Hi!

Today’s an exciting day, I’m launching my podcast: Growmance! Going forward, I will publish once a week every Friday, as per usual, but will also record the newsletter as a podcast. Basically, click play above, and you get the audio version — perfect as you’re easing into the weekend. The podcast will also be available on your preferred podcast app very soon too 😼

You’re probably asking yourself about the name; what does growmance mean? This newsletter has evolved from my early musings in politics and social issues to my deliberations around growth in startups and life, and that’s where I want to keep steering it. Romance? Well, life’s a romance 😘

As always, thank you for following my newsletter (and now also podcast!) — I’m truly grateful for it 👐

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by every problem we need to solve or task we have to do. Often we solve the problems that scream the loudest, but they might be a distraction from solving the problems that really matter.

This is particularly true in startups, where time is the most precious resource. Startups often have very limited money and incur large financial losses as they try to grow and develop their technology — and time and how they spend it is often the most valuable resource they can leverage to turn losses into profits.

So how can we know that we’re spending our time and energy on the work items that will yield the most results? The best way to leverage our time as well as possible, is by taking a data-based approach to decision making. Here’s an example:

Bill (fictional dude) 🤓 has created an app, which has around 100 paying users. That’s a great achievement, but he will have lots of problems to solve now, and Bill has to make a decision on how he’s going to spend his limited time. Here are some useful questions that he can ask himself when looking at the data:

How many months do users pay for the app?

How often do they log in and use the app?

How many new paying users does he get per week?

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Let’s imagine the data says that most users pay for only one month, they log in only 3-5 times per month, and Bill gets about 10 new premium users per week. Where should he spend his time? With this simple data on hand, it’s clear that he should spend time on understanding why users aren’t willing to use the app for more than one month. It’s impossible to grow a business when your customers aren’t willing to use your products or services for more than a month. Imagine a restaurant with no returning customers.

It’s easy to be caught up in vanity problems, such as making a super pretty website, posting lots on social media and making plush business cards — but that can easily lead us to waste our most precious resource: time (website and social media are important, but often get too much attention at the expense of other areas of the business).

Have a great weekend!

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