5 Maxims of Great Execution For Founders

This blog is part of open sourcing the Fynd Culture.

A little backstory to begin with. Before we evolved into Fynd, my co-founders Harsh, Sreeraman and I were building Shopsense. Shopsense was an enterprise retail technology company providing an in-store engagement SAAS product.

In early 2015, the market made us realise that Shopsense was never going to be an exponential company. Along with our very patient and supportive investors Kae Capital, we decided to leverage our existing engineering experience and retail connect to build Fynd — our Nearby Shopping App.

This pivot was a slow and painful process. Our engineering team was systematically poached by other Powai startups. Very close friends who were building Shopsense with us, left for grander opportunities. At one point of time we were down to a handful of engineers who had to manage the workload meant for a team of 20.

In hindsight this was a good thing, as it allowed us to bring in fresh energy to build Fynd and move quickly through the tough times.

Today we are a team that is building a kick-ass shopping app, the organisation is lean and trying to be as automated as possible.

What Did I Learn From This Experience?

Execution is the only thing that matters.

And how does any founder do this?

Show up everyday like clockwork, keep one’s head down, and get things done.

I have distilled my learnings into 5 Maxims of Great Execution.

These maxims are for great execution, not just plain execution. The difference between the two — great execution happens rapidly, and with quality output.

Let me elaborate each maxim.

Ruthless Prioritisation

The most important maxim of all — prioritise! Choose what your teams need to focus on, what you will spend your time and your money on.

This needs to be done with surgical precision — be ruthless.

There is something I call the opportunity mirage which almost every founder faces. These mirages appear as VC mixers, meeting with prominent angel investors, invites to entrepreneurial events, coffee with a Harvard MBA who wants to run business for you, frankly the list is endless. I cannot stress enough how important it is to guard your time. Every minute wasted on these mirages is a minute your product is delayed by.

Being Hands-On

This is a simple one, just ensure all founders are deeply involved with the things they are handling.

I look after the product and engineering is my primary focus. I will work with designers to polish product, make product roadmap, fill the bug list, find ways to crash the app and the servers, check, re-check and check again till all features and app performance are as expected.

Aggressive Follow-ups

This follows from my earlier point on how great execution happens rapidly. When your team becomes larger, you are not looking at everything very closely. You have people looking after large mandates for you. Multiple things are happening simultaneously and you need to be on top of things to ensure one slip-up doesn’t cascade into something else. Be paranoid that something is not going to happen on time.

Following up aggressively will ensure you can predict fails in advance and that you have sufficient time to fix it.

Fierce Output Ownership

As founders, our organisations and products are a reflection of ourselves. If you believe you are the owner of the collective output of your team then you always ensure that the output of each individual is above par. It’s like how our Indian parents won’t settle for anything less than 100% 🙂

Precise Attention to Details

This is the key differentiator between a good and a great product — the details. The smallest aspect must be deeply thought through, no stray pixels. Of course this can get very painful for everyone but there is absolutely no escaping this.

At Fynd, we have what is called the Beer Review. During the review the team presenting gets 3 strikes, any more and they buy the Friday beer for the whole office. Don’t believe me?! Just ask Rajnikant or The Closet team.

As founders, we need to constantly learn only then will be able to lead. Unfortunately they is no one to teach us and we have to teach ourselves.

I have learnt immensely from a few books that I would recommend to every founder:

High Output Management, Andrew Grove: If there is only one book you can read then this is it. The first chapter will sound weird but bear with it.

Good To Great, Jim Collins: A classic on the recipe of 10x organisations.

Exponential Organisations, Salim Ismail: A must read for every founder facing scaling challenges or wondering whether to pivot. This book helps you build the mental model for thinking of the new organisation.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni: This book is optional and should be read when you start to see output degrading.
Study hard, change the world!

I’m adding a few more posters from our office that I used to get the team aligned to the Maxims of Great Execution.