4. Build a SWAT team
(Part 4 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
Any entrepreneur, CEO or CTO should always have a development SWAT team on hand. This team should be outside of the core development team and outside of the company's critical path. This team can be made up of employees, a virtual group of employees (borrowed from their core team/job) or an outside development shop. It doesn't matter as long as they are super "scrappy" (see Scrappy versus Steady), have great vision, move extremely fast and require little direction or management.
I have had to call on my SWAT teams many times in the past. Sometimes in emergency situations, and other times to take advantage of market opportunities that quickly arise. Sometimes I have had to trash what they produced, other times it became a major turning point in a company's growth.
At L90 (Startup 3.0), we were sued by DoubleClick on the eve of our IPO for alleged patent-infrindgement. They tried to sue us in Virginia. We were scheduled to launch a new data center (of over 300+ servers) in Virginia the following week. With hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value at stake, I had to call on my SWAT team to do two things. First, they needed to reroute millions of dollars in computing equipment from Virginia to Texas and setup a new datacenter in less than 2 weeks. And second, they needed to architect and deploy an alternative to our core ad-serving software (which was delivering billions of ads for the Internet's top web sites at the time), because DoubleClick was trying to get an injunction to shut us down. The SWAT team was able to pull-off both of these seemlingly-impossible objectives within weeks and it gave us a lot of leverage in settling the bogus lawsuit in our favor.
At StrongMail (Startup 5.0), in the beginning, our biggest selling challenge was that it was difficult for us to visually demonstrate the value of our infrastructure solution. We had developed the world's best engine, but it didn't have a steering wheel (our strategy was to rely on other companies' steering wheels). Our internal development team was busy focused on developing our core product, but I needed to develop an application with an attractive, easy to use web user interface. I called on one of my outside SWAT teams and within months they were able to create an application on top of the StrongMail infrastructure that made it easy to demonstrate the value of the core infrastructure and it made the selling process magnitudes easier. It turned out to be a catapult for the company, and sales have been booming since then. The application is now being used by some of the world's most successful companies. After the initial product was developed, it was folded back into our internal engineering team and became part of our core product offering.
Without having a SWAT team on hand, it could have taken 10X as long to build a team, product specs, an architecture and a roadmap. The SWAT team helped us kick-start the project and get it to market in less time that it would have taken us to interview and hire a small team.
A solid SWAT team is invaluable, and to me, it is essential.
Next... Outsourcing (Part 5 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
Any entrepreneur, CEO or CTO should always have a development SWAT team on hand. This team should be outside of the core development team and outside of the company's critical path. This team can be made up of employees, a virtual group of employees (borrowed from their core team/job) or an outside development shop. It doesn't matter as long as they are super "scrappy" (see Scrappy versus Steady), have great vision, move extremely fast and require little direction or management.
I have had to call on my SWAT teams many times in the past. Sometimes in emergency situations, and other times to take advantage of market opportunities that quickly arise. Sometimes I have had to trash what they produced, other times it became a major turning point in a company's growth.
At L90 (Startup 3.0), we were sued by DoubleClick on the eve of our IPO for alleged patent-infrindgement. They tried to sue us in Virginia. We were scheduled to launch a new data center (of over 300+ servers) in Virginia the following week. With hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value at stake, I had to call on my SWAT team to do two things. First, they needed to reroute millions of dollars in computing equipment from Virginia to Texas and setup a new datacenter in less than 2 weeks. And second, they needed to architect and deploy an alternative to our core ad-serving software (which was delivering billions of ads for the Internet's top web sites at the time), because DoubleClick was trying to get an injunction to shut us down. The SWAT team was able to pull-off both of these seemlingly-impossible objectives within weeks and it gave us a lot of leverage in settling the bogus lawsuit in our favor.
At StrongMail (Startup 5.0), in the beginning, our biggest selling challenge was that it was difficult for us to visually demonstrate the value of our infrastructure solution. We had developed the world's best engine, but it didn't have a steering wheel (our strategy was to rely on other companies' steering wheels). Our internal development team was busy focused on developing our core product, but I needed to develop an application with an attractive, easy to use web user interface. I called on one of my outside SWAT teams and within months they were able to create an application on top of the StrongMail infrastructure that made it easy to demonstrate the value of the core infrastructure and it made the selling process magnitudes easier. It turned out to be a catapult for the company, and sales have been booming since then. The application is now being used by some of the world's most successful companies. After the initial product was developed, it was folded back into our internal engineering team and became part of our core product offering.
Without having a SWAT team on hand, it could have taken 10X as long to build a team, product specs, an architecture and a roadmap. The SWAT team helped us kick-start the project and get it to market in less time that it would have taken us to interview and hire a small team.
A solid SWAT team is invaluable, and to me, it is essential.
Next... Outsourcing (Part 5 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
Labels: CEO, CTO, L90, product development, StrongMail, team building
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It makes sense, but how to develop or build such a SWAT team?
Posted by
Proven |
6:02 PM
It's not enough to say you need one. What are the qualities this team should have?
Posted by
JWT |
2:12 AM
Frank mentioned scrappiness and I think he does a great job of fleshing out what he means by scrappy. That's one quality of a SWAT team. There are three other characteristics I think are worth mentioning:
Institutional Knowledge
My best SWAT teams have been (a) together through multiple ventures/projects, and/or (b) together in the current venture since its inception. This gives them the benefit integrating big-picture thinking, even when while intensely focusing on the rapid development of a new feature or product. Because of the speed at which they work, a SWAT team with won't necessarily produce something that fits like a 'puzzle piece' into an existing product, but if they have solid institutional knowledge they're very unlikely to produce something that doesn't play nice with the existing product.
Sense of Ownership
If you have to command or bribe your SWAT team into staying to complete a job then you don't have a SWAT team on your hands. Great SWAT teams are populated by individuals who 'own' their work, and who can will themselves to work without sleep or food or entertainment in order to hit a deadline, if necessary. They don't gripe about it or expect extra pay or benefits – because they own their work, their reward is achieving the impossible on time.
Professional Detachment
In my opinion, the most critical feature of a SWAT team is probably professional detachment: the ability to change directions mid-project without being upset about the change. Line developers don't always understand the business exigencies driving their projects. Without the ability to detach, a change in direction driven by external forces (e.g. new direction from executive management or a client) can upset them and slow them down just when you need them to be pushing ahead. Detachment is probably the hardest thing to learn for a developer; it’s an absolute requirement for a SWAT team member.
Posted by
Frederick |
11:54 PM