What happens in a founder’s office?
What would be the most precious commodity for a growth oriented startup. Is it funds in the banks, dedicated team, access to the best tech, or an inspiring office space?
I would argue that the most precious thing would be – Founder’s time.
How and where the founder(s) allocate their time, based on the size and funding-stage of the venture, differentiates outperforming startups from the lesser successful ones. This becomes even more profound in the case of single founder startups.
Recently, there has been a significant amount of discussion and interest on how to unlock founders’ bandwidth from low priority low-impact tasks to high-priority high-impact ones. This has resulted in creation of a new set of roles, which we commonly referred to as – ‘Founders’ office’ or ‘Strategic Planning and Coordination’.
There can be more than one job description for a founders’ office role, due to the ambiguity and dynamism inherent in the working of any startup. This inevitable ambiguity, conflicting priorites, and everyday fire-fighting is led by the founders themselves. It sounds convincing if there is someone to whom the founder can offload these unavoidable tasks to. Hence, the role of the founders’ office is gaining traction.
There can be three major tasks attributable to the founders’ office role. One of them would be to become the champion of the Eisenhower Matrix (fig below) or to put it in simple words – enabling super-priortization of the founder’s time.
This involves optimizing the calendar for the founder and aligning leadership teams’ bandwidth around it. Clearly, this goes beyond scheduling and coordinating meetings, as decisions would have to be made on prioritization and relevance of calls.
In our informal discussions with founders, we overwhelmingly come across founders claiming to spend around two-thirds of their time on tasks, such as tracking updates, and doing follow ups, ideally which could have been delegated. Nothing better than an email update over an avoidable meeting, it saves everyone’s time. Moreover, shifting non-planned adhoc activities to planned ones lead to greater productivity.
Second would the cross functional project management role for strategic initiatives. This would require cultivation of excellent working relationships with the functional heads in the startup team. The role again goes beyond taking updates and nudging others as one would have to contribute intellectually in problem solving and get the work done.
Third important function would be to establish and own a proper MIS process and reporting cadence for the startup. Reporting and data gathering is often adhoc, unstructured and incomplete. This is often the case in accounts and financial reporting, which gets overlooked when the scale of operations and revenue is low. But it creates bottlenecks during later fundraise or compliance related issues.
Beyond these definable roles, the founders’ office evolves to become the sounding board for the founders and contribute to shaping the strategy with the leadership team.
The value of a founders’ office increases furthermore if the individual(s) manning it can view the startup from an investor standpoint. He/she can then establish workflows and best practices, keeping in mind all of the key-metrics, which are bound to be asked by the VCs and strategic investors in a large round.
At ecosystem ventures, we prioritize safeguarding investor interests as ultimately it leads to value creation for everyone in the ecosystem. This requires working closely with the founders, like the founder’s office, and ensuring the success of each investment.
Ecosystem Ventures This Week
We are happy to share that Mr. Abhijeet Bhandari (Partner, Ecosystem Ventures) was invited as a speaker in Nath Valley School, Aurangabad. He underscored the significance in the session for students, aiming to assist them in thinking methodically about commencing a new business.
Startup Funding Summary
RenewBuy, Gurugram-based digital insurance aggregator, has raised $40 Mn in Series D funding from Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc. – Read More
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M&A Snippets
Bikaner-based F & B company Bikaji Foods International Ltd has acquired 49% stake in Bikaner-based F & B company Bhujialalji Pvt. Ltd for $621K – Read More
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