A fintech start up is a molten mix of a bunch of subject matter experts (SMEs) and techies. Where product, unlike in a traditional business means something that the customer experiences and NOT necessarily something that is physical like in the case of FMCG or a consumer durable or even a traditional banking product like a credit card or debit card.
Since joining a start up, I have been bombarded with tech startup terminologies like scrums, sprints, hackathons, war-rooms, bug bash, PODs, use case, hypothesis, user stories,MVP, mock ups, wire frames, CTA – call to action, product market fit, runway, moat, pivoting a business model, stealth mode, edge cases, what’s the hook? , bootstrapping et al. Tech productivity/ collaboration platforms like Jira, Figma, Confluence, Trello and Slack are the norm. Not to be left behind, being a FinTech, I too have started to get back through conversations garnished with a liberal dose of financial terminologies like OSV, OVD, cKYC, KRA KYC, AMB, AQB etc to name a few.
As I got introduced to team members, people introduced themselves as 0-1 or 1- 10 specialists. Anyone with more than 5-6 years of industry experience introduced himself as a long timer, interns from engineering institutes are my sons/ daughters age. So with this yard stick, I with my 3 decades of industry experience is being quickly termed a seasoned veteran. Candidates for open positions are recruited either through referrals are through postings on portals like LinkedIn or Glass Door. Candidates are chosen basis their problem solving skills, passion and willingness to work hard to deliver on the company’s mission. Candidates crawl websites like Glass Door for comments by current and ex-employees about the work culture and feedback on how the company is faring on cash burn or funding etc.
Startups look at motivating team members through quirky things like board games, foosball tables, even showers in the changing rooms for over nighters at the work place, phone booths for concalls , collaboration zones for teams, work from home flexibility or even introducing “Hangover Holidays”, as they invariably face the problem of job hoping or attrition. Those startups which hire a motivated team and inspires them to believe in something bigger than their job to work towards, hope to solve this attrition problem. As a result, startups don’t value stalwarts but value team players. Startups also hire by way of takeover of other startups – this is called “Acquihire” wherein a startup is acquired solely to onboard the talent and not so much for the business they are into.
During lunch conversations, I realised team mates stay at chummeries or shared accos and use smart apps like Splitwise to keep tab on spends and also settle money owed amongst room mates. Lunch room topics revolve around goof ups/ hacks of the ever “jugadu” Indian customers who always find ways to ace some of the e-commerce business models for e.g. how millennial’s manage to move apartments without having to pay for moving the furniture – they simply “sell “ their current furniture on OLX or Quickrr to another “customer” who “happens to be staying at their own new address” . This helps as the platform pays for the transportation from place A to place B and of course the “customer” is none other than his öwn spouse. Or take the example of NestAway, a second home renting website. House Owners typically list their 2nd homes on NestAway so that their property earns assured rentals and at the same time is in safe hands. NestAway in turn maintains the property and markets it as PG “acco” to individual bachelors who rent bedrooms with a common living room. This way NestAway is able to earn more than would it normally would had it given out the entire property to a single family. NestAway, in its initial days, had launched a promo offer to encourage prospective customers to opt for a trial stay for 3-4 days before finalising the place for a long term rental. This promo offer was seen as an opportunity by a hospital, which latched onto this and started promoting patients from outstation to opt for the promo free trial offer of nearby NestAway properties to park the family members while the patient got treatment at their hospital.
During one of lunch time conversations, I mentioned about all time classic war movie from the 1980s “The Guns of Navarone” starring Gregory Peck and drew an analogy to “The Eagle has landed” phrase from the movie “Where Eagles Dare”, all around, I got a blank look. When I explained the context, pat came a question to check if this was something similar to a war film like Lord of the Rings!!
The dressing at work is casual to easy with jeans and T-shirts being the norm for the business team while for the Dev team it means wearing three fourths to work. While visiting one of our partner banks for a formal platform interaction, the security at the bank, refused to allow one of our Dev team mates and we ultimately had to sneak him past the security.
Established companies envy startups for their agility. For startups, the golden rules for success have been encapsulated in the book “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries which is their bible. To maintain agility, startups prefer to keep open channels of communication through AMA (Ask me Anything) or Open House sessions, actively opening Ideas channel on collaboration platforms like Slack. This allows the leadership team to keep their ear to the ground and scout for ideas which can lead to breakthroughs without having to wait for the idea to get diluted while it finds it way through a hierarchy.
Founders who inspire, are those who usually are serial entrepreneurs. These guys value entrepreneurial aspirations amongst their team members to start on their own. They encourage members to collaborate closely across teams and to win over colleagues through respect for domain expertise, leadership and trust which builds personal equity within the startups own eco-system. They challenge team mates to take the acid test for leadership by making them assess how many colleagues will walk out with you – this encourages leaders to build their own brand to a level wherein they are able to pull team members with them as and when they intend to start their own break away ventures.
So here’s Cheers to start-ups which are leading the way in disrupting the status-co to solve customer problems, just so that the customer wins !
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