Here are a few tips I learned while creating and launching Steep.ly that I thought would be useful for people wanting to launch their own companies.

Sleep on the Idea

I had the original idea for Steep.ly 2-3 years ago. At the time I wanted to ship out bags of coffee instead of tea, but for various reasons the timing wasn’t right and I never executed on the design. Every few months I’d think about how I could get to work and I constantly thought about it. I started drinking tea a lot and in May of 2013 I knew I was ready to start this company. Having that long-lasting idea helped me finish Steep.ly. Short term ideas are often not important enough to finish.

Research

The most important part of starting a business is researching the feasibility of the company. You can have the most amazing idea fail if nobody is willing to pay you for it. Once you’ve found people willing to pay you for your idea you need to research whether you can be profitable from it. I know there are stories of companies not being profitable until year 2/3/4 but that’s not the norm. I wanted to make sure that Steep.ly was profitable from almost day one and that took a lot of research into the costs of shipping, packaging, buying the tea, etc…

Researching your company first can save you a lot of time building something that won’t succeed.

Use Tools your Comfortable With

For me, launching my first company meant removing as many barriers to launch as possible. One of these barriers was technology. It’s exciting learning a new language, using the latest and greatest framework or technology but these things take time to learn and ultimately delay the launch of your company. I stuck to what I knew (Python, Django, PostgreSQL) so I could launch quickly. Using these tools also let me fix 14 separate things that weren’t working correctly after I launched. If I had used the latest and greatest tool it would have taken me longer to fix those problems.

Just Launch

There’ll always be missing features and nice to haves that you want to add. I could easily have procrastinated the launch of Steep.ly until 2014, then 2015, then never if I had tried to put every single bit of polish on the design and every feature that I wanted. Figure out the absolute minimum that you need to launch with, do those things and then launch.

For example, Steep.ly still doesn’t have a great logo, or labels for the first shipment, or even shipping envelopes. I knew I could do all of those things once I launched and got customers.

Content is greater than Features

The biggest oversight I had when launching was not to have as much content as I should have. The number one criticism about the site was that my tea section was empty. I initially thought that didn’t matter because each month the tea selection is chosen by myself and my team but I quickly learned that people want to see what they could be buying.

Next time I’ll make sure I’ll have all the content I need and potentially pass of some features that aren’t necessary.

Leverage your Network

Once you’ve launched your company you need to market it and get the word about about it. One of the best ways I found to do this was to leverage my social network. I created a Facebook page and a Twitter account and told all of my friends, family, acquaintances and pretty much anyone I could about it. Ask people to sign up, ask people to give you money, do whatever you can to get people to sign up and tell their friends about it.

I’m still learning about running my own company so if you have any tips or tricks I’d love to hear about them. Also if you haven’t seen the copious amounts of links, sign up for Steep.ly now!

People

The people at G Adventures are some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. It really makes work enjoyable when coming in every morning feels more like hanging out with friends instead of a tedious chore. Along with the great people, G Adventures also has a very shallow management structure. Above me is my manager, the CTO and then Bruce Poon Tip. This shallow structure allows decisions to be made quicker and without the waste of getting 50 people to approve a single decision.

Bruce is also one of the best CEO’s/Owners I’ve ever known. He cares for the business, the travelers and especially the employees. I’ve worked at business where you never see the top management team. At G, my desk is 10 feet away from Bruce and conversations happen regularly. This is a leadership quality that I plan on taking to any companies that I create in the future.

Technology

Because of the shallow management structure, the developers at G are able to manage our own technology stack. This means that we have the final say on what software we use, what servers we host our stuff on and even on when we deploy. Because of this, we’re also able to try out new technologies faster. If we want to try out the latest CSS/HTML framework, new deployment script or the latest programming language we can try it out. If it works we’ll launch it into production.

To further our learning, G promotes going to meetups and technology conferences. This helps us as developers improve our skills which also helps the company. It’s small things like this that make developers feel at home here and foster a culture of innovation.

Culture

One of the important aspects of any company is the culture that it has. If you’re miserable at work it doesn’t matter how much you get paid; it’s not worth it. You often spend more time at work than you do awake at home so the culture has to be right. At G we have a number of things that help create a welcoming culture. Every friday at 4pm we have Beer O’Clock. Employees are encouraged to go down to the kitchen and grab a beer (or wine) and mingle. This time allows people that wouldn’t normally talk in their normal work days a chance to catchup and talk about things outside of work.

We also do a number of things outside of the Travel Industry. In response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti we raised over $10,000 for relief. We also have a number of outreach events in Toronto including Christmas in the Community for underprivileged kids. These events just add to the culture at G and make the work environment so much more rewarding.

Culture is so important at G that we even have a special “Culture Fit” interview that decides whether a person is right for the job.

Things We Can Do Better

Open Source All the Things: G Adventures writes a lot of code. With 16 developers and growing we generate a lot of unique software tools and applications but most never reaches the development community. I think we should release more software, both to give back to the community as well as make our code better.

20% Time: Google is famous for their “20 percent time” policy that has employees working 80% of their week on their normal projects and 20% of their week on projects of their choosing that would normally be outside of their job description. I think this is a fantastic idea that allows developers to think of creative ideas that can benefit the company.

Hackathons:  Hackathons are a great way to get the creative juices flowing. Whenever I complete a hackathon I always feel revitalized and exited, coming back to work with new ideas on things to work on. I think G Adventures should host semi-regular hackathons, not only for our own developers but for the community as well.

If you’re interested in working for G Adventures feel free to contact me or check out our open positions.

After a brief conversation I came to the conclusion that meetings are poisonous and should be removed from the social norm of the business world.

Meetings Kill Productivity

One of the biggest problems with meetings is that they kill productivity. Every time you have a meeting your mind has to switch contexts and focus on something other than what you were working on. When the meeting is over your mind has to switch back to what you were working on in the first place.

Every time you have to context switch you lose valuable time which could have been used to complete your tasks quicker.

Meetings Waste Time

Meetings, more often than not, waste the time of everyone attending. People start day dreaming, surfing the internet or working on other things as soon as the topic goes to anything that’s not directly related to their job. If the meeting has more than five people there is no way it can keep everyone’s attention.

Even when the meeting stays on topic very little is accomplished. Decisions that can be made in the short time-span of the meeting can often be made without a meeting and harder decisions are generally impossible to reach with the consensus of a group.

Meetings Frustrate People

When was the last time you heard someone say “That meeting was great, I got a lot out of it”? People generally leave meetings frustrated and annoyed because they waste time, kill their productivity and get little done. Often meetings won’t go as scheduled and this leaves the employees even more frustrated. Thirty minute meetings can quickly turn into hour-long meetings if the leader is disorganized or there isn’t a specific game plan laid out for the meeting.

Tips for Meetings (if you must have one)

30 minutes or less: Longer meetings don’t mean you get more done. Keep your meetings short and on point.
End the meeting early: Ending the meeting early will make people think it was productive.
No Laptops or Phones: These just provide distractions for people and take away from the purpose of the meeting.
Take Charge: The person who calls the meeting should take charge. When there’s not a leader people get off track unfocused.
5 People or Less: As soon as you have more than 5 people the meeting gets out of hand. Keeping it to less than 5 people means every one can talk and discuss without stepping on one another’s toes.
Action Plan: Every meeting should end with an action plan. This action plan should have 3 items or less so people can quickly get them done.

Before you schedule your next meeting ask yourself “Is this meeting necessary”. If the answer is yes, make sure you follow the above tips to make sure you don’t waste everyone’s time.

I started talking about beer and cooking, two things that I enjoy, and the rest of the interview went without a hitch. I later learned that if those three people hadn’t of liked me or didn’t think I was a good fit, I wouldn’t have been hired. I think every company should hire for culture, not skill and here’s why.

A Better Workplace Community
I was once apart of a development team of 3 people (including myself) and it was absolutely toxic. Entire weeks would go by where we wouldn’t talk to one another. It wasn’t that we disliked one another, we just had very little in common and the other developers were on the more extreme side of introverted.

If your employees are hanging out together after work, you’re doing something right. Hiring people who fit into your company’s culture creates better teams and happier employees.

Less Turnover
When employees don’t get along with each other they leave. Every time you have to train a new person it costs the company money and the team loses a little morale. From the other developers I’ve talked to when they don’t get along with their team they’re constantly looking for new opportunities with new companies.

I’ve been at G Adventures for almost 2 years now and it’s fantastic. Because everyone gets along there isn’t the constant searching for better opportunities.

A Better Company
Happy employees are fundamental to a successful company. It doesn’t matter if you hired the best programmers in the world (from a technical standpoint), if they don’t get along with one another your company won’t be successful.

Whether you’re running a startup, a Fortune 500 company or just managing a small team of developers, hiring for culture is the smartest thing you can do. It’ll save you a lot of headaches down the road when your team doesn’t work as one.

I work for G Adventures, all the thoughts above are my own and in no way represent official G Adventures statements.