I love getting post board meeting emails that are retrospectives from execs in the meeting. This one came a week ago from Jeff Malek, the CTO and co-founder of BigDoor. They’ve been on a tear lately and are in the process of a massive set of Q1 launches for new customers.
We had a solid board meeting, but I suggested they were being too casual about a couple of things, including communication about what was going on. This is NOT a casual group and I knew using the word casual would press a few buttons. And they did – the right ones. Jeff’s retrospective is awesome and he was game to have me share it with you to get a sense of what’s inside a CTO’s head during and after a board meeting.
I have a retrospective addiction. But as a result of looking back at our meeting today Brad, words like ‘casual’ still ringing in my ears, I recognized I’d let some of my own assumptions drive away potential opportunities, maybe even creating some problems along the way. I’ve always run under the assumptions that :
- your inbox is an order of magnitude more onerous than mine (quite)
- the best way to respect and value your time would be to limit email/communication
- you and Keith have regular communications complete with bits about what I’m up to and thinking
- you know even in the absence of communication from me that I’m working like a madman, doing everything I can to make it happen
- you also know through some process of osmosis how much I value you, Foundry, your approach, feedback, etc
Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not that I took your feedback and concluded that I needed to give you more BigDoor insight, or that you needed more info in general to get a better picture – that’s what the numbers are for.
So while all of the above assumptions are probably true to some degree, here’s the new protocol I’m going to start optimistically running under:
- thanks to your candor and aversion to BS, you’ll tell me to STFU as needed
- you’d like a concise ping about whatever, whenever from me
- you’ll give me feedback if/when it makes sense to, and I won’t expect a reply otherwise, unless I’m asking a direct question
- doing so is likely to benefit both of us, one way or another – hopefully more candid feedback will ensue
- you know that I value your time highly, and mine specifically in the context of devoting most waking hours to making BigDoor a success
- you know that I am incredibly grateful to know you and have you as an investor
Those are my new assumptions. I felt like giving this topic some time and thought, glad I did, will keep it (mostly) short going forward but hopefully you know a bit more about where I’m coming from, out of this.
Thanks again for the time today, I thought it was an awesome f-ing meeting. I always leave them on fire.