In The Builder’s Guide to the Tech Galaxy: 99 Practices to Scale Startups into Unicorn Companies, a team of accomplished investors, entrepreneurs, and marketers deliver a practical collection of concrete strategies for scaling a small startup into a lean and formidable tech competitor. By focusing on the four key building blocks of a successful company - alignment, team, functional excellence, and capital - this book distills the wisdom found in countless books, podcasts, and the authors’ own extensive experience into a compact and accessible blueprint for success and growth.
In the book, you’ll find: - Organizational charts, sample objectives and key results (OKRs), as well as guidance for divisions including technology and product management, marketing, sales, people, and service operations - Tools and benchmarks for strategically aligning your company’s divisions with one another, and with your organization’s “North Star” - Templates and tips to attract and retain a triple-A team with the right scale-up mindset - Checklists to help you attract growth capital and negotiate term sheets
Perfect for companies with two, ten, or one hundred employees, The Builder’s Guide to the Tech Galaxy belongs on the bookshelves of founders, managers, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders exploring innovative and proven ways to scale their enterprise to new heights.
Table of Contents
Forewords (Building the Third Way) xix
Forewords (Preparing Europe for maturity) xxvii
Introduction xxix
North Star
1 Six Dimensions of Direction 3
Purpose beyond profit
Practice 1: A company that makes the planet a better place 6
Company values
Practice 2: Guiding principles for aligning the crew 8
Business ambition
Practice 3: Business outcomes to aspire to in the long run 10
North Star metric
Practice 4: The PRIMARY metric that matters NOW 11
Value proposition
Practice 5: Unmet customer needs that you solve uniquely well 12
OKRs
Practice 6: Making direction operational 16
2 Environmental, Social and Governance Criteria as Drivers of Business Success (With Johannes enhard and Hannah Leach) 21
Environmental
Practice 7: Measuring, reducing and offsetting your environmental footprint with clear responsibilities and targets 26
Social
Practice 8: Building a culture that embraces diversity and inclusion 29
Governance
Practice 9: Establishing internal governance that facilitates growth, compliance, and employee representation 32
People & Mindset
3 People (HR) Excellence (With Constanze Buchheim, Manjuri Sinha and Chris Bell) 37
OKRs
Practice 10: Establishing the right people OKRs 40
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 11: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a people function 46
Practice 12: Scaling the right people roles at the right time 49
Recruiting & candidate experience
Practice 13: Building the candidate sourcing muscle 50
Practice 14: Evaluating candidates in record time while creating an outstanding candidate experience 55
Practice 15: Boosting the offer acceptance rates 57
Organizational development
Practice 16: Establishing a strong job architecture with clear levels, career paths and tracks 58
Practice 17: Putting fair appraisal and promotion processes in place 62
Employee experience
Practice 18: Driving employee happiness by enabling meaning, mastery, psychological safety, autonomy and community 64
Employee stock option programs
Practice 19: Building the right employee stock option program 67
4 Scale-Up Mindset (With Johannes Lenhard) 73
Obsession with customer experience
Practice 20: Improving key customer journey experiences as a top priority for leaders 74
Impossible is nothing
Practice 21: Setting impossible-is-nothing goals by thinking “and,” not “or” 77
Learn-it-all beats know-it-all
Practice 22: Embracing learning cycles by establishing psychological safety and an idea meritocracy 80
Autonomy to act
Practice 23: Empowering cross-functional teams to make decisions rapidly & independently 82
Functional Excellence In Scale-Ups
5 Product Management Excellence
(With Johnny Quach and Sven Grajetzki) 87
OKRs
Practice 24: Establishing the right product OKRs 90
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 25: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a product function 96
Practice 26: Scaling the right product roles at the right time 100
Product vision & direction
Practice 27: Developing a clear product vision and deriving your roadmap from it 102
Practice 28: Focusing your product organization on outcomes, not just designing a “feature factory” 104
Practice 29: Investing in the core product while pushing adjacent opportunities and venture bets 106
Product development process
Practice 30: Creating a crystal clear picture of your target customers 107
Practice 31: Aligning your product value proposition with the underserved needs of your customers 108
Practice 32: Developing your roadmap as a communication tool with the right prioritization logic 111
Product management basics
Practice 33: Getting the brand and product design right early on 115
Practice 34: Building a thriving user research engine quickly 119
Practice 35: Implementing best-in-class product management tools 122
6 Technology Excellence (With Christoph Richter) 129
OKRs
Practice 36: Establishing the right technology OKRs 132
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 37: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a technology function 140
Practice 38: Scaling the right technology roles at the right time 144
Your way of agile development
Practice 39: Creating your own version of agile development 145
Development operations (DevOps)
Practice 40: Establishing lean software development principles 150
Practice 41: Establishing technical DevOps practices for continuous delivery 153
Practice 42: Enabling a team of doers through the right DevOps culture 156
Scalable architecture
Practice 43: Creating a “good enough” software architecture that can evolve over time 158
Practice 44: Establishing a resilient cloud architecture 161
Information security
Practice 45: Mitigating the top 10 web applications’ security risks 163
Practice 46: Integrating the key information security practices into design, development and deployment early on 165
Data management
Practice 47: Democratizing data with self-service data tools while building a scalable data architecture 167
7 B2C Marketing Excellence (With Kelly Ford) 175
OKRs
Practice 48: Establishing the right marketing OKRs 177
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 49: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a marketing function 182
Practice 50: Scaling the right marketing roles at the right time 185
Marketing basics
Practice 51: Establishing a single source of truth for key marketing and growth KPIs 186
Practice 52: Bridging the gap between marketing quants and creative brains 186
Practice 53: Equipping your teams with the right marketing and growth tools 187
Practice 54: Finding your product-channel fit quickly and maintaining it 187
Organic and viral marketing
Practice 55: Leveraging the power of organic conversions to drive down customer acquisition costs 190
Practice 56: Getting your PR machine up with trust 192
Paid online marketing
Practice 57: Harnessing the six key hacks for buying online ads efficiently 194
Offline marketing
Practice 58: Leveraging the power of offline marketing in the digital age 197
Monetization
Practice 59: Nailing your monetization strategy to drive revenue 198
Growth hacking
Practice 60: Establishing cross-functional growth hacking teams for activation, retention and monetization 201
8 B2B Sales Excellence (With Karan Sharma) 209
OKRs
Practice 61: Establishing the right sales OKRs 212
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 62: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a sales function 217
Practice 63: Scaling the right sales roles at the right time 220
Sales playing field
Practice 64: Exploiting the right niches 221
Sales basics
Practice 65: Creating a commission plan that fits your growth stage 223
Practice 66: Enabling your sales teams with the right sales tech stack 225
Practice 67: Attracting and hiring a world-class sales team 227
Practice 68: Training and coaching a “challenger” sales team 228
Practice 69: Getting your basic sales pitch in place 230
Qualifying and closing leads
Practice 70: Becoming rigorous with lead qualifications 231
Practice 71: Enabling your sales teams to close leads 234
Retaining and “farming” customers
Practice 72: Measuring customer health to predict and prevent customer churn 235
9 Service Operations Excellence (With Dr Nicola Glusac) 241
OKRs
Practice 73: Establishing the right service operations OKRs 244
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 74: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a service operations function 247
Practice 75: Scaling the right service operations roles at the right time 250
Preventing contacts
Practice 76: Preventing unnecessary contacts in the first place 252
Deflecting contacts
Practice 77: Deflecting transactional contacts to an automated self-help 253
Resolving contacts
Practice 78: Investing in a hybrid operating model and specialization to ensure availability at all times 254
Practice 79: Resolving customer inquiries with autonomous teams and close-knit performance management 255
Practice 80: Investing in Lean Six Sigma processes while giving teams enough room to create moments of service delight 256
Practice 81: Investing in a loosely coupled, yet highly integrated suite of service tools 258
Practice 82: Steering external partners to jointly drive business goals 259
Practice 83: Boosting back-office throughput with performance management, automation and centers of excellence 260
Practice 84: Investing in resilience to quickly recover from demand and supply shocks 261
10 Supply Chain Excellence (With Matthias Wilrich) 265
OKRs
Practice 85: Establishing the right supply chain OKRs 268
Organizational chart and roles
Practice 86: Defining the roles & responsibilities for a supply chain operations function 271
Practice 87: Scaling the right supply chain roles at the right time 275
Supply chain
Practice 88: Hiring supply chain specialists early on 275
Practice 89: Investing in supply chain resilience to quickly recover from demand and supply shocks 276
Practice 90: Boosting partner and supplier relationships with smart and scalable contracts 277
Practice 91: Becoming proficient in supply chain operational excellence and maintaining a hands-on attitude 280
Growth Capital
11 Six Questions Every Growth Stage Investor Asks (With Vanessa Pinter) 287
Future vision
Practice 92: Do you capitalize on the next inflection point? 293
Rockstar team
Practice 93: Have you assembled a great team that can scale? 294
Business model
Practice 94: Does your company’s performance to date show a path toward becoming profitable in the long term? 296
Venture-scale market
Practice 95: Can you achieve USD 100 million in annual revenue within 7-10 years? 298
Category-leading product
Practice 96: Have you created a unique customer value proposition which is 10x better than any other in that market? 300
Fund fit
Practice 97: Does your company fit the investor’s fund in terms of industry, size, and funding needs? 300
12 Fifteen Key Issues in Growth Term Sheets (With Vanessa Pinter) 303
Negotiating guidelines
Practice 98: Following major guidelines for term sheet negotiations 304
Key term sheet issues
Practice 99: Negotiating the 15 most important term sheet issues during a growth round 307
Contact Us 321
Notes 323
