Startup, Scaleup, Screwup.

12Kings of the North

Navigate your business in the right direction using a North Star Metric, with the help of Support Metrics and Check Metrics.

 

I was not happy.

I came back from a two-week vacation in Japan to find that the team had made almost no progress in the areas that I had prioritized before I left. Instead, they had worked on some other themes of which I didn’t see the relevance. I tried to blame myself as much as I did the others. I had not conveyed my objectives well and I didn’t understand their explanations. I foresaw another note urging for “better communication” in our next Agile Retrospective.

On top of that, there was no sign of our customers enthusiastically using our product. There was no gamification. No intrinsic motivation. No fun. Fortunately, the money from the Equity Crowdfunding campaign had finally arrived. I had remotely finalized the legal process from my hotel in Tokyo and our cash reserves had been replenished. Thank God! Because of this financial support, we felt a vote of confidence from the crowd that we could solve this problem, but also a strong responsibility that we should.

And so, we decided to do another patch of our business model. It was not a pivot, because nothing drastic in the business would change. We didn’t replace any of the pieces of our Business Quilt. But we also didn’t just want to persevere as if nothing was wrong. Our ...