Business update 005: our principles
Hey everyone,
Last week, I shared Crowd Card’s mission statement. This week, I’m sharing several operating principles that I’ve drafted for Crowd Card. Establishing a Mission Statement and operating principles are two primary steps toward transitioning Crowd Card from a fun project into a start-up company. Although I’m currently the lone employee at Crowd Card, I thought it would be a useful exercise to think through operating principles from a mindset of: “if I were hiring today, what kind of employee would I want to join the team?”
This is what I came up with:
1. Build world class products
At Crowd Card, we aim to build world class products. We believe that the best way to do this is to give competent people the resources they need to get stuff done, and get out of their way.
2. Obsessed with customer satisfaction
We’re building Crowd Card for - you guessed correctly - the Crowd. High quality user experiences need to be at the core of everything we build. All products should integrate high velocity user feedback loops that allow us to assess and adapt rapidly.
3. Highly Agile
The world changes. At Crowd Card, we’re vigilant of, and highly adaptable to, these changes. We also strive to be the innovators driving these changes.
4. Unapologetically decisive
We embrace high velocity decision-making. Our decisions are always well-intentioned and as informed as possible. We will not let small internal disagreements hinder our ability to innovate and build. Along the way, we’ll make mistakes, but we will not stagnate from indecision.
5. Driven by data, with a skeptical view of proxies
We are a data-centric company. Everything we build is driven by our principles and supported by data. That said, we must remain skeptical of the metrics we use (and the tools we use to measure them) and always seek the ground truth.
6. Callus quickly
From the bottom to the top, we will hold each other accountable. If you mess something up, you’ll hear about it. To thrive here, you’ll need thick skin.
Development Updates
Here are a few quick updates on development:
Admin portal: I made very solid progress on the admin portal last weekend and am continuing to move toward launching the MVP. My initial goal was to launch the MVP by the end of January, but I am slightly behind. My hope was to be able to test the portal in a sandbox environment on UFC’s Feb 1st card, but I am pushing this test back one week and will test during UFC 312. Very excited about this.
iOS: As the MVP for the admin portal is wrapping up, I have started to put together a more formal development plan/timeline for the iOS app. I should be able to provide more information on this next week.
Main website: I am adding an About page to the main site this weekend that states our mission and lists the operating principles above. I may also include a small blurb about myself.
Media updates: The blogs continue to roll out, but I need to think through whether I want to start rolling out vlogs and, if I do, how I want to publish them. More to think about on this…media strategy has never been a strength of mine.
Coming up
I’m stoked for tomorrow’s UFC card and especially for the sandbox test of the admin portal at next week’s UFC 312. I will be sure to share screenshots and recordings of the test after the card.
Okay back to work - thanks for reading.
Written by Daniel Kuhman, Founder
