AndersSchmidtHansen
commented
10 years ago The title of this piece does not completely reflect what I want to get at. My point is that if the momentum is going down and if momentum can be increased by wins then either lowering the requirement for a "win" or shifting to a different type of win altogether could reignite the momentum.
For example:
In the beginning, a small win would be to get 10 active users a week, which has worked really well for you and your team. Your startup gains momentum, your team is happy and so forth. Since you want to grow, you need to set the bar a little higher every time. A win is now 15 active users instead of 10 active and along the road a win eventually becomes 200 active users a week. At this point you and your team simply can't win this week and not next week either. You begin to lose momentum and have to turn it around because growth is key. What do you do here?
Given the above, you could have a few options:
- Reduce the requirement for a current win, e.g. a win is now 150 active users a week instead of 200.
- Shift to a different, much easier win for a while, e.g. a win is now 5 user feedback statements. Or shift a win to be feature launches. But don't think up bogus features and launch random stuff just to get momentum. Talk to your users to reveal stuff to focus on.
"If you do lose momentum, most founders try to get it back in the wrong way. They give these long speeches about vision for the company and try to rally the troops with speeches. But employees in a company where momentum has sagged, don’t want to hear that. You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you’re not winning, you just have to get momentum back in small wins. A board member of mine used to say that sales fix everything in a startup. And that is really true. So you figure out where you can get these small wins and you get that done. And then you’ll be amazed at how all the other problems in a startup disappear." - Sam Altman