Drive: The Truth About What Motivates Us
A great 10 minute short adapted from a talk by Dan Pink. It’ll make you think.
Focus on building 10x teams, not on hiring 10x developers
Avichal Garg CEO of Spool
Software development, however, is more like rowing. It’s a team sport that requires skill and synchronization. This applies at all scales. On a three-person boat, one person out of sync will stall your boat. As you get bigger, no single developer can impact your team’s performance, so again synchronization is key.
Making your team as efficient as possible is what determines long-term success.
It’s true, just having one person off and you’ll be going in circles.
Via Avichal’s Blog
Starting a company is like starting a fire—harder than it sounds, and you have to do things in the right order.
Ev Williams
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. - Andrew Carnegie
As the curtain draws to a close on another Tour de France I’m reminded once again how important team work is. For those unfamiliar with the sport of cycling it’s easy to look at the winner and believe it’s the result of individual effort. However, this could not be further from the truth. To win the toughest race in the world requires the work of every man on the squad. Whether it’s to pull their leader up a mountain or to hammer the pace in order to pull back a break away; each man must depend on the others in the squad.
For an exhaustive 3 weeks of pain, suffering, highs and lows they have to stick together with the goal that one of them ascend the podium in Paris and slip on the coveted yellow jersey.
Working at a tech startup reveals many of the same characteristics. It’s about the talent that you surround yourself with unified towards a common goal. An understanding that even with great talent you can still fail. It requires trust, sacrifices and ultimately a belief you can change the world. You have to see yourself, nay will yourself to the top of the mountain where others fear to go.
In real life I don’t need to be Cadel Evans. I do however want to work on a team that shows the same level of dedication and commitment that BMC did over the last 3 weeks. At the end of the day a win for Cadel was a win for the team.
I want to win! Who’s with me?
Breaking Bad: The Finest Hour on Television That Almost Wasn’t
Newsweek just ran an article on my favorite show Breaking Bad. In it Vince Gilligan recounts the effort to getting the landmark show made.
“I’m still to this day astounded and amazed that it came to exist,” says Gilligan, a lumbering native of Farmville, Va., who has something of the Southern raconteur about him, with a boyish face and bourbon drawl that mask a wicked sense of story and character. “It’s kind of like the old saw that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly, aerodynamically speaking. Clearly they do, but on paper it doesn’t look like they should. It’s the same with Breaking Bad.”
Sounds just like a startup.
Cool Instagram API powered screen saver Screenstagram from Barbarian Group.
Perfect description of what being with the right team feels like.
“You’re sitting with some guys, and you’re playing and you go, “ooh, yeah!” That feeling is worth more than anything. There’s a certain moment when you realize that you’ve actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you. You’re elevated because you’re with a bunch of guys that want to do that same thing as you. And when it works, baby, you’ve got wings”
Keith Richards - Life
Thorough preparation makes its own luck. - General George Patton
