Lessons I learned from life as a cog in a start up - from 8 people, through IPO
Even if PODP's life has proven an unhappy one - even reaching IPO was pretty cool!
I started at Pod Point in February 2011, there were 8 of us in that office. We took it through acquisition and IPO in late 2021, peaking at ~650 people. It wasn't my business, I was just a cog in the machine, but here are a handful of the many lessons I learned in the process:
Success only appears in your rearview mirror
Success does not feel like success on a day to day basis - it feels like problems and work. Things that went perfectly don’t need fixing, so don’t consume your time. Your time is spent on problems. Even obviously good news - e.g. big contract wins, big policy wins - just enable you to do heaps more work, which means fixing more problems.
Success is only apparent when you take the time to look where you are now versus where you have been. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Two key thoughts:
Do occasionally (annually?) take the time to really appreciate what the team has achieved. There is no inherent compulsion to do this, so unless you force it to happen it won’t happen. The realisation of progress is motivating, so there is value in appreciating success.
Don’t dwell on success, you’ve work to do... But then this is a pointless piece of advice - if you have the fight in you to succeed in the first place, every motivation in you is to get on and fix the next problem anyway.
Related: Success is different problems
We chase success as a destination, where all our struggles are resolved. The sooner you disabuse yourself of this fantasy the better. Succeeding, whether big or small, just resets your baseline of normality. You will always have some kind of struggle, the real benefit of succeeding is that you get to tackle new challenges. If you do not, you have the same problem(s) over and over until you give up.
Proper start up entrepreneurs are built different
I worked with a great one, up close. Erik amazed me. Yes I bought into his vision, found him inspiring, that kind of stuff. But it was what he could tolerate and keep pressing on that stays with me. The resilience, drive and level headedness in the face of constant existential risk.
Examples were legion, I remember him freaking out a senior govt official who was deliberating over an existential ruling “If you do that, I’ll just go to the pub, I won’t have a business”.
The ones that impacted me the most were when we’d spent months working to land something which ultimately failed. I wanted to dwell/recriminate/mourn, but he immediately moved on to the next thing, pulling me along with him.
Your start up’s culture directly mirrors your leaders’ personalities
This makes sense, they’re at the end of the decision tree, but the way it happens in practice is really stark. Watching PP shape to Erik (and Gill’s) style was particularly obvious when you compared it to competitors with different leadership styles. And I really loved PP’s culture.
People make your culture, but the culture makes the people thrive - and it’s a virtuous circle
One way success is immediately apparent is in your company culture. Once you hit your straps here you’ll know it, people are excited and proud about where they work, you start pulling in great people.
This was clearly more obvious when in a full time office environment, but having witnessed it leave a company whilst working remotely, I’m sure it applies remotely too.
Once you have it working - PROTECT YOUR CULTURE! It is so vital. Make it a key part of your hiring and onboarding processes.
[FWIW - The lack of curiosity about the company culture, and the wealth of insight and talent that was not capitalised on must rank as the worst thing about the post-2023 years. And, IMHO, a critical reason it has proven such a struggle.]
Early start up working makes you extremely adaptable
The cavalry aren’t coming. You’re doing it yourself. I remember asking “Do we have an XXXX policy?” whilst filling in a tender, for Rob Walden to tell me “Yes. Once you’ve written it.” Spend time at a start up and you’ll have turned your hand to most things. Hiring? Tonnes of it. Sales? Millions of it. Led teams? Several. Led a strategy? Sure. Trained teams? Heaps. It carries on...
This adaptability is obviously massively useful and makes you (feel you’re) capable of basically anything. The downside is that you might find it harder to decide where to dedicate your energies if you are looking to become a specialist professional. Or more succinctly, you'll find it harder to choose what to interview for, but much better in the eventual interview!
Different types of people fit at different times
Early doors you don’t really need the most elite software QA engineer, particularly as they’re expensive and likely unenthusiastic about loading a van with kit to go to/from the factory. You need people who can nail a loosely defined primary role, and contribute on a heap of fronts - Erik used the phrase "T-shaped people" - good across a broad range of tasks, good depth in their core area.
As the business grows and departments become more discreet, that elite software QA engineer might become exactly what you need. On the flipside, it’s rare that start up thrivers can happily adapt to the big corporate it becomes, with the inherent constraints and operational inertia. But they can do, if they find a role, and they likely have value as cultural leaders.
Crowdfunding rounds were fun, but don’t be fooled
Getting a wider community to buy into your project whilst raising money is a great thing. But don’t imagine firms successfully executing a crowdfunding campaign just popped it on a funding platform and watched the cash roll in. You need ~all of the funds secured from institutions/big investors before you hit launch. This is a marketing/engagement ploy, not a core investment strategy.
Don’t be precious/too ambitious about your processes - keep evolving them to meet the contemporary need.
As something one member of staff handled gets too big and needs a team of 4, there needs to be a process to distribute and track the work. So make one and tweak as you go. But don’t try to make it fit for a time where there might be a team of 40. You will be wasting your time guessing, and a heap of circumstances will have changed by then anyway.
The firm - and you - will probably fail
You know the stats. The wondrous “exit” usually doesn’t materialise. Yes, the world’s wealthiest people are successful entrepreneurs, but that doesn’t mean this is a dependable path to riches. More likely, one day you have paper riches, one day you’re back at square one wondering where to go with your life from here.
Even so, if you get the chance to work in an early stage business - do it
Compared to working in an early stage company, I think the only thing more powerful for shaping your mindset to be curious about how companies and institutions work is to launch/run your own firm.
Either way, you will never again see any company/institution as a permanent fixture that just exists. They are all precarious, animate beasts, with internal processes that must endure and evolve, or stop and cease to exist. And, regardless of their size, you have probably had to wrestle with similar challenges, and can relate to the decisions that senior leadership have to make.
There’s just no way this isn’t valuable for the rest of your career. And goodness me you will have bagged several sedate careers’ worth of lessons along the way.
And - you might just get a chunk of that big exit!
In the end, this cog sprung loose from the machine. In my case, my start-up grounding was in the wholly nascent space of EV charging, giving me pretty deep expertise here, hence RCP Ltd.
So now I spend my time helping other companies work through their own challenges. Turns out the broad perspective you get from startup life is exactly what's needed when you're trying to fix things.
