End of the year is here and our office is shutting down on Thursday. \u00a0At the end of each year I run a retrospective with my team on our accomplishments and failures for that year. \u00a0In a startup, it’s easy to focus on your failures, because it might seem there are more of them, or that they are more meaningful. \u00a0And I think that is fine. \u00a090% of our retrospectives are spent analyzing the KPIs we didn’t meet, and understanding why we didn’t meet them. \u00a0Being honest about where you are, and how you got there, is essential in any business. \u00a0In startups, it’s a requirement.<\/p>\n
This year we pivoted into a platform marketplace, bringing banks into our lending and savings platform for MNOs. \u00a0I learned\u00a0that building a platform doesn’t just include the software side of the business. \u00a0It also means the human, cultural, and organizational sides of the business. \u00a0I assumed that if we could build a platform, that the rest would fall in place. \u00a0That isn’t true. \u00a0I didn’t work hard enough to build the structures and processes to unleash the people around me, or in other teams. \u00a0A platform business is a fundamentally different type of business than what we were before. \u00a0A whole level of new interactions comes on board, and the people behind those interactions require support, sales, reporting, communication briefs, and bespoke analysis. \u00a0Those things require people to provide them, and people require leadership and a belief in what they are doing. \u00a0It was unfair for me to assume that would just happen, and everyone would understand clearly how being a platform meant they had to change the way they worked, and the outputs they were responsible for. \u00a0But I’ve learned that now, thanks to a retrospective, and we’re going to be a hell of a lot better next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
End of the year is here and our office is shutting down on Thursday. \u00a0At the end of each year I run a retrospective with my team on our accomplishments and failures for that year. \u00a0In a startup, it’s easy to focus on your failures, because it might seem there are more of them, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fintech","category-startup"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jongore.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}