Founders

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I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is a compilation of a whole week's takeaway. You can read more about the reason for it in the article Restart.

I cannot take time for any new work area; my current task keeps me busy? How can I find time and plan to do something new?

Developers may want to work on Javascript currently working C#; Tester may want to work on the Datasets feature instead of the Survey feature. Operation person may want to work for X client because she has been working for client Y for a long time.

I will pick a pair programming concept and try to solve this problem.

Two people work together on one task. Quick Intro here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ-x-T34z9w. Watch it to learn why you should be a navigator when you don't have time to work in the new area.

You are a Navigator, and you have to find 15 minutes in your day. Pick a teammate for the month who is already working on things you wish you could work on. Inform them that they are your pair for the month. Pick a time of 15 min; my preference would be the start of the day may be doing an early start. Join on Skype, and you will watch how your pair are working on their task? Your job is to help your pair increase efficiency and avoid mistakes. Keep a timer on your phone to stop it at dot 15 minutes. 

Since you will do this for the next 20 business days, you will get the big picture of the area of work, common pitfalls and shared knowledge. 

What will you(Navigator) gain?

1) No need to plan the task that you wish to learn

2) No accountability for getting the task done. 

3) No Pressure to complete the task

4) No big commitment on time

5) No chance of getting stuck

What will your pair(driver) gain?

1) An extra pair of eyes for your task

2) Additional 5 hours of help for a month. 

3) A temp replacement when you are on leave

4) You can share your thought process 

5) You will have to answer questions to learn

Do this for a month and see what the experience looks like? You can pick another teammate and pair for another 15 mins. You are leveraging the energy, effort and enthusiasm of your teammate. 

How did we know that we would get clients for Probench? How did the company start? Why are we working in the Indian time zone even when the clients are UK based? 

Let me begin with 2nd question first. The founder of 73bit Limited is Carlos. He incorporated 73bit in the year 2007. Previously, he created a project for BITC that became a survey tool and later enhanced it to become Probench. Once the product was almost ready, he thought of adding it under 73bit. Around 2012 he also had two more clients, namely Textile Exchange and PRI. Both of them are still our clients in 2022 after ten years. 

In 2012 he needed more help with managing work for the client because Probench kept on adding features that clients commissioned. Gautam joined 73bit as a consultant. Later in 2015, two more clients were onboarded, and Vikram joined the team. The client count now was five active clients.

Next year in 2016, Carlos wanted to move to a different role, and he didn't like the clients to suffer. He looked for new owners, and we were his first option. We grabbed the opportunity without knowing the future. We knew we had a profitable product, paying clients and international exposure. We started working on it by improving the process, adding team members, increasing the pricing, trying different sales techniques, introducing systems and creating a vision.

Over the years, we have tripled the client count and revenue of the company. We have grown our team from 3 members to 22 members now. That's a bit of history for you. 

Coming back to the first question, we didn't know we had a product-market fit. We bet that we have existing clients, which means other people may want it. We also learned that we had the potential to create a self-serving SaaS product. The advantage of that business model would be the license fee would cover all the fixed expenses, including salaries and leave us some profit. 

The projections for FY 22-23 have the following break up License Fee - 42%, Custom Dev - 30%, Operation - 15-20% and Consulting - 15%. For us to become a Product company, we should earn more than 70%-80% of our income in License fees, and it should come from 50 to 100 clients with a small number of team we already have.

This answers your last question because we aspire to be in the Product business rather than the service business. We want to work in our time. The client should depend on the product and not on our support. So that, when we are sleeping, the product is working for us and helping our clients—in turn, giving us more freedom with our time and no pressure to meet a deadline. We can create our timelines to build more value for our clients, which will make more money for us.

For example, do you talk to the support staff or the engineer when you book your movie ticket from the site book my show? The online portal helps you book a ticket and takes a convenience fee from you. Similarly, we would like clients to find Probench from the internet or social media, purchase a monthly subscription and start using it to conduct their Sustainability benchmark or Assessment process. Our role is to keep adding value to the Probench at our own time and pace.

How does the promotion process work?

We have a self-scoring system for each team member. It's a metric and outcome-based system where you control your growth. Each one will have different key areas based on the team you belong to. So for developers, it is billing hours, non-billing hours, learning, improvements, coaching and adding tests. Everything will add up to 100.

You will be scored out of 100 based on your experience or role. There will be two levels of achievement in getting your pay hike. You must gain it three months in a row and twice a year. This applies to people who have an appraisal cycle of six months or twelve months. The two levels of achievement out of 100 are 80 or 95.

The pay hike for 95 point achiever will be more than the person getting 80 points. At any given time, you cannot slip down 50 points. If you score 50 points 3 times in a row, we will have to get into a difficult conversation about your future here. 

If you don't have your point table of the self-scoring system, which has the key area and how many points you need to score. Ask your lead and get your points table. Also, ask your leader how much per cent pay hike you will get once you score 85 points or 95 points. You must know this to plan your career and map your growth. 

If you don't get it reach out to Gautam or Me so that we can get it for you.

If you have a colleague share this article with them.