are long-time friends and can riff pretty well off one another. The talented drummer has a style that she fine-tuned with her previous band and plans to stick to that. And then you have the bassist — who just looks lost, but certainly intends to play their heart out.
No setlist, no sheet music — just improvisation, and not the intentional jazz kind.
The outcome? Not a stellar performance.
Many startup leadership teams feel like this. They have impressive talent and energy but lack mutual understanding and cohesion. This is dangerous when existential risk and distraction are constant threats. It's crucial for leaders to get on the same page about their focus, purpose, and vision for success.
Here's a practice to help you achieve alignment.
Document and share your founding thesis
If you're a startup, your team is likely guided by unproven assumptions supported by signals, instincts, and maybe some first principles. It's common for founders to keep these assumptions in their heads, like a treasure trove of earned insights.
Writing these down might sound like your worst nightmare.
But, do it.
Tap your co-founders on the shoulder, reach out to trusted early advisors, or bring in someone like me to help — just do it.
Inviting your team to scrutinize your thesis might feel vulnerable — ah! the emperor has no clothes! — but it encourages collective ownership and builds a stronger thesis.
A well-documented thesis will help your team identify the biggest risks and focus their efforts on the right things. It ensures an intense, shared focus over time, reducing the chances of costly missteps.
Here are some questions that you can start with:
When we founded this company, what opportunity did we see, and why did we believe this company needed to exist?
What have we learned since then about our customers, our offering, and our opportunity?
Today, what do we believe is most valuable about what we are building — to both our customers and our company? (be specific)
What are the 2-3 things we need to absolutely nail in order to create this value? What must be true for us to achieve our goals?
To bring this to life a bit, here's a fictional case study:
There is a five-person founding team (with a number of teams behind them) working feverishly on a prefabricated ADU startup. Everyone will tell you they’re working around the clock, but it’s unclear to what end:
The Head of Marketing is working on a rebrand exercise
The Head of Finance is building complex pricing models
The CTO and Head of BD are working on a partnership to integrate a certain voice-enabled product owned by a big tech firm
The CEO is fundraising
On a whim, the team reads this newsletter and decides to step back and land their thesis (below):
Some callouts:
I know you’re busy with the day-to-day. Set aside specific time to view things from 5,000 to 10,000 feet to gain perspective.
The above view is a speculative thesis. These assumptions are a great starting point for a debate. Check if your team shares the same understanding of the world and the opportunity, and how we arrived here.
Is the above a “strategy”? Not really. It’s a set of assumptions that precede it.
Use your founding thesis to drive focus and execute
Now, with the above drafted and agreed upon, you might find yourself curious about the following:
How important is that big partnership half of our team is working on?
How complex do we really need our pricing models to be?
Are we doing enough on the marketing end?
What is the biggest risk and are there bets we can take today to help mitigate this risk?
Here are some other things you can do once you have your document drafted.
Your document is not a one-and-done deal. Keep it up-to-date as your thinking evolves. Let it be a hub for new ideas and bold bets. Work on it with your team to drive cohesion.
Let this thesis guide your thinking on goals and priorities.
Use the document as a tool for onboarding newbies. Distribute a neat, one-page version to everyone in the company.
The days of easy funding are gone. No more free rides for whitepapers and powerpoints. Only teams that can execute will stand out and survive.
Most people think about "execution" as going heads-down and shipping products or closing deals. That’s not enough. You have to:
Stay grounded on a thesis and work as a team to get smarter over time.
Stay no to countless distractions and focus on making the right few bets.
Bring in and properly utilize new skill sets to expand the team's capabilities over time.
It’s always worth the time and effort to get and keep your leadership team on the same page. It’s key to focus on the problems that will move the needle.
Want an intro to Amanda? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you!
As always, please let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to Amanda!
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures & Talent
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Awesome People Continued 🤩
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