Manual labour
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Avoiding spreadsheet-ification
To expedite things, we often think that the answer is to reduce our efforts into a mathematical formula. Getting sales, raising investment, hiring people — stick it in a spreadsheet.
And if a startup has an app that has to scale from 1m to 100m users to balance the books then maybe that is a case for spreadsheet-ification; construct a wide funnel or a large pipeline and churn through that conversion formula without delay or emotion.
However, many things that we do are too complex and unpredictable (and, actually, too interesting) to be reduced to a mathematical formula that will spit out the easy answer.
Below are three examples of manual approaches that founders could replace with spreadsheet-ification but really shouldn’t:
Getting really good at having coffee. That’s what John Graham did. Now he only takes on clients via referrals. This means he doesn’t have to take selfies or blast out over-excited LinkedIn posts about himself. He says getting good at having coffee is actually a really reliable channel.
Keep growing your network. That’s what Matt Boffey told me in 2012. I wanted to know, back then, what would come of and come from 9others. That was impossible, still sort of is. The answer is now as it was then: keep meeting good people.
Hector Alexander wrote here that important tasks are rarely urgent, so we spreadsheet-atise the urgent things that people are shouting for first. But, he says, “We can do many of the most urgent things tomorrow and find time for the important things today”.
Try it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Important: None of these posts are investment advice. If you are thinking about investing you should seek the advice of a suitably qualified independent advisor.
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