It was an intense but a healthy discussion I was having with my co-founders. We were debating about our strategy, our positioning, how we are different than our competitors, what story we should tell to VCs so they would fund us, how can we define a new category and be a leader of that category, how can we build a big independent business instead of entertaining early acquisition interests, etc.
All were important topics. But after a while, I realized they were just not timely. We were talking about the end state after 18 months, 3 years, and 5 years.
I was worried about this month and this quarter. All I wanted to do was – onboard first 10 customers for Avoma.
Somehow we agreed on key points and wrapped up the discussion. But the first 10 customers concept stuck in mind.
Since then, while I continue to think about longer term vision, strategies, etc., but in the end, I always bring the conversation back to getting the first 10 of whatever that key milestone we wanted to focus on.
Some of the examples are:
- The first 10 manual prospecting emails before we implement email automation
- The first 10 trials converting into paying customers
- The first 10 paying customers that we don’t know
- The first 10 customers who absolutely love us and can’t live without Avoma
- The first 10 customers came from one particular channel
- The first 10 customers that were referred by existing customers
- The first 10 $10K+ contracts
This mindset always helps me to get tactical and start acting on the next milestones immediately, without getting lost in over planning and delaying the execution.
Obviously, the downside of this mindset is that once you are bogged down in achieving the first 10 of “x”, there is a high chance that you are not thinking about the bigger picture. You need to find a good balance between the both.
As they say, entrepreneurs are a special breed who need to have a great macroscopic vision and at the same time they need to have a great microscopic vision.
Aditya Kothadiya 