Mission Teahouse— First New Year Plan
A cold, drizzly Sunday morning in Cambridge. 8am.
This morning, we chopped up the coming year into quarters with goals & plans; we prototyped, planned who we should speak to and when and set goals with “quit conditions”.
Prototyping
Taking to the whiteboard room, with sketched plans in hand, we set to work. Green pen? Out of ink. Blue pen? Out of ink. Red pen? Yeah, this one works (sort of).
Looking at the sketches we had prepared for potential products, we classified these into species, genus and family. “WhatsApp meets Twitter, or StackOverflow meets Omegle, maybe Google meets Snapchat.”
The product we settled with is a refinement/a new perspective on the product we built last quarter. We decided to take what we have and make it as engaging as we possibly can.
Goal setting
What are we going to do this year? This morning, we found out! Our plan is made up of goals, metrics and quit conditions. I loved making the quit conditions — they’re harsh but fair and they’re in the spirit of holding ourselves to a high standard.
So here are our crazy goals. As my Dad loves to say:
We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars — Oscar Wilde
Q1
- An amazing story / mission
- Feb+March: Hire 3 people easily — by sharing our mission (20% should love it)
- Find 3 Believable experts who have built products and talk to them for feedback
- Have a decent product
- 1k daily users
Quit conditions (March 28th)
- BOTH MUST BE TRUE — Bias to quit.
- PRODUCT: If we have 200 or less people who logged into the product yesterday (27th) and used it, and it wasn’t their first time. Even if it’s 199, it’s still not good, it should be 1000! Quit.
- PEOPLE: If we have 2 or less talented people attached (sum(experts+coders) >= 3 who Will would cry if they were ‘fired’)
Q2
- An amazing product
- 10k daily users
- A scalable organisation
- Have 5 outside devs (hire 3, fire 1: this Q)
- Have 5 experts we can talk to (3 from Q1 + 2 more)
Quit condition (June 27th)
- BOTH MUST BE TRUE — Bias to quit.
- PRODUCT: If we have 5k or less people who logged into the product yesterday (26th) and used it, and it wasn’t their first time. Even if it’s 4999, it’s still not good, it should be 10,000! Quit.
- PEOPLE: If we have 2 or less talented people attached (sum(experts+coders) >= 6 who Will would cry if they were ‘fired’)
Q3
- 100k daily users
Q4
- 1MM daily users
- Raise (20million at 100MM valuation) from VC in China+Silly Valley (10MM each).
- If our valuation is less than 50 million William will quit 6–12 months after.
The Logic Behind Our Goals
You might be thinking that those goals are insane (they are), given we don’t even have product-market fit. We chose them because we believe a huge success will be an overnight success, or it will never be one at all. Instagram gained 25,000 users on their first day, and hit 1 million users in 3 months.
If we don’t reach these goals, there’s always the opportunity to pivot, learn and rethink things.
Why does Q2 involve firing 1 person? To get the right people, it helps to iterate.
Conclusion
This year is going to be difficult, exciting and an opportunity to learn and grow! Mostly I hope we can create something awesome which makes the world a better place.
