Ideas are cheap, what really matters is execution!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.?

If you ask an entrepreneur if they want to succeed or if they want their company to grow, you are likely to get quizzical looks. Because the answer is always "Ofcourse!". Everyone always says the right things during a BOD meeting. However, what truly differentiates great companies from others is what happens outside of the board room. Execution of decisions and board directives is what matters.

That is one of the key reasons that we closely partner with our founders to build operational rigor and discipline. Compounding small improvements result into great outcomes.?

Here's a few ways we work with founders to help delivery A+ outcomes through robust execution:

1. Talent for scale: Building in 0-1 is different from 1-100. During the 0-1 phase, execution can be done by a small but motivated founding team. In fact small teams means 1-100 requires robust talent as the consequences of changing tracks or reversing decisions can be significant and the ability to get the execution right, ideally within the first try, is important.?

2. Movement without progress: Sometimes people feel they've done well after burning the midnight oil and pulling 60-80 hour weeks. But not all movement means progress, input without outcomes doesn't really matter much at an overall company level. It's easy to stay busy but unless you have your eyes on the prize at all times, easy to get distracted from the most impactful activities. e.g. one founder would spend hours personally resolving customer queries. While it was important and it made them feel in-touch with their consumers and brand, it left them tired and with very little time for much else.?

3. Marrying demand side signals with supply side intuition: Founders know the market well. We partner with founders who usually have a very deep expertise on supply/product. However, our ability to look at demand signals and collaborate with founders leveraging demand-side data helps delivery execution. E.g. you may have the purest and bestest product that ever existed for one particular type of condiment for cooking, but if your average consumer buys it only once every 2 years it's unlikely it'll be a huge market.?

4. Avoiding distractions: In early stages there are always multiple problems to fix, and founders can easily feel overwhelmed. However, it is important to be distinctive in a few areas rather than mediocre in many. We help estimate what is the most impactful lever and assist founders prioritize. E.g. when scaling looks hard it is easy to take comfort in launching across 10+ channels simultaneously. However, at early-stage (<INR 25-30CR ARR) it is important to prioritize a few channels and nail them first.?

5. Clear definition of success: Founders can get biased to look at heuristics or pick examples to indicate success. e.g. we realized a portco was founders were planning to double down on product, but we realized that current product pipeline is good enough to 5x the business

6. Communicating accountability: Our favorite analogy is in any sports team there is a clear role defined e.g. in football a goalkeeper is generally expected to be at the back of the pack even when all the play is happening near your opponents goalpost. Similarly in business everyone should have clear roles and expectations assigned to them so everyone doesn't run behind the one single fire at any given point of time.?

7. Outside-in perspective to define right benchmarks: Corollary to the above is that often progress is good but not enough. We are?able to?provide an outside-in neutral perspective based on objective benchmarks of progress. e.g. in one case customer churn had declined (almost halved vs the starting point but it was still significantly higher than the brands category benchmarks. We were then able to firstly stop churn from being deprioritized as an org priority and then work towards improving it further

8. Compounding of consistent efforts: We engage with our founders on a regular basis e.g. weekly and we are consistent and persistent with our focus on what will create the most impact. In our experience, micro-decisions compound and ultimately yield a strong outcome.?

9. Top-down strategy meeting and bottom-up execution: Once we align on objectives/strategic choices, day-to-day actions have to be consistent even at the junior levels. e.g. a service company decided that they wanted to become super?customer centric and rolled out NPS as the first step towards it. However, their frontline was never really trained to prompt the NPS or even was aware that such a thing mattered.

10. Eco-system support: We are fortunate to partner with an investor base that comes from strong operating backgrounds. We are able to engage them regularly to help founders with specific areas.

Let us know your thoughts on how else founders can excel at execution.?