I’m sure most of you have read my article “Time to end the frat house culture! We need more women in our midst.” I want to see more women in leadership roles and the ranks of techies, scientists, and entrepreneurs. This not only benefits society, but is also great for business (see my previous article for the data).
This article was inspired by several months of conversations with successful female professionals about the subject. I also had the pleasure attending a great event organized by MITX and Girls in Tech called “Lessons Learned: Women’s Careers in Review”. Here are 7 “commandments” that summarize everything I’ve learned so far:
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EditMe is a two person startup. We consider ourselves a startup, because we’re still searching for the product/market fit that can result in scalable growth. But, we’re a bit different from your typical startup in that EditMe has bootstrapped every stage of growth by providing real value to customers who have validated (or not validated) the product through real dollars. In a world where most entrepreneurs spend a majority of the time refining their deck, it seems strange to ignore outside investors. Impossible even. Here’s how we do it.
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Last week a founder of a software development company asked what to look for in a COO on answers.onstartups.com. Since this is a fairly common question to me, I decided to expand upon the answer I posted and further describe what attributes a great business operations leader/professional should possess.
Bit of background: I have been in operations for almost my entire career and have had some incredible mentors along the way. I spent 2+ fun years as the heading operations for an awesome software development company that we grew to 120+ employees by the time I had to move. It was an honor serving some of the smartest software development professionals in the market.
So here are the points one should consider when looking to add a Chief Right Hand Person to your team…
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In the late 90’s, the Six Sigma quality improvement process swept through the corporate world, led by early and vocal adapters such as Motorola and GE. For those who are not familiar with Six Sigma, it is a process for making significant quality improvements through a rigorous five-step data- and statistical-based approach (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control). The siblings of Six Sigma, such as Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Lean Six Sigma, expand its applicability to new product design and manufacturing flow. You can immerse your products from cradle to grave in the Six Sigma process to achieve total quality control nirvana.
While this may be great if you have the resources of a GE, and are involved with markets and products that are more mature and slow to change, I’m here to tell you that Six Sigma is anathema to the nature of the startup.
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Apolinaras is a business operations leader with 12-year track record of helping companies manage growth, build diverse teams, harness technology, and get a lot more profitable.