Is the workflow automation tool big enough that subgroups of users are still a big number of users to service
Of those subgroups, does one (or more) stand to have a better product experience if someone focused on their core use-cases / workflows. (e.g. Reclaim takes a bunch of calendar automation around scheduling and makes a product that reduces the work needed to optimize your calendar).
Early hires are so crucial in a startup. I've made dozens of interview loops to try and tease out the people who will raise the bar but honestly it just made for longer interviews with about the same mis-hire rate. When I was hiring for my last two startups, I added a simple check to our interview loops: "Were they clear and did they provide good energy". Our mis-hire rate dropped. I wrote this to talk more about how I got there and start a discussion!
I agree both of these are useful skill but overly focusing on these concerns me. In your experience, is there a possibility that this lead to bias? Folks who are first generation immigrants, may not have gone to the top schools, may be very productive but not as fluent with English as native speakers. How do you account for this?
In my experience, people who are highly creative are not always crisp at communication. How do you reconcile this? I work as a research scientist and this is from sample across multiple top-tier research labs.
In my experience, I agree with the fact that top school people don't correlate with the best hires but my data shows that high clarity + high energy does not correlate with top schools! In fact, I have many high-clarity // low-energy folks as examples.
I think that not being crisp at communication does not mean you wont be clear. English was not my first language so I empathize! More recently, I've worked with south american developers who are not 100% fluent but are very clear in what they mean (ie. consistent and form solid ideas/thoughts/visions). And early in my career at Alexa, many researchers (lots of top-rate folks) were international and didn't have 100% fluency in english but were 100% clear about what they were building, their methods, and how we were going to test their hypotheses.
Unfortunately, the default meaning of clear is: speaks english well. But I am speaking about clarity in thinking and being able to represent that consistently in words.
Also, I realized, an over-arching concern could be: Does this promote bias?
Yes.
Especially in early-stage, it's about how fast can you go and are you iterating enough. For example: Some of the advice for hiring early stage is "hire your friends/people-you-know". Instant bias.
Over time it's about taking that risk on less-clear-thinkers to help refine their thinking or more junior folks to grow them but at the start: there is very little risk in execution that you can handle.
I think that task/project management is also starting to go through that with Clubhouse, Linear, Height, Notion/Coda/Knowledge-bases (trying to solve it). I would not be surprised to hear that there are a couple in "Stealth" as well.
It has been years since i have had to manage web design stuff...but as i recall, section 508 specifically calls for federal-centric web properties to - by law - include accessibility features to accomodate the American Disabilities Act (the ADA). So, yeah, it better damn well have accessibility baked in, else it would be illegal. :-)
To be fair, the little documentation and blog posts here and there that i have read on the US Digital Service is that those folks reaslly are attentive to design considerations for always including accessbility...which is awesome!!
I wonder if what they meant was "it's impossible to have a turnkey solution for UX"?
There are all sorts of turnkey solutions for frontend and backend infrastructure, but none guarantee good user experiences - only a team that knows their users' needs and is empowered to meet them can do that.
Working at a company where middle-management is incompetent is common. Particularly in startups where they promote from within or the leaders haven't seen good management before. That being said, if you aren't getting your best work done, it's probably best to leave.
That being said, regarding whether or not your startup is failing, its hard to know (even from the inside). But one thing that is important is whether the leaders of your company think they are failing. That is easier to notice and is a shittier experience than just if your company is failing but your leaders see a way out. If your leaders think they are going to die, the easiest way to know is when the free stuff gets taken away (swag, coffees, expensed lunches). The other is if projects keep getting killed and new ones that get promoted as the answer to all the problems ... sign that they don't know what they're doing.
Wow, this non-linear note-taking space is blowing up. Just recently I started using https://museapp.com/. That being said, they're hierarchical if not linear but same concept with "inking"! Any others that people are trying?
I've been working with founders that are finding new startup ideas. I found that many were aware of B2B SaaS but were often intimidated by going out and figuring out which industries to go after and who they should talk to. I put the advice I usually give them into this handy little post :)
Hey folks! I wrote this as I've been trying to start my second company. Starting the first required trashing a bunch of "Uber for X" and it always sat weird with me. After internalizing this method of "inflection events", I was able to discover much different opportunities and it led me to create an Auto-Tech company.
RevvUp is an early stage, venture funded startup building an operation management platform for auto service shops. Our mission is to make auto service operations ($125B industry) more efficient for vehicle-owners and shops alike. This starts as a platform used by service centers to manage their processes and process payments.
This mission involves thinking about how to move offline processes/interactions online as most of auto service operations is done manually or over the phone.
We are looking for a frontend software engineer to build our first product around productivity management and analysis at these auto service centers.
Is the workflow automation tool big enough that subgroups of users are still a big number of users to service
Of those subgroups, does one (or more) stand to have a better product experience if someone focused on their core use-cases / workflows. (e.g. Reclaim takes a bunch of calendar automation around scheduling and makes a product that reduces the work needed to optimize your calendar).