The real reasons to found a startup

Posted on by
1

It’s often hard to put your finger on why you want to start a company. Maybe you just want to tinker with a product. Maybe you’re inspired by seeing what others have managed to achieve. Maybe you want to change the world.

But many people think these things will motivate them to keep growing a company…

  • Getting funding (Stressful, time-consuming, and takes way longer than you’d like)
  • Revenue (Nice but always needs to grow!)
  • TV and media (Fun but temporary, often inaccurate)
  • Product launches (Exciting but stressful)
  • Exits (Have never heard anyone say it was “the best thing ever!”)
  • Panels and conferences (Fun but self-interested)

They won’t. The things above are, at best, brief pleasures. But the good news is, there’s a bunch of other stuff that is extremely motivating and good. Things that provide long-term happiness, as opposed to temporary pleasure. Joi Ito wrote a post in 2007 where he explained the difference:

“We often [try] to decide which decision will make us happier. We often mistake pleasure for happiness and make the choice that may be more pleasurable instead of the choice that would provide more long-term happiness. [...] It often takes self-control or will to choose happiness over pleasure. “

But when you’re just starting out, you don’t always have the experience to know what the happiness-inducing stuff will be. And I think we (as a community of startups) don’t talk about the gratifying things enough. We talk about funding, and events, and exits, and founders committing suicide instead. So I made a list of the things I’m most grateful for, the things that make me glad I decided to start a startup. Most of these I had no idea about when I began working on Gengo.

Learning
The gap between how much I learned as an employee and how much I’ve learned as a founder is vast. As a founder, there are so many areas that you just have to pick up (marketing, sales, legal, management, finance, fundraising etc) that you can’t help but learn a huge amount by default. And if you throw yourself into that challenge, you’ll learn even more. It’s extremely gratifying.

I’m not saying that it’s not valuable to work for a company. It shapes the way you think, often in great and positive ways. For instance, having a good manager at a larger company can set you up to be a great manager in the future. And it’s useful to know how large companies operate, if you want to be able to work with them. But there is nothing like running your own company to force you to learn.

Seeing the company grow up
It’s very gratifying to peek into a meeting and realize you are not needed, or to go on vacation and come back without worrying that you should have been there. Even better when people are coming up with great ideas and great work without even needing to talk to you. That’s truly pleasurable, to create something that has gone beyond you.

Watching individual staff grow up and develop
This is probably the most fun thing. My favourite example is when we’ve hired someone as an intern, and they’ve become a full-time staff member, and then gone on to get more and more responsibility because they are great. It’s awesome because you can so easily compare where they were to where they are now, and because they know the company inside and out. Maybe even better than you do.

While it’s sad when people leave, if they’ve grown hugely at your company, you’ll get pleasure from seeing them succeed elsewhere, and hopefully stay a part of their lives for a long time. That’s amazing.

Failing and recovering
I don’t want to dwell on this because I think Silicon Valley has such a massive erotic passion for “failing” that the word is overused more than “The Cloud”. However the kind of failing that I want to talk about is not about having your company die, it’s about making non-fatal mistakes (which are the nicest and friendliest kind). If you do things “right” and preserve enough runway, you perhaps get two chances to fail in a big way, per funding round, and recover.

I know after our Series A we massively failed in a product we tried to build. There were a number of really interesting after-effects of this. Firstly it made me realize viscerally that I could never let that particular mistake happen again. Secondly the company “learned” that too, and we put in place a bunch of new ideas to fix things. It’s the kind of thing you simply cannot learn in college, you cannot really learn in a big company unless you’re very near the top. And best of all it didn’t kill us. Nice.

Changing your perspective and technique over time
There was this interesting discussion on Reddit recently about why you should watch movies more than once, which boiled down to the fact that as you change as a person, you notice new things. I think that change of perspective applies to startups in two big ways.

Firstly, as you learn as a person, you look at the same problems in different ways, and can evolve your solution with your experience. It kind of gives you the chance to have another go, and use your bigger brain to solve the problem in a better way. For example, staff performance issues are a lot easier to deal with after you’ve experienced them a couple of times. Small crises get put into perspective. You know your own strengths better.

The other way is that the company changes. So the first time you have a problem (like sales slow down) you have limited resources and limited knowledge. Whereas the second time it comes up, maybe you have new team members, or some new technology, or new contacts, and you can be a lot more creative and resourceful. I’m always thankful and gratified when we’re able to do this.

Office culture
I don’t ever want to work somewhere where there’s not at least some element of joking around in the office. You can make laughter a near-certainty if it’s your own company. That is very compelling to me. I don’t mean slacking off or being a dumbass, I just mean having a good laugh at silly stuff every so often. That’s a nice life.

Seeing teams emerge with complementary and competing needs 
There’s a sort of delicious moment in the evolution of a company where teams know what they are doing, and have motivations that are very clear (and beneficial) and unique. I don’t mean a kind of Game Of Thrones-style disingenuous wargame going on. I just mean that it’s gratifying to create an ecosystem where teams believe in their own needs, and have high motivation to make sure they get the resources of the company to do cool stuff. Creative conflict is massively productive and exciting.

User delight
This is one of the more obviously pleasurable aspects. Seeing a user comment that’s glowing with positivity is just unquestionably great. What surprised me is how far they’ll go.

I think before you start a company you never expect someone to say “X is awesome!!!!!!!!!, I love you guys, I want to work there!” but people do say that kind of crazy stuff about good products and good companies.

On top of that, at Gengo we’re lucky enough to provide thousands of translators with income, and they tell us about the trips they’ve been able to make, or the family security that’s improved, with that money. That’s amazing and humbling and eternally motivating.

Making cool things
Successful production of design and technology is an inherently fragile and ephemeral process. Even good teams rarely get it right. You only have to read the mountains of literature on design and product management to realize that even good teams struggle constantly with this stuff. It’s very hard to attain.

So it’s extremely pleasurable to be part of that when it works, and have the chance occasionally to work on the 10% or so of projects that go smoothly and produce great results. For me this is the most beautiful thing, to work with great people and have moments where we’re producing outstanding work that’s exciting and innovative and cool.

I think if you are only focused on the results, you never get to enjoy this process, those precious moments when the wind is perfect and it’s sunny and you’re balanced and sailing.

People building technology on top of your technology
There’s this huge amount of trust that is displayed when a company decides to build on your API. Especially if they build something with the assumption that you exist. Like, we build on AWS because we assume they’ll be around for as long as we need.

It’s a big leap, especially for a small company, to say “I trust this enough to make a bet on it”. And it’s exciting, because people often build cool things that you’d never thought of. So seeing the first signs of that is immensely cool.

The icing on the cake for us is when an investor asks us “Have you heard of company X? I think they are a competitor” and you can tell them they are actually operating on top of your API. Nice.

Becoming “obvious”
There’s this really nice moment that happens (and it’s easiest to observe over Twitter) where someone will ask “How do I do X” and someone — who you have no idea even existed — will reply “I use Gengo”. To the point where it’s an “obvious” answer to a question. This is just an all-round great feeling, because you’ve become part of the fabric of the web. Probably the next iteration is where people don’t even need to ask, because it’s so obvious. Maybe we’ll get there.

Anyway, the point of this post is mainly to say this: The interesting stuff, the stuff that will make you happy, is not the stuff that you’ll read in a press article or see on TV. It’s the simple good feeling of working on something interesting with good people. That’s it.

Enterprise Sales in Japan for Your Startup

Posted on by
1

As a US startup, beginning enterprise sales in Japan is tough.

I was talking last night to one such US-based startup. They are exploring the idea of opening a Japanese office, in order to capitalize on some initial interest and a promising first partnership with a Japanese customer. I wanted to capture some of the advice we gave them. I wrote a post called “Big in Japan” a while ago about some of these ideas — but specifically for enterprise sales in Japan, I had four main pieces of advice.

None of these things will guarantee success. But ignoring them will guarantee failure.

Be careful of market-entry specialists. For a startup, it can be tempting to work with someone who tells you they can bridge the gap between the US and Japan. They might speak great English and “get” your business. But it’s rare for these people to be the best ones to actually go out and sell your product, because they’re not the Japanese people on the ground with the relationships, track record and skills of enterprise sales. I’d recommend instead to use a good, boutique, local recruiter to find a first employee or contractor. These people are out there, who are great enterprise sales people but with good enough English to work with you. You can set a really easy milestone for that person, in that when they close their first deal (or a $ amount) you start to increase the team.

Figure out the basics of the landscape. Partnerships in places like Japan can be an important way to scale. But if you don’t know the market well, it’s hard to make good choices. For instance you might be approached by (say) SoftBank. A local would instinctively start to sniff out the interests of NTT, KDDI etc in order to get the best deal. A US native probably won’t think to do that. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to have a sense of what you don’t know, and research it. Don’t expect to make good strategic decisions without this attitude.

View from Hikarie

Don’t get distracted by the small things. See the big picture. There’s a tendency for people to overestimate the importance of etiquette, language and style when they find themselves in a foreign culture. These things are visible, so you’ll easily get distracted by your failings. What’s much more important in the long term is your ability to learn the market, to use information to your advantage, and to make good strategic choices. Handing over your meishi is something anyone can learn quickly, but choosing a solid first hire in Japan is a true skill. Worry more about the latter.

Your reputation must be nurtured, grown and protected. In the US, startups are cool, sexy, and everyone wants to hang out with you. In Japan you’re like a teenager… untrustworthy, naive, poorly-connected. Over time you can improve this reputation by being reliable, achieving traction, making money, and showing that you’re here to stay. But you’ll only be able to do this by continually focusing on, and planning how to improve your reputation. One way is to convince very credible and experienced people to represent you. Another is a solid partnership. Another is to make a ton of money. But none of those things will save you if your business acts like an ass.

Are you entertained? Tell everyone on Hacker News.

Surviving Regular Long-Haul Startup Travel

Posted on by
2

Many startups based outside Silicon Valley have to cope with regular travel between multiple offices. This can easily screw up your life by making you permanently jet-lagged, poor, disoriented and unhappy.

But regular long-distance travel can actually be survivable.

Gengo has offices in Tokyo and San Mateo. Flying NRT-SFO is 9h there, 11h back (here’s why). I did that trip 8 times last year, 80% of the time in economy class. This year I’ll do it once a month. I know some people who do it even more frequently. A lotta this:

wingBut now I’m a master at it. And it’s kind of fun. You can make it work too:

1. Always have a goal
My goal is normally like this:

  1. Be there for 5 work days.
  2. Get x or y important meeting done.
  3. Have a day to recover on return.
  4. Minimize days away.
  5. Minimize cost.

You know the flight search tools that allow you to check +/- 3 days of your chosen date, to find better prices? It’s very tempting to use these in scrappy startup mode, because you’re used to optimizing the pennies. Danger danger.

You should optimize for your plan, not the cheapest flight. Every day and night you stay, you incur hotel, food, transport costs. So the savings you make on a flight that’s $500 cheaper two days later will be lost on hotel, car and food.

But more importantly, for morale and your business, sacrificing days of rest for the sake of a slightly cheaper deal is usually a false economy. So stick to the plan.

2. Always have a routine
This is the most important thing of all!

When you travel, it’s very very easy to waste a lot of time orienting yourself. Different airline, Different flight time, Different hotel, Different rental car company, Different car, Different route to the office, Different day of the week. Especially if you chase “hot” deals on Expedia to save yourself $50.

Not having a routine screws up your brain because all throughout your trip you have to worry, or remember, or figure out new things. My brain can only hold about one thing at once. So you end up thinking all about travel details, and not interesting or cool or important things. No!

Instead, I have a routine which I try very very hard never to change.

  1. ANA or United (Star Alliance)
  2. NRT<>SFO direct
  3. Arrive Monday morning leave Saturday midday
  4. Narita Express from Shinjuku
  5. Dollar Rent-a-car at SFO straight to office
  6. San Mateo Hilton (AirBnB is thus a no-go for me most of the time.)

nex

This means I know exactly what’s going to happen, and I can go on autopilot. This means I can be thinking about Gengo or at least enjoying myself. Instead of wondering about inane rubbish like where the Hertz car counter is at the hotel or whether there’s a gym or if the parking is free or how to get to the office from here… Have a routine, it works.

3. Don’t order room service
Room service might seem convenient and easy after a long day. But it means you stay indoors. It means you eat alone, probably watching TV — studies show this means you’ll probably eat more — what’s more depressing than that? It means you have no sense of the surrounding area.

I always try to at least walk down the road and pick up something or, much better, eat out with co-workers instead. Healthier, happier, more fun. Better view, too!

burrito

I actually have a lot of fun on my trips meeting friends in the Bay Area on Fridays and the weekend, for which I count myself lucky.

4. Say “yes” to drugs
I take a sleeping pill on the plane with one of those mini-airplane bottles of wine. So sue me. It lets me sleep, even in a bad seat. By the way, the plane is for sleeping; not movies or work or anything else. Hope you knew that.

Screen Shot 2013-01-20 at 4.24.27 PM

But the biggest improvement to my jet-lag recovery is this: Melatonin — I take two of these before I go to sleep for the first 3 nights after landing. It means you sleep the whole night and wake up non-groggy.

Learned this from someone who used to fly 100+ times a year, and it’s a life-saver.
This fasting trick also works (I’ve done it successfully a couple of times) but normally I’m to weak-willed to do it in the food-is-everywhere surroundings of hotels and planes.

4. Put up with working a few double-timezone days
Let’s face it, you’re not going to have any work-life balance on your trip.

When I’m in San Mateo I’ll get up at 7am, clear out a bunch of emails from Japan time, go into the office/meetings/whatever until maybe 6pm, then do dinner with staff. If I get back to the hotel at 9pm, then there’s a whole new heap of people online ready to talk on Skype. In a sort of utopia I would be able to avoid working two timezones, but this is real life. So I normally end up finishing with Tokyo-related things at about 12pm.

I decided a while ago not to stress about this too much, and instead just put up with it for Monday-to-Thursday. Friday’s nice in San Mateo because it’s already the weekend in Japan. So it’s normally a chance to relax.

5. Get a company credit card that earns frequent flyer miles
One of the best things we did was to get a credit card which earns miles. We got one with points you can transfer to United (Star Alliance) or BA (OneWorld). We put a lot of online expenses on it, which really rack up the miles you can earn.

In tight times, I use the miles for flights. In slightly less tight times, for upgrades etc. It makes a big difference, and it’s like free money. So do it.

Got any tips of your own? Share them here or on Hacker News.

Pitching a Post-Seed-Stage Startup: 10 Pointers

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t know if you believe the Series A/B Crunch or not. I think you should.

If you want a chance of getting through it, realize this: Things change when you start pitching VCs instead of angels. When you start pitching a startup that’s been around for a few years. Things get a bit more serious. Maybe a bit more boring. Definitely more time-consuming and more difficult.

While I’ve successfully done it a couple of times now, of course I’ve made my own mistakes at Gengo, done some things poorly. So take my advice with a handful of salt.

Some things never change. You still need traction, an interesting market, a quality team. Investors still either “like” the business or they don’t, and no amount of convincing, explaining, will change that.

Some things are completely different. Raising the next round is harder. VCs see 1000s of pitches from companies with real revenue, good teams, good products. So even companies on good growth trajectories are not necessarily interesting. And there’s a lot of you now. Yes, you there with your 12-month-old-seed-funded-startup. And your 12-months-out-of-date shiny demo-day product videos… j/k. Maybe. So listen…

1. There’s no pleasant gradual progress. In the fun of the angel round you have a telethon-like thermometer gradually bubbling up to your target. Pitching VC is a binary condition. Pre-term-sheet and post-term-sheet. Until you have a term sheet you’re, uh, screwed. After you have it you’re kind of set.

At seed stage, every angel you meet is a potential connector as well as being an investor. So you can quickly multiply your contacts by virtue of a good pitch. VCs rarely do this. It’s not OK to talk about all the other VCs you’re pitching to. It’s not possible to bootstrap your round by implying existing interest.

2. It’s an individual slog. At seed stage, you and your co-founders are barely decided on who’s CEO. Because it doesn’t really matter. So pitching can be 50/50. It’s fun, it keeps everyone feeling involved, and it’s not that time-consuming. Anyone can spare a couple of weeks. At Series A you can’t afford to have 3 of your management team schlepping around the Bay Area pitching together. So it’s one of you. By the way, if it’s not your CEO pitching, you’re a weird company and you need to fix that now.

A seed transaction is simple because you don’t have complex legal requirements, you probably don’t have much revenue. A convertible note is very easy. So the deal can be completed in a couple of weeks. From Series A onwards it gets more serious, more distracting, and more opaque to everyone else in the company. So managing expectations, deciding what to say internally and when, gets a lot more tricky.

3. You gotta get serious. You could describe the progression from incubator to seed to A/B/C rounds as “the degradation of wonder and joy”. Investors aren’t swayed by emotion and “what ifs” so much. Your hopes and dreams about a business either become solidified, or tempered, or disappear. Normally somewhere in the middle.

So the product demo that’s so important for attracting angels doesn’t matter. There is no such thing as a demo day. Having your iPhone App “featured” by Apple doesn’t matter. What does matter starts to be the same kind of things you see on the public markets. Revenue. Margins. Revenue Reliability. Market Size. Defensibility Not drop-shadows.

4. Traction is everything. If you double revenue year-on-year, you’re doing great by regular company standards. But for Series A, yeah, not interesting enough. The only numbers that are going to make people really interested are in the real hockey-stick range. And even in that range, your business is only going to be interesting to a few investors.

So where do you fit?

fundraising_statuses

My advice below is most relevant if you’re in the “It Depends” category. If you’re in the “Yes. Now” category, you don’t need help. If you’re in the “No” category, you need to make some serious changes to your business before you can expect to raise more money. So I can’t help. But “It Depends” is fixable…

5. Time-scales are much longer. In an incubator, your business can change radically within a few weeks. In a 2-year-old startup it usually takes months or quarters to see significant change. “Pivoting” will be a huge nightmare with a team of 15. Let that sink in a bit. If you have trouble pitching in January, it might be March before you can really see a big difference.

Some people describe progress as measured in “value events”. A value event early on might be a major hire, a major customer win, a major revenue milestone. Real life is rarely so precise. But a 15% ARPU increase isn’t that interesting. A 100% increase is. So be conscious of the visibility of your progress.

6. Timing allows you to course-correct and solve “Yellow Flags”. If you’re in the “It Depends” category, you probably can have 1-2 “Yellow Flags” before the deal’s a no-go. A Yellow Flag might be your location, your gross margin, a competitor in your space, some poor PR. These are the things that you can fix in the 2-3 months before fundraising with specific efforts. Most Yellow Flags from respectable investors are reasonable things, but of course don’t start running around trying to please everybody.

A Red Flag (like your revenue is dropping), well, that’s a lot harder.

So you want to figure out what those smaller things are, well before you need to raise cash. I’m talking 6-9 months before. Having experienced investors on your board will help spot potential blockers in advance. But pitching to real future potential investors is the only way to really figure this out.

During our Series A we had what I’d call a yellow flag due to our lack of senior sales talent. So we spent a significant amount of time to hire Kenji Yamamoto, previously VP Sales at Apple Japan. We had a lot of questions about market size, so we spent some cash on some really solid market analysis. We had questions about being able to really scale enterprise-level operations so we hired someone with extensive experience.

7. Don’t forget to continually simplify your business. Startups get more complicated over time. You add products, add customer types, market in many different ways, add price points. You add people. If you’re not careful, a 10-slide pitch can turn into 60 slides. But your job is to make all that complexity simple to understand. Being able to simply explain your business shows you understand it.

I always do a one-slide ”summary up front” now… What you do / KPIs /Market definition & size /Team, Location /Investment to Date …because it’s a lot more helpful for an investor new to your business. And it allows you to skip sections if they’re already familiar.

8. Enter the exciting world of extensive backup slides. I believe in being able to answer any reasonable question about my business within a few seconds. It’s the difference between a fluid conversation and an awkward stammering mess. By now, this stuff should be in your head, or if it’s really detailed, accessible by flicking to a backup slide. Presenter View in PowerPoint or Presenter Display in Keynote let you do that instantly rather than having to frantically stab your arrow keys. We probably have 30-40 of these now, plus specific presentations on deeper topics.

backup_slides

These slides include a bunch of standard stuff, such as Org chart / KPIs not already in your main deck / Patents or other IP / Product roadmap / Sales pipeline (for enterprise businesses) / Conversion rates but there’s a lot more stuff that’s very specific to your business (e.g. Gengo):

  • How will your translator pool will scale to handle 100x the volume you have now?
  • Growth rate of different translation market segments, regions, related services
  • How specifically does your product increase the productivity of translators?
  • Can you provide comparables for IPO or acquisition?
  • Can you tell us about any large customers who have left? Why did they leave?
  • How has quality improved over time?
  • Can you compare your service in detail to a hyped pre-revenue startup with zero customers and quite a different value proposition? (I have been asked this…)

During your DD process you’ll spend a lot of time on these kinds of slides. It’s my least favorite part of my job.

9. It’s much harder to get a “no” than a “maybe”. Angels tend to be pretty quick with their decisions, and for a $50k investment it doesn’t make sense for them to hem and haw too long. But VCs don’t have a lot of incentive to give you a clear “no”. So don’t be surprised if you have a number of VCs who seem interested. But as you near your funding deadline, a “maybe” becomes increasingly useless. You need to know who’s really interested.

So sometimes I encourage fence-sitters to say no. Like, “by the way, if this isn’t really for you, I’d really appreciate you letting me know. We’re at the stage where we need to know who’s really in.” I have never failed to get a solid response that way.

10. Fix the business, not your pitch. Don’t focus too much on the pitch at this stage. That’s the good and bad news: a great business doesn’t need fancy pitchwork, a so-so business can’t be saved by an amazing pitch.

Seems fair to me.

Love/Hate/Want to discuss this post? Why not talk about it at Hacker News.

Rebranding Your Startup

Posted on by
9

We decided to rebrand from myGengo to Gengo in early 2012. Two small letters, one big decision. It was expensive and time-consuming, but definitely worth it. Few first-time founders have done it before. So I thought I’d share my experience.

To give you an idea of the investment you’re making with a serious rebrand:

  • You’ll spend roughly the price of a luxury car if you use an agency.
  • If you need them to do naming too, it will cost 10-20% more still.
  • It will take at least 8 weeks for the branding phase, normally longer.
  • The implementation will take longer than you think. For shame, our developer sandbox is still in the old myGengo design…
  • It will take at least 80h of management time in meetings, travel, implementation.
  • Trademarks can be $5k to $20k+ depending on complexity and region choice.
  • It can go wrong.

So, probably best to have a think about it first, eh?

Why rebrand?

For us, it was simple: “myGengo” was friendly, but clunky and childlike. At the time, people who knew the company well would get confused and ask me “How’s Gengo?” and I’d have to correct them. Moving from a 3-syllable, 7-letter domain to a 2-syllable, 5-letter domain was always going to be appealing, but we couldn’t afford the domain.

Gengo rebrand

Our movement to Gengo was more than just about removing two letters and a new logo. The company had grown to 30 people. We had enterprise customers. We had partners. The cheeky attitude and bright colors that had made sense in 2008 were starting to look a bit childish. We needed a public face that was more mature, more confident, less kiddy. It would be nice if you could fix all that with a $500 99Designs logo contest. But you can’t.

So when we raised our Series A, a proper rebranding was on our to-do list. We successfully acquired the domain through a broker (the previous owner was very reticent to sell). That was the simple part. Now the real work of doing the rebrand.

At this point I should make a confession. I’m a reformed designer. Before Gengo I worked in branding, advertising (always on the web) and building often quite flashy sites for larger corporate clients. Design’s always going to be important to me and how I run Gengo. So it was vital to me that we did this properly. As a reformed designer who is CEO, I also didn’t want to distract myself by trying to do it myself — it would have been a half-assed vanity project. We didn’t have the internal resource. So we went the route of choosing an agency.

How do you choose an agency?

Agencies are expensive. But the good ones are experts. They’re outsiders, which means they can provide perspective, new ideas and objectivity (if you let them).
You want to choose an agency with these attributes:

  • They understand you as a company. You have to “click”.
  • They will challenge you.
  • They will educate you.
  • They have good process (not just pretty designs).

I’m lucky enough to have worked in this world, so I knew where to start. And I knew what agencies to avoid. But it’s not hard to get recommendations from other founders, from investors, from finding out which agencies your favorite companies used. We interviewed 7-8 branding agencies of different sizes, ranging from a studio of three people, to two of the largest in the world, in Tokyo, London, New York and San Francisco.

We chose Cuban Council because they “got” us from the start. Their portfolio is 90% web startups (including Zendesk, Facebook, Rdio, Quora, Evernote). Our chats with them were easy and comfortable. The price made sense. They described a process that sounded right. Most importantly, we really liked their work:

Cuban Council's work

How does an agency work?

Normally an agency will have a creative director who oversees all the output and provides, yep, direction, and designers who do the bulk of the actual design work. The bulk of your fee will be calculated from the hourly rates of the people doing the work. Creative directors cost more than designers. So your fee might include a handful of hours from the CD and tens of hours of designer time. They’ll have project managers and account managers too. Don’t be surprised if the person you meet during the evaluation phase is not the person who ends up doing the work — but a good agency will give you a clear idea of who will be on your project before you start.

Each agency will have their own defined process for branding. One that allows them to fully understand your company and its needs, the competitive environment, your tastes and desires for the brand. This should happen well before anyone opens up Photoshop. This might sound like overkill, it might sound airy-fairy. But this process separates good work from poor work. I always say that design is about problem-solving. If you don’t know the problem, you’re just making pretty pictures.

A typical agency branding process might look like this:
1. Research  2. Concepts  3. Refinement  4. Applications of the brand  5. Extras

For an in-depth view of a branding process on a large, year-long project, it’s worth checking out Moving Brands’ work for HP. You won’t need anything of this scale!

Good company => Good brand

People bandy around words like “clean” and “uncluttered” when they try to describe design they like. What they really mean is that they like brands that have focus. That have a clear message. That know themselves and their priorities. Design can express that, but design can’t decide what the company is and what it stands for. That’s your job. You can’t do a rebrand unless you understand your company. And often the research process forces you to understand your company better. This is often a reason why companies spend much longer re-doing their websites, re-doing marketing materials than they think they will — because they realize in the middle of the process that they don’t understand their own company, and have to figure it all out. It’s healthy, but can be surprisingly time-consuming.

In our case, Cuban Council sent two designers to Tokyo for a few days to meet Gengo, hang out with Gengons, learn about our company, see us work, and experience Japan. They found out what design Matt & I really loved (and hated). They saw how we ran meetings. They saw how we eat together. They interviewed almost everyone on the team. They asked questions like “If Gengo was a car, what kind of car would it be?” (and, quite awesomely, everyone gave a very consistent answer that it would either be a Prius or, not a car even: public transport). They took photos of Tokyo. They ate. By the time they’d left they had absorbed Gengo into their pores, and had bookloads of inspiration to get started.

What do you get?

After the Research phase, depending on the route you’ve agreed on with the agency, you may be presented with 2-3 concepts for the brand. These may include a logo, color palette, typography and photography. If you’re doing a more in-depth project, you might start from a much more abstract set of choices, and the agency might guide you towards the 2-3 concepts phase more gradually. It all depends on your timeline and your budget. But at the early stages, it’s much more about choosing a route, rather than perfecting artwork (a logo could just be a sketch at this stage).

You might get a kind of “mood board” like this to set the tone:

Yoda

Cuban Council presented their ideas to us over Skype, remotely from New York. The clear winner for us was the identity created from the Japanese Ensō shape, because it had meaning — not just because we’re based in Japan, but because of the human nature of our translation platform. They’d combined this approach with a color palette that felt mature but individual, and photography that was calm but had personality. We also chose the new brand tagline of “Communicate freely” at this stage.

Gengo Logo Construction

In our case, this process was very smooth. We got to a design we liked, on schedule. For many companies it’s not smooth, there’s a lot of back-and-forth — especially if you have a committee (boo). That’s why you need very clear direction (see below in my dos and don’ts).

After you’ve decided on a general route, there’s normally still a lot of tweaking and development of the brand to come. For instance, the logo will be finessed, iconography and illustration might be created. Typography will be defined. Photography will be refined into a set of principles and guidelines. You’ll talk about brand voice. Some of this work might seem fussy and time-consuming to non-designers, but it’s in the details that good work is done.

At the end of the process, you’ll normally create a set of Brand Guidelines. This used to be a big printed book or a larger website (and still is for a big company rebrand) but for our purposes, a PDF was fine. You can see the contents below.

Brand Guidelines

At the same time as the guidelines, or directly after, you might ask the agency to come up with so-called “applications” of the brand. All this means is showing you how the brand might look as a homepage, a mobile app or similar. It helps define how all the elements fit together in practice. These are very useful for communicating the brand to the rest of your team. An example of this can be to show the brand in action, as opposed to just a ‘dead’ logo on a page. It’s a simple trick that really brings it to life:

Fake Gengo Office

We chose to communicate the brand to the rest of the team once we had most of this in place, and could make it an exciting event. So it was a celebration, as well as a chance to reaffirm what we want Gengo to be. Actually launching the brand to the public took a while longer, but we got there in the end! It was well-received by our users, but equally importantly it’s a brand we know we can use for years to come, and working with it is a pleasure every day. We’re proud.

Rebranding isn’t something you want to do very often. It’s a big investment. But if you need to do it, do it well. You see your brand everyday, so you gotta love it!

Do’s and Don’ts

Go with your gut
Your brand is something you have to be 100% comfortable with, 100% of the time. No persuasion from a project manager should change that. Be prepared to draw a line in the sand to protect that gut feeling, and accept that some people will not like the brand. That’s a good thing. It means, you have an identity. And that’s the whole point.

Avoid committees
If you allow committee-like behaviour to decide your brand, you’ll end up with mediocrity. We had one decider (me), and I took feedback from just two others during the process. Then we rolled out the brand to the rest of the company. This worked very well. If I do say so myself.

Think globally
You need a brand that will work in the US, in China, in Spain. Make sure you take the basic steps to ensure it does. There’s no excuse in 2013 not to think globally.

Be honest and clear about your desires and feedback
As with anything that will cost your company a lot of money, be crystal clear about what you expect to achieve with a rebrand. Having unrealistic expectations (e.g. instant user growth) helps no one. Don’t expect agencies to throw in freebies. It’s incumbent on you as a client to provide honest feedback as early and as clearly as possible. Good designers respect honesty, and hate last-minute changes of direction.

Make sure you know what you’re paying for
Agencies can throw in hundreds of extras that you may not need. Things like design layouts for brochures, animations, sounds, brand videos, music choices. Expensive brand books to communicate the brand to the company. You probably don’t need these things as a small company.

Have a brand guardian to maintain and develop the brand
As you work with the brand over the weeks and months after the rebrand, you need a single person in the company to ensure anything that gets produced is on-brand. This could be your head of marketing or a designer. Just make sure it’s a single person and it’s clear to everyone who it is. Be strict!

Good luck!

Love/Hate/Want to discuss this post? Why not talk about it at Hacker News?

Simple Advice, on Advice

Posted on by
2

Productive people start work early! / It’s more natural for programmers to work late! / People in an early-stage startup should work whatever hours they choose! / The most important thing is have meeting-free time! / You should track your time! / You should optimize for flow! / You should work a four-day week! / You should work remotely! / You should have ‘quiet times’! etc etc etc

All ‘advice’ I’ve seen on Hacker News on the single topic of working hours.

As a startup founder, I’ve found it hard to know when to seek advice. And it’s difficult to know what to do with unsolicited advice. Which you get. A lot. I wish I’d had some advice when I started Gengo, on how to filter it all. So this post is for me three years ago. Some simple advice, on advice:

1. Fully understand your problem
Advisors often add more value by asking questions, than providing answers. If you’re not being asked for clarification, you may not get good advice. John Lilly asked “What do you really want? What do you really need?” which was nicely direct.

2. Learn how to recognize good advice
Good advice should be disinterested, experienced, germane and more than just an opinion. Unsolicited advice is often the opposite. Value new information. Value balance. Value the difficult. Beware of agendas. Beware of the fashionable ”strong opinions, loosely held“. Beware 20-something startup founders with no previous jobs…

3. Discard bad advice without regret
My biggest mistakes to date at Gengo have been because I took advice against my personality. Sounded logical. Felt wrong. Blew up.

It’s OK to reject unsolicited advice. It’s healthy to reject advice that goes against your gut. It’s OK to ignore an employee, an investor, a friend sometimes. It’s definitely OK to ignore a blog post.

Creating Daily Team Adrenaline: Newsroom

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a lot to enjoy in the first episode of Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom. But one aspect in particular made me think. It’s the adrenaline of a big finish.

Shuffling Off
In most normal companies — even the most go-getter startup — there’s something kind of sad that happens at the end of almost every “office day”. Whether or not we start with a good standup meeting. Because we all have different schedules, different deadlines, we drift off one by one. There’s no ‘big finish’, there’s no event at the end of the working day. We shuffle off the playing field.

Big Finish
Contrast that with the newsroom team. Their whole day builds up to the big finish. From the time they get into the building, they’re getting geared up for an hour of high-intensity, totally focused work. During the hour they’re on live TV, it’s a huge adrenaline kick, and a moment where you need total trust between the team. At the end of the hour, they’re exhausted.

If the show went well, they feel great. Even if the show was tough, they get the satisfaction that it’s over.

Work Modes
I believe our work has four different modes.

  • Contemplative Individual: Individual research, writing, planning
  • Contemplative Team: Meetings, 1:1 discussions
  • Operating Individual: “Cranking Widgets”, quick emails
  • Operating Team: Live TV, war (yeah), sports, events, launches, intense project planning, disaster management

[Warning: This idea is not for everybody! Some people will not like it! But some will love it.]

Imagine if you had that “Operating Team” experience where you worked, every day. An intense hour or half-hour at the end where you’re relying on your team 100% in a time-sensitive task. It doesn’t even need to be exactly at 6-7pm – the point is the build-up and the release. Wouldn’t it be pretty awesome? Why not end with a bang?

How to do it?
If you’re on board, the question is, how do you build “good” Operational Team events into the day? Is there a way to plan them so you’ll always have one on a Friday evening? How do you do it so it’s always positive, and not unnecessary stress?

One way to create good drama is to invite an outsider (client, VC, competitor, advisor) into the office for people to present their ideas to, or to get very firm about internal deadlines. But this is tough without a stable team, known velocity and trust.

Another way to “create good drama” is just to run a clock. We do that for our weekly team updates — each team has just 90 seconds to share their “one big message” for the company, which keeps it snappy. You could schedule something like a Power Blogging Hour, bug-hunt or mini-hackathon at that time.

Any other ideas?