8 things startups can do early on to optimize for focus & productivity:

1. Synchronous meetings only for p0 and p1 items

All meetings should be 25 minutes by default with the ability to extend by 15 minutes if necessary.

Each meeting should have a clear agenda that outlines its context, asks, action items, etc.

Meetings should be brief & impactful
2. Asynchronous for everything else

- Stand ups
- Project demos / updates
- Design / Eng handoffs
- Documentation walkthrough

A simple flowchart for meetings:
3. Strive for 90% focused work / 10% meeting & sync time

- No meetings on Tues & Thurs
- Encourage turning off Slack & distracting notifications
- Track your time to better understand your distractions
- Buy your team a copy of Deep Work & Getting Things Done
4. No recurring meetings

Recurring meetings are a productivity killer. Try to avoid them when possible.

Instead, assess whether a follow-up meeting is needed at the end of each meeting.
5. Short sentences > Long paragraphs

We often spend too much time drafting the perfect Slack message or tend to over-explain ourselves over email.

Encourage succinct communication whether it's through words, emojis, or a @loom recording.

https://t.co/gK1dNUvznn
6. Keep a simple work stack at the beginning

A stack that *just* works:

- Slack: keep # of channels at a min.
- Loom: async updates that require visual & voice
- G Docs / Notion: documentation & tasks
- Whimsical: visual documentation
- Gmail / Superhuman: external comms. only
7. Keep a flat hierarchy

Giving out vanity titles "CxO, VP of X, etc" early on makes you come off less reputable & can also be detrimental when hiring senior leadership.

If everyone in the org is considered equal, your teams' willingness to lean in & share––feels more welcomed.
8. Limit your distractions as a Founder

Avoid conferences. Avoid podcasts. Limit your use on social media.

Your time is better spent at your desk and/or with your team.

More from Startups

The Beatles wrote “Yesterday” in less than a minute.

Led Zeppelin wrote “Rock And Roll” in 30 minutes.

The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”, 10 min during a soundcheck.

The Rolling Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, 40min.

Making a startup in 24 hours is perfectly fine.


I worked on my first startup for 2.5years. It was an events app. Sunk in cost and expectations were so high, that I had to close it, despite getting consistent revenue.

In comparison, I wrote @CryptoJobsList in 2 days. And it's way more meaningful than what I've been doing in my events startup for 2.5 years.

When I let go of my engineering ego and let go of expectations that I need to raise capital and hustle for 4+ years — I started lauching fast and interating fast without any expectations — then I started coming up with something truly meaningful and useful ✨

12 startups in 12 months by @levelsio
24 hour startup by @thepatwalls
— are great challenges that make you focus on the end product value, iterate fast and see what sticks and ruthlessly kill what does not work.
1/ Tuesday was my last day as CEO of @CircleUp. I’ve been CEO since starting the co. in 2011 with my co-founder @roryeakin.

This is a thread about what happened, why and my emotions about it. For more detail:

https://t.co/vYImcm1bTM

Much of this I have never talked about.

2/ My goals: I hope it helps founders feel less lonely than I did. Little public content about the challenges of transitioning exists, but I longed for it. I’m not here to provide a playbook- just to share my experience. Hope it might build greater empathy.

Here goes….

3/ Why: When I tell people that I’m transitioning to an Exec Chairman role their first question is always: “why?” Short answer: co. pivot + fertility issues + health issues + a false sense that grit was always the answer = burnout. Long answer: is longer so hang in there with me

4/ Over a 12-18 month period that ended in late 2017 I ran my tank far beyond empty for far too long. You know that sound your car makes when it’s sputtering for more gas? It was like that. Worst year of my life. Since then it has felt like bone on bone.

5/ Here is what happened:

Professionally: pivoting a Series C company was a living hell in and of itself, as I’ve talked about before.
There are a *lot* of software shops in the world that would far rather have one more technical dependency than they'd like to pay for one of their 20 engineers to become the company's SPOF expert on the joys of e.g. HTTP file uploads, CSV parsing bugs, PDF generation, etc.


Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.

"Who is the prototypical client here?"

A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.

(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)

"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"

I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.

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शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।


परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।


तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।