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You are not your companyFrom 0 to 180 employees - the hard way.
Piotr Karwatka, CoCEO Divante
Divante
• eBusiness Software House operating since 2008
• Over 180 people at our office in Wroclaw, Poland
• Offices in Rotterdam, London, Stockholm
• Clients from Europe, Asia, Africa and US
• Case studies: divante.co/portfolio
Key to success?
• Pragmmatic over egocentric
• Business goals first
• Best tools available
The Hero vs Fireman myths
Write down your goals
- Two eye-opening books: “E-myth and Built to sell- Scalable very often equals to Saleable; company that can
thrive without You personaly
My goal creating Divante? - The greatest entreprenuer caveat: To do more what I love
(building great computer software)
What I’ve discovered? My company is not Me. To let Divante thrive I’d to treat it as a product. Consist of people, processes and rules - built arround priorities: people / projects / money.
But (there is always a “but”) one advice: understand your processes and services first. Don’t scale your company too early. Choose right people depending on trust level not only on their experience.
vs
The Hero vs Fireman myths
When doing it wrong: Owner as the best employee ever.
FiremanHero
“We have cool startup culture and flat organization” “We have great structure and processes”
Having “scalable structure” sounds cool. Don’t scale too fast. At first try focus on selecting right people and establishing trust rather than management theory.
Carnivale vs Lent
- It’s better to have co-founder- Jobs and Wozniak- Gates and Alen- ...
- Split responsibilities clearly: business dev. / production
- Services business is all about selling and new projects
- It’s almost impossible to sell anything dealing with fire inside other projcets at once; you loose your faith
- … but there always will be some fire in projects :)
- Production is about now and here- Business Development is about tomorrow and
future
Focus and priorities
- Focus changes with company growth- Priorities - kind of signspot thru company growth
- Our priorities at Divante:
1. People when unhappy problems with rotation, new hires, productivity and with ...
2. Projectswhen not delivered / poor quality / sale issues - all causes loose of team morale and problems with ...
3. Moneycashflow problems causes hr problems, no marketing etc.
Define your product
- Scalability is all about repeatability- Repeatability is all about products
- Services can be formatted as products - your process is your product
- Do reality checks - ask customer; test final artefacts; show your interest
- Start with business value- Customers are always buying results- Recurrence is key
It’s not about describing processes but about implementing them:
- Theory vs. practice: team communication is key
- Repeat, practice, teach, show ... repeat
The key is to make customers understand your product and process as well.
- Repeatability isn’t a rocket science- Rocket science and aviation have ready
made solution!
- Short(!) Checklists for key processes- onboarding,- analysis,- ongoing development,- deploy,- quality and UATs,- invoicing and payments.
- Set Single Responsible Person for each checklist / process
Delegating tasks and repeatability is about: setting clear goals / finding right people / asking for results.
We use Trust But Verify and No Suprises rules along with reporting and recurring project review meetings at Divante to check project statuses
1. At some point building company is about building company, no: coding, selling … Finding right people letting them do the job
2. Make your business fully repeatable and set checks to be sure how repeatable it is3. Make decission to happen always closest to the issue - avoid over-structuralization4. Don’t scale too fast; being “small” has great benefits for your business5. Embrace the bad news quickly and adopt6. Choose right, motivated people rather than trying to change one’s or motivate them
Summary
Divante UK286C Chase RoadLondon, N14 6HFUnited Kingdom(+44) 20 [email protected]
Divante Sweden
Divante HQ
Divante NLDivante UK
Divante HQ17 Dmowskiego Street50-203 WroclawPoland(+48) 733 355 [email protected]
Divante HollandRivium Quadrant141-181, 2909 LCCapelle aan den IJsselThe Netherlands(+31) 657 625 [email protected]
Divante SwedenErik Dahlbergsallén 15115 20 [email protected]
