(This post is a continuation of my prior posts on the transition from Riya 1.0 to what comes next. The previous episodes are:
10 , 9 , 8 , 7 , 6 , 5 , 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 .
Episode 11 – Oct 1 to Oct 7 – Hot swappable leadership
On Oct 1 – Azhar, Dan, and Tanvir all fly out to our India office for the final push. This is tradition at Riya as we approach a release. Development is always faster when everyone is in one room. As Dan says, “You can do a code merge of two branches in hours when you are all in one room vs. days if you are not.”
As they arrive though our India team is already at 120%. The daily conference calls with research expand to twice a day 10am PST and 10pm PST. Folks are tired but still are still cranking. The great news is that some of our India team have really come into their own.
Azhar writes, “RK, Pallavi, Amod have really joined the ranks of Sandeep and Nikhil in just becoming superstars. They have really taken ownership for their pieces of the system and have just got everything working.” Dan notes, “this trip the India team has really impressed me.” Azhar notes that this time he is always the first to leave the office … at 2am India time.” Emails at Riya never stop – weekends, days, they are flying back and forth as someone is working in either office.
The real test of a team's drive and autonomy happens when its leader is missing. Unfortunately this happens. Azhar has a family emergency in Pakistan and has to leave. He is out for a week. The timing couldn’t have been worse. He calls me from the airport in Bombay. Of course I say go ahead and take the time you need. Inside I’m worried for him and us…
But there was no need to worry – everyone steps up. Tanvir and Dan step up. Tanvir runs the calls in Azhar’s absence. Burak steps up and manages the coordinate between both teams. Burak has what I call a superman moment. There are times when even great people have a moment (or week) of incredible productivity.
I want to take a moment and talk more about Burak. Over the last year I can’t tell you just how impressed I am with Burak. He is just brilliant. It doesn’t stop here: he can multi-task like no other, he can see users issues and deep technology issues in a single bound, he is a Ph.D. with a sense of urgency (usually an oxymoron), he works tirelessly, and cares deeply about Riya. He is quiet and steady and sometimes you forget just how astonishing him and his team are. Burak’s team are the core differentiator of this company. Because of them we are a company with deep technology expertise.
With Azhar gone – Burak manages the coordination between both teams:
On Oct 2 at 2:21 am PST he writes:
Thanks for all your efforts so far in the last few weeks & weekends. We have seen very obvious visible improvements in the last few months, and we should continue to do that until we ship. We are getting very close to shipping, and there are a few more iterations in the next few weeks/weekends.This weekend is even more critical, because this is the first time, where we are putting everything together in the Engineering platform, the research functionality as it is, the new UI, text search, all the hooks plugged in etc. We will need to be in perfect coordination with engineering this weekend. Please fix any issues that relate to your components asap when they come along. We need to iterate extremely fast this weekend, i.e. we do not have luxury to spend a day in looking at the issues.
Engineering (RK, Dan, Pallavi et al.):
Here is the list of people that you will need to contact for individual issues. Please send an email to ojos_research for all the issues, and the first available person will pick it up.
Global Search: Diem, Xiaofan, Baris
Sliders: Diem, Xiaofan, Baris
Drill Downs: Diem
Feature Extraction Crashes etc: Diem, Xiaofan (all), Drago, Ashwin, Balu (Metadata features) Navneet, Danny (local features)
Local Search: Diem, Navneet, Danny
Domain Mapper: Drago, Ashwin, Balu.
Test Quality: Burak, Baris -- Whenever some functionality is up, please send a note and we will review the results as quickly as possible. Send the note to the resarch.If it is a crash case, please send any debug information/data as well.
Sometimes Burak is so impressive. I predict that one day Burak is going to become one of the legendary CTOs of Silicon Valley.
I step in and send a note covering all of the items we need to. As I write the list I’m thinking holy shit how are we going to get all of this done.
My todo list shows:
1) File trademark for new product name - Munjal
2) Revise and update patents prior to launch – Burak
3) License celebrity photos for new home page – Mark
4) Run usability test and revise new UI – Munjal and Dan
5) Finish downloading all 100 merchants feeds – Tanvir
6) Schedule B-Roll shoot for press tour – Munjal & Beth
7) Hire a Merchandiser for editorial on home page – Beth
8) Get SEM marketing hire in place – Beth
9) Run 3 more efficacy tests with 50 participants – Karl
10) Deliver working system on Stage – Azhar & team
11) Deliver working system on production environment – Azhar & Team
12) Integrate affiliate tracking codes and usage tracking software – Eng
13) Prepare price comparison module – Eng
14) Deliver Rev2 of Point of interest search – Burak and Team
15) Deliver new segmentation module – Burak and team
16) Deliver Navneet’s new search engine and multi-view support - Burak
17) …. The list goes on
After I send out the list, I sit back and laugh. This list of things to get done is just absurd…;-). Of course this can’t get done, but then again it is just absurd that YouTube would in 18month become the fastest growing website in Internet history. Startups are all about achieving what initially seems absurd. But you gotta laugh, otherwise you’ll drive yourself crazy.
This week was a test in “Hot Swappable Leadership.” Jack Welch talks about his bench strength at GE, but it is the same idea: how deep is your reservoir of leadership ... and how does that help to build a team backs each other up ... and hence is fault tolerant. I am very proud that we’ve been able to build this at Riya.
As the week comes to a close, I fly to New York to present at a Shop.org panel. Vijay and Deven join me as I want to spend time with them given how little I saw them during the past week. On Sunday, I steal away a few hours to take Deven to the central park zoo and FAO Schwarz where he runs on the floor piano for almost 1 hour. Vijay takes a few hours to herself shopping in New York. The weather is still warm and sunny in NYC…
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