The Heroic Pit in my stomach

Today I juggled with one of the classic problems of a startup... There is no such thing as a scalable hero.

Friday 6pm: RC2 release was supposed to come out. The plan was we'd all start running our product on Friday - let it upload and process our personal photos while we have a great long weekend and get some must needed rest. So friday at 2am, we are still waiting. They found a bug and were fixing it. Saturday 2am, we are still waiting. Team works all day on another issue. Sunday morning at 4:54 am Azhar writes:

What's hot? USC or UI?
Who is cooler? www, fatboy, dannyboy or speedo?
Who has more wow? Giggly or Viggly?
Has MessageQueue become the "God father" of the system?

And of course.....

Who is the sexiest engineer on the team?

To find out answers to all these connect to Ojos production servers TODAY @

RC2 launches.

I laugh at the note and on Sunday morning, I send out a congratulations email. We all start uploading. Sunday night I am at the office - it is hasn't uploaded all of many of my photos but it sure is running slow. I am concerned about this as we are doing our first pre-alpha test with users on Tuesday. I do some diagnostics to try and isolate the issue, try a few more sites, etc. I fire off an email with my results. I get no response from Azhar or Neelesh. Poor Dan responds to hold my horses. I am a little annoyed by this and send back a note asking Azhar / Neelesh to at least acknowledge the issue. Right after I hit send ... I get a pit in my stomach... You know the saying, "friends don't let friend hit send (when emotional) ... Wrong move ...


I wake up on Monday to a flame email from Azhar. He feels like they busted their butt for four months (which is true) and he really doesn't want to hear me bitch about how it is still too slow (which they haven't optimized yet). He says a few more things which I will leave out...;-) He and I are co-founders and this kind of direct chat - even if emotinally ladden is okay. I didn't think my speed concern was that emotionally charged but clearly I stepped on something. I call him and get vmail. He calls me back. I realize that after that kind of effort, he and the team just want to bask in the glory of the release. While they could hear issues that other team members where finding, from me, the CEO they wanted recognition. I apologize to Azhar for this. He is detached and doesn't really want to talk about it. He seems exhausted as does his team. There is still one more issue, the uploader doesn't work right yet. It is hanging and not all of the photos for the pre-alpha testers has been uploaded. What should we do. Realizing he is exhausted I tell him, forget it, it is labor day for god sakes. Don't ask them to work and give them tomorrow off too. I send off the "stand down" order to the team, one guy still doesn't listen and keeps working. Azhar backs up my email asking his team to relax. I still feel lousy about it. I really do appreciate what the team has done. This is the best team I have ever worked with but I want this to be a great great product, but obviously I need to figure out how to say both at the same time. The knot in my stomach stays all day.


So why the long story. Startups are built by heroics. People who do incredible things. But I know that heroics don't scale. I (through asking for more) and Azhar (through himself staying up to 4am with his team - day after day - teams follow their bosses), have both cultivated a culture of heroics. We reward these heroics, verbally and in toys (I got Dan and Neelesh a new dual core Pentium machine right after the RC2 release went out). We create great energy to hit a goal. We both personally feel more alive when working this way than any other time in our lives. Not just us, some of the members of the team also seem to live best in this mode. I guess for all of it is addictive. But heroics have their costs. Today I saw that in listening to Azhar's voice and I saw that in his flame email to me.

I know we need to change this, but I also know that speed and a few patents are the only real advantage a startup. In a startup you tend to have many heros but you know that as you grow you have to change out of this mode while still moving fast. Maybe there is something both Azhar and I can learn from our co-founder, Burak. He works very hard but rarely stays up beyond midnight as he knows it will impact his next day. He is like the tortose and we are like the hare... sometimes I'm sure he covers more ground in the long run.


I say I know it as I write this post at 1:40am PST...;-) Thanks team for RC2! You did a great job and I still want this product to be best it can be .... I just wish I knew how to say both of these things at the same time.

Comments

[Kunal]

I love learning about startups - especially from the CEO. By the way, are there screenshots, or any way we can be apart of the alpha/beta?

[Munjal Shah]

Kunal - email tara at "beta at ojos-inc.com" and she will get you on it. There are a few screenshots as well.

[Darren]

Enjoyed your post, working at a startup myself I can relate to alot of the points you make. I'm up for beta'ing if you need more people.