Jugaad

Our ventures are built with Jugaad as the primary driving force: be as cheap as possible and build as fast as possible. We do not plan to conquer the world, we try to address a customer need as fast as possible and then iterate what we need from there. Our teams are loosely coupled partnerships of vendors and contractors coordinated on WhatsApp and Github.

In this regard we use three main tools to run our ventures:

1. Apple Notes App. Yeah, a lot can be done with this app. Nearly everything for a venture should be a single note within this app.
2. WhatsApp. Nearly all communications happens through WhatsApp Groups.
3. GitHub. The operations of the business runs through Github and as much of it is run under the abhiyerra user as possible.

We build businesses that have the following characteristics:

• Serve People. Build things that help better the world.
• Domain Expertise. Build ventures with others who can bring in their expertise.
• Low Cost. Use technology and automation to drive down cost across every part of the business.

2. TEAM.
3. GROWTH Planner. 7 Powers framework for Growth Hacking.
4. SUPPORT.
5. LEDGER. Deming's Statistical Process Control.

Technology

Growth

7Powers

We optimize our growth engine around the 7 Powers framework. The framework is basically the following:

• Scale economies: A business in which per unit cost declines as production volume increases.
• Network economies. The value of a service to each user increases as new users join the network.
• Counter-positioning. A newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent does not mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business.
• Switching costs. The value loss expected by a customer that would be incurred from switching to an alternative supplier for additional purchases.
• Branding. The durable attribution of higher value to an objectively identical offering that arises from historic info about the seller.
• Cornered resource. Preferential access at attractive terms to a coveted asset that can independently enhance value.
• Process power. Embedded company organisation and activity sets which enable lower costs and/or superior product.

We build experiments that help us optimize each of these powers leading to competitive moat.

Partners

Seek out ~5 partners who can help you grow your business. These partners should be in the same space as you, but not direct competitors. They should also be willing to help you grow your business.

Marketing

Promotion

• Social Media. Use social media to promote your business. This can be done through paid ads, organic posts, or influencer marketing.
• Email Marketing. Use email marketing to promote your business. This can be done through newsletters, promotional emails, or drip campaigns.
• Content Marketing. Use content marketing to promote your business. This can be done through blog posts, videos, or podcasts.
• SEO. Use SEO to promote your business. This can be done through optimizing your website, creating backlinks, or using keywords.
• Paid Advertising. Use paid advertising to promote your business. This can be done through Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads.

Sales

Email Prospecting

Closing the Deal

Challenger Sale

• Listen
• Ask Questions, Lead Them
• Empathy
• Say Little, This is Therapy
• Slow Down, When Speaking
• Put Things in Customer Benefit
• Be funny 🙂

Step 1: The Warmer

“We are seeing the following three things at other companies like yours. Is there something you’d like to add?” This is where you start with a hypothesis of the company. What other companies have you worked at that face similar situations? Make it three things specifically. Get more data back.

Step 2: The Reframe

You need to present something to the customer that reframes their perspective. Not an "I totally agree," but a "huh, that is interesting." It needs to shock. If you fail to create this "huh, how interesting" moment, you’ve failed the sale because they’ve already thought through how to solve it themselves. Break the news that their problems won’t be solved with the solution they’ve imagined. Get within their OODA cycle and throw them into chaos so they must reframe and reorient their decision-making process around you. Shock them. Create a "huh / that’s right" moment.

Step 3: Rational Drowning

They need to feel like they truly need this solution. Make them consider the opportunity. Do not mention yourself at all. Reframe it with solid data. Why is this important? Provide examples of why this is important.

Step 4: Emotional Impact

The customer must see themselves in the story you’re telling with the solution. Paint a picture of other companies like theirs who went down a similar path. Highlight behavior that the customer will immediately recognize as typical of their own company. Help them glimpse into the future. During a successful Emotional Impact step, your audience will feel personally connected to your presentation because you’re giving them a scenario that resembles their own situation. Relate to their pain. Create a story that helps them feel the pain. What is the unhappy ending here? Have them be in the picture, but the ending doesn’t look good.

Step 5: A New Way

Talk about solutions, not about yourself. Discuss what the solution can do, e.g., the capabilities of the new system. Convince them how much better they would be if they acted differently. They need to buy into a solution before they buy your solution. Tell an alternate story with a happy ending. Describe a solution that could be generic.

Step 6: Our Solution

Demonstrate how our solution is much better than anything else out there. Explain how we have experience solving that exact need. Show how we’ve created a solution that allows them to scale and grow. Explain why our solution is better.

Competitors

Identify your competitors and what they are doing to grow their business. This will help you understand what works and what doesn't. You can use this information to tailor your growth engine to be more effective.

Make a list of each of the features that your competitors have and how they are implemented then use that information to build your own growth engine.

Support

Our operations is focused on low cost and high automation. We minimize the tools people use and force everything to run within the following tools:

• Github. We run the entire operation through Github. Running the venture within a monorepo.
  • Issues. All tasks are tracked in Github issues.
  • Actions. All automation is run through Github actions.
  • Code. All code is stored in Github.
    • app. The backend code.
    • www. The frontend code.
    • infra. The terraform code.
    • Makefile. The makefile that runs the entire operation.
• WhatsApp. Communication for collaboration. WhatsApp because it is the most used.
• Third-Party Distribution. Launch using third party marketplaces.

Ledger

Metric	Goal	Formula
Revenue Growth	30% per year
Asset Growth	30% per year
Free Cash Flow Growth	100% per year	Free Cash Flow = Net Income + Depreciation and Amortization – Changes in Working Capital – Capital Expenditures
ROIC	30%	ROIC = (Net income – Dividends) / (Debt + Equity)
Debt-to-Free Cash Flow	400%
Debt-to-Asset	50%
Effective Tax Rate	12%
Negative Cash Conversion Cycle	-30 days	Cash Conversion Cycle = Days Inventory Outstanding + Days Sales Outstanding - Days Payable Outstanding

Working Capital

What is the working capital of the business per month. We need to know exactly how much to keep within the account.

Team

Every Project has Three Things: Revenue, Support, Ledger

Group	Description
Ledger	People and Finance.
Growth	Sales, Marketing and Partnerships.
Support	Customer Support and Technology.

The goal is to optimize these three parts continuously with Deming’s Statistical Process Control.

The best way to judge people is to have them do problems right off the bat and see how they work with your team. Unfortunately, I do think algorithmic problems have a place for companies like Google and Amazon which are triaging through thousands of candidates. However, startups doing this seems like a bad call. Most of the time as a startup you are trying to figure out not if someone can do a bureaucratic task like pulling an algorithm out of their ass, but do they know the context of the code they are building. Can they understand the library ecosystem and use existing tooling.

One effective process I’ve found in weeding out ineffective people is hire them fast and put them on simple problems in the codebase that shouldn’t take more than an hour to accomplish. If they solve it in that time or find additional problems. Wonderful, we can start working more together and I just continue assigning tasks. If they can’t get anything done within the first hour or two when they said they will. I will cut them.

To remove my bias on people and different backgrounds I do not have video calls. I only chat with them and write the issues they need in GitHub Issues. Sometimes I send a Loom video if there is something that can be explained better.

Seems like it is working thus far.

I’ve wondered why small teams work. What is it about them that drive results? I think the answer is that they empower people to make changes giving them ownership over the outcome. People have pride when they see their work actualized. They like to point and say I did that. It is a good feeling.

I'm looking to see how to setup Notion in such a way that it is easy to manage multiple teams as individual units. I don’t want them to really interact and as a secondary they should be provided value.

• Roles, Responsibilities, and Ownership
  • Job Information

All jobs are created with the following information:

Job Description

A clear and concise description of the role.

Responsibilities

• Define what this position has ultimate responsibility and decision authority over.
• Clearly outline the products, services, assets, activities, and subordinates assigned to the position.

Expectations

• Specify the results required of the position to achieve the firm's objectives.
• Expectations should be:
  • Clear, specific, and measurable.
  • Focused on desired outcomes rather than activities.
  • Open-ended and challenging to encourage experimentation and innovation.

Access

• Define what resources or systems the person is given access to and how they are expected to use them.
• Ensure each person is given the least amount of access needed to accomplish their job.

Training

• Provide the information needed to be most effective at their job.
• Include any specific principles or guidelines related to their role.

Routine

• If the job involves singular tasks, list them here.
• Link to recurring tasks that the role is responsible for accomplishing.

Manager

• Specify the manager responsible for overseeing this position.

Growth

• Sales collateral should include proposal, privacy, terms of service

Sales

Sales Commissions

Marketing

Hiring

Books

• Have a weekly training call
• Weekly routines also include finding and updating issues with current processes.
• Add a list of common books that need to be read by the team
• Institute training so everyone comes to the same level of performance.
• Stocks should be looked at in terms of power
• Figure out which kinds of tasks are commonly asked and create a pareto chart that can then be used to automate those processes

Books

• 7 Powers
• Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs
• Leaders Eat Last
• Cable Cowboy
• Outsiders
• High Output Management
• E-myth
• Working Backwards
• Thinking in Bets
• Good Profit
• Kochland
• Never Split the Difference
• 80/20 Principle
• The Goal
• Science, Steategy, and War
• Antifragile