On the importance of relevant advisory, mentorship, and coaching

When we started Ministry of Programming in 2015 we didn’t know much about leadership and management.

As an ex-developer, I was cocky and convinced that software engineering is more complex than management.

Is it really that hard to figure how to run a company?

I have heard the sentence that the key to building a successful company was just about great execution — whatever that means!

You just need to execute

Like any umbrella term — “execution” does not mean a thing to most people, nor does any academic definition encapsulate the full complexity of all the things you need to learn to lead and manage a company.

Over time, we built our own map of the things we had to learn to build a technology business:

• Strategy and Tactics
• Operations
• Legal Affairs
• People Management / HR
• Finances
• Administration
• Product Leadership and Management
• Marketing and Sales
• etc. etc. etc.

I realized that my 10 years of experience as a software engineer wasn’t helping in many of these areas.

The list of things we didn’t know as a management team was overwhelming. We realized that we don’t need to be experts and that we could hire others — but knowing the basics of sales, marketing, legal affairs, etc. is always helpful to manage other people.

How can you manage a team if you don’t know what quality is for each domain?

You need to keep learning at all times.

Learning by Burning

As the company grew from 3 to 160 people over the years we have learned many of these things by mistake and by burning cash.

Is there a better way to learn about legal affairs than to sign a bad contract and lose money? or is there a better way to learn about investments than to invest in a lousy startup and figure you have not done your due diligence properly?

“We are learning by burning” — Benjamin Bilski

Learning by mistake certainly builds strong memory and pattern recognition.

But is there an alternative?

Over time we started thinking that there must be a faster and more efficient way to learn and acquire all the knowledge needed to build a successful company instead of making the mistakes ourselves.

We wanted to save time.

We found great books, blogs, and podcasts, but nobody was sharing tactical advice and details applicable to our context.

There was a lot of WHAT but not too much HOW in the books.

There was a lot of inspiration, but few concrete examples that we could convert into action.

And then one day we figured a solution to this problem — learning from others.

What if we connect to people that have built similar companies as we did?

Most advisors and coaches are useless because their advice is out of context.

I have observed board meetings where external investors and advisors share their experience, but it’s not applicable to whatever we were doing.

We had advisors from Spotify and Uber, but often it wasn’t relevant for our companies.

Never choose brand/logo over context and relevant experience.

However, there is a special case of advisor, mentor, or coach — a person that went on a similar journey before.

For us, it was Keith Ippel — a seasoned manager that built a very similar company as “Ministry of Programming”.

Talking to a CEO that ran a company similar to the one you are building is like riding a time machine. That person can help you navigate very specific problems and give you actionable advice applicable to your context.

And then I realized what Charlie Munger meant when he said the following

One of the best ways to learn from mistakes is to learn from the mistakes of others. Learning from others’ mistakes is cost-free.

It’s certainly true that we learn best from the mistakes of others, as long as those mistakes were in a similar context as yours.

Bottom line? Find a relevant advisor, mentor, or coach that can help you.

Mirror and observe them doing your job if possible — look for concrete advice and example.

Avoid advisors that are not relevant to your context — 99% are not, even if they have a flashy logo on their LinkedIn profile.

Community and sharing knowledge

It’s a myth that people succeed alone. It’s always a team and community sport.

Execution is important, but building a support network is even more important.

Elon Musk, Larry Page, or Steve Jobs succeeded because of their environments and the people they were surrounded with.

Mark Zuckerberg had great investors, advisors, mentors, and coaches.

Many of them had strong support from their families and friends.

All of them had great employees.

Every successful individual is a product of their social graph.

Support and sharing knowledge is the mechanism that speeds up progress for entrepreneurs in a community.

This is exactly how Silicon Valley became what it is — not because the people there are the smartest in the world, but because they were an open community that shared ideas, knowledge, talent, and products with each other.

This is why we believe it’s essential to share knowledge and be generous with the time invested to help other entrepreneurs and why we are committed in order to help other entrepreneurs with our own advice and experience when applicable.

Sharing is caring.

Caring builds communities.

Communities succeed faster than individuals.

We will succeed only in one way — together.