Execution Trumps Strategy

Spinning your wheels? Not moving as fast as you like? Thus eager to pivot to “the next big thing”? Sounds tempting but don’t be too quick to do so - great execution compounds!

In the murky waters of (pre-) seed startup building, things hardly ever move as fast as you’d like. Which can be extremely frustrating.

With it, who isn’t inclined to start thinking about “the next big idea” or to “change the strategy”? A big narrative that explains where you are, why you’re struggling, and what you need to do differently could fix it all, right?

Because the light at the end of the tunnel won’t come from looking inward and challenging ones execution. That likely won’t move the needle too much - it’s the 80 / 20 rule after all …

I actually beg to differ - great, consistent execution compounds and CAN lead to 10x+ improvements!

The image below is meant to make a case for consistency vs intensity.

One can make the same argument for focusing on small execution related improvements vs changing your course and sprinting in a new direction every time things aren’t moving as fast as you had hoped.

Let me give you a simple example to illustrate this point (one we get a bunch as VCs) - asking your cap table for intros to their portfolio companies as potential customers:

Scenario 1:?You include a short blurb describing your company in the emails to your cap table or include this “call to action” in your monthly investor update.

Scenario 2:?You send your investors a forwardable email for each of their portfolio companies that could be a fit with an ask for an intro and a well articulated value you could create for that company (see my post on?“selling value”?for this). Takes some work to pull together, I know.

Assuming you have 10 investors on the cap table with 50 portfolio companies each, it could look as following :

With an additional 2-3h invested to improve your outreach, you get 9x the customer meetings in this hypothetical scenario.

Small changes, big improvements in an area that moves the needle significantly for your startup - sales.Now imagine if you did this across all the small activities that are part of your GTM (and any other part of your business).

Such small improvements compound and lead to huge improvements over time with consistency and patience - which is oftentimes much more impactful vs one-off strategy changes followed by a sprint in a new direction.

As simple as this sounds, great execution with consistency is hard. Oftentimes, what stands in the way includes:

1. Understanding what great execution actually looks like / challenging yourself to think hard about how you could do the small things that move the needle over time much better, and
2. Being consistent, day in and day out!

This post isn’t meant to build a case against (smaller or larger) pivots in general. I’m mainly trying to highlight that it isn’t always the best answer.

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