When in doubt, š¢ it
Taking ownership of your work at a startup
Hi friends, š
This is my first draft of this newsletter ā and the fact that Iām comfortable publishing it is a minor miracle.
In consulting, I learned to title my first drafts ā_v01,ā rather than ā_v1,ā because the first zero was necessary to keep your drafts able to alphabetically sort if you made it through more than nine drafts. The cycles of revision and commenting were endless, and they taught us junior people two important lessons:
Your early drafts donāt matter
You are not the owner ā it is your job to enact the edits of your managers and your clients
When I moved to Silicon Valley, I was amazed when both of those rules proved to be unique to the consulting world. I would turn in first or second drafts at Astranisā¦ and weād ship them! š¢ It was exhilarating (and slightly terrifying) to have that much ownership over a final work product.
Over time, however, I found that more ownership led to more learning, and the skill of making the most of your first drafts (and being comfortable releasing them as a result) has been a huge benefit to my work at Astranis and my writing here.
As another case-in-point, hereās a first-draft attempt at a keynote speech.
Over the past year or so, Iāve given speeches to college students on a variety of Silicon Valley Outsider-like topics: what itās like to be an entrepreneur, how venture capital works (and why that matters), how startups think about risk, and more. Iāve been wanting to give a āhow to start a career in startupsā talk for a while ā and when I was invited to attend a conference, I asked the organizer if I could take a speaking role instead, and she graciously said yes!
I didnāt know that I had just volunteered for an EdTech conferenceā¦ in Europeā¦ on the night of daylight savings timeā¦ on the weekend of a friendās weddingā¦ but once I figured all of that out, it was too late to back out. š
The result was a first draft ā armed with little more than a few bullet points of prep, I woke up at 5:00 AM Pacific, walked outside of the hotel, and gave a talk about why you donāt have to start a startup.
Some of the resources I mentioned in my call:
Thanks for reading Silicon Valley Outsider! Iām Christian, the Chief of Staff of Astranis, and I write this newsletter for folks who are interested in startups and live outside of the SF Bay Area. Here are a few past editions that you might like if you enjoyed this one: