what to focus on when building a business
Amrita has done a lot in her career. Evan, too. It's kind of insightful to see how they think about their work.
A few thoughts on these top-level concerns, what people at the Veep level think about.
Budget. Budget can be as much a curse as a blessing. Budgets often get handed down. As in "we decided you need $150,000 this year" to do all the things you said you'd do. Zero-based budgeting flips the script and forces focus on the important things.
Top Team. I like Evan's take on this. Hire "people WAY smarter than me." To take it a step further, people who bring a lot of positive energy have always been stand-out hires for me.
A BIG Market. People fantasize about gigantic addressable markets. If you like feeling like a gladiator in the arena, go as big as you can. But if you want to sleep at night knowing that you can dominate a market of your choosing, narrow that focus. Even in big companies, there are smaller teams within teams whose job it is to focus on niches within big markets.
Low Cost to Acquire Customers (CAC). Like any number, this can be manipulated. What do you attribute to the cost of acquiring customers? Is it marketing spend? Sales and marketing spend? What about support calls that lead to a sale? Evan kind of sounds dismissive of it, but it's a number every company should set and monitor. Just don't change how you calculate it every other month.
Work less than 12 hours per day. Ze Germans would ask Amrita what she and her team are doing all day. Just like Evan suggests. If you're working that long, surely it's not on the right things. But sometimes there's a reason for hammering out a bunch of hours. Sometimes the project changes or an opportunity opens up and you need to strike. Ignore any long-day shaming and do what's right for right now.
One thing that's missing from this conversation is product. Before anything else, I'd want to know that the people we serve have a real problem AND that we can solve it for them.
Above everything else, a good product or service underpins a good business. Yeah some businesses sell shit products - they burn hot and fast and they don't last.
A good product helps generate its own budget. It attracts a top team. A good product solves a real problem for a specific market (and can dominate that market).
Budgeting, hiring, sales, marketing, and support all get easier with a good product. And working 12-hour days can be fun when you know you're doing good work.
There's a reason Product is the first of the 4 Ps of Marketing.
So, before doing a marketing budget for the new year, maybe it's time we look at the product we're selling and making sure it's good enough to attract customers, a strong team, and earn a big market.
Peter
(494 / 500)
PS: This email is coming from Substack. I made a change to a different platform. Nothing else changes. Thanks for being here.