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Ask HN: How can you avoid chaos in your startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How can you avoid chaos in your startup?

#11
post #7

I take a military analogy to it. War is probably the most chaotic situation anywhere. And to cater for it, they develop a lot of discipline, starting with formations and strict routine. The key is to create a bubble of control. Once you control a zone, once you form a secure perimeter, it's much easier to control the rest. This zone of security is most easily done with Agile. Agile lets you control that sprint. Agile…

This analogy seems really strong. I don't know much about war though so I might miss some of the nuances! The bubble of control sounds like a great way to visualise what you need focus on (reminds me of the "circle of control" from the book "Seven habits of highly effective people"). "develop a lot of discipline, starting with formations and strict routine". This makes a lot of sense and completely fits with the othe…

Oh yeah the recon and support teams are some of the best tools we've had for reducing risk.

At the very least it highlights high priority obstacles, like whether an API is running properly or able to do what it should. And system analysts are awesome for making sure a sales team doesn't overpromise.

Support teams are great too. Like if you have a huge, expensive, time constrained project involving a technology like Firebase, it would be worth it to have a Firebase expert sit around the office to ask questions to. It's often more cost effective than throwing more programmers at the problem. At some point, extra programmers just conflict with one another, but support won't.

Re: Ask HN: How can you avoid chaos in your startup?

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what the purpose of your blog post is. Is it a message to potential employees, customers, investors, someone else? I don’t mean “what is that post talking about”, more what was your intended ROI on it? Would you be willing to inform on that point? (Please don’t take this as a critique, I’m curious and hoping to learn something)

Hey Matt, No worries, I always try to assume that people are well intentioned with their questions until there's undeniable evidence otherwise! I didn't have any specific ROI in mind, I just wanted to get the thoughts out of my head and onto "paper", and hopefully help out anyone who finds they have the same challenges. Also, if I'm re-inventing the wheel or missing other obvious ways of doing things, that would be i…

Hi Alice thanks for the reply.

You might wish to consider what message these types of postings give to your (potential) customers, investors, employees, etc. They can be used as a queue to them. I’m not saying your post is good or bad message. Just that everything under your company’s banner sends a message. Some company leaders have separate personal and company blogs.

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