Startup Operating Principles - by Sam Gerstenzang

After three and a half years, this is a compliment of sorts to Operating well – what I learned at Stripe. Sense of urgency: why can’t we do this today? Never do anything you could do today tomorrow, or anything next week you could do today. Amp it up! No snacking: only work on the big stuff. The hard part of focus is saying no to the things you want to do. Also see the LNO framework. Counterintuitively, to get to the big stuff, you need to be in the details. It’s important to be data driven, but we only can understand what is going on if you look line-by-line at data. Go look at 50 last calls/deals/cases. It is never a waste of time. Delete before you optimize Question every requirement Delete - remove everything you can Only then simplify and optimize Outside in: don’t get stuck in our internal view. For every change, pretend you are a customer (think specifically about who that customer is - 73 year old woman from Palm Springs calling about her husband’s unexpected passing - and what

After three and a half years, this is a compliment of sorts to Operating well – what I learned at Stripe. Sense of urgency: why can’t we do this today? Never do anything you could do today tomorrow, or anything next week you could do today. Amp it up! No snacking: only work on the big stuff. The hard part of focus is saying no to the things you want to do. Also see the LNO framework. Counterintuitively, to get to the big stuff, you need to be in the details. It’s important to be data driven, but we only can understand what is going on if you look line-by-line at data. Go look at 50 last calls/