Thanks James - that’s very kind of you.
Great question! Yes, me, Mark and Luke started our first business together in 2004 and since then we’ve launched and sold (and lost) several side projects/businesses. So we’ve been through the highs and the lows and what we’ve discovered is that we’re quite different in some ways: we have different appetites towards risk, we have different strengths and weaknesses and we often have differences of opinion, too. But we do all share two things: values and aspirations.
That means that we don’t spend a lot of time debating whether something is right or wrong, but more whether it gets us to where we want to be as efficiently as possible. It also means that if we disagree with each other, we know it’s not personal… we all want the same thing after all.
So my tips would be:
-
try and establish that you have shared values early on. If you aren’t aligned here: if one person thinks creating a great working culture is important and another thinks that it’s a waste of time and money, then you are going to spend too much time debating that every time it comes up
-
find consensus, even if that’s a compromise, then execute that plan. Don’t look back: decide on something as a group then just do it, even if you weren’t 100% in agreement.
-
talk all the time. If you are frustrated or worried, talk to your co-founders. Don’t let it linger and fester.
-
don’t make it all about work and understand that people have lives outside of work. We’re all human beings trying to do our best and we all have flaws.
-
then finally, play to your strengths and accept your weaknesses. In our business, I love metrics but I’m not as technical as I’d like to be. Mark hates numbers but is good at understanding the technical complexities. Luke is CTO so obviously gets the technology but traditionally hasn’t had much to do with sales and customers. We can’t all be good at everything.