We are in the midst of an industry reset. The single most important requirement for every single digital publisher is to employ a team with the entrepreneurial flare to rethink the way our products are produced and positioned in the market.
There is no point in even thinking about scaling our businesses to try and theoretically increase profits without first getting our products in the right condition to fit their contemporary marketplace. You need the right people in place to make this happen. People who care about and understand their audience, are aware of the latest developments in technology and know how to apply these developments to positive effect.
Too frequently the wrong people are put in place to try and bring success to a business which needs to make these changes. Reading Mike Hirshland’s blog post, How to Kill a Startup: Hire Executives instead of Entrepreneurs, this became glaringly obvious.
Whereas later stage successful startups typically should be run by executives who excel at scaling a business and its organization, early stage BPMF (Before Product Market Fit) startups typically are best off being led by highly entrepreneurial founders with great product sensibilities.
Mike Hirshland, 2009
Although Mike’s post is talking about his experience as a venture capitalist working with tech startups, his way of thinking is perfectly applicable to all businesses which find themselves at the bottom of their product lifecycle curve, because at the bottom of the curve we are all a startup. It is at this point we need to develop a VC frame-of-mind and invest in the right people to restart our product lifecycle.
I have full faith in the fact that audiences in the UK and around the world crave the products we are capable of delivering to them and there is a profitable marketplace in which we can play, but fitting with that marketplace and having the right product is key and this can only be achieved with entrepreneurs pressing the reset button, not executives.
