Articles by Gokul Rajaram
Self-serve first: the overlooked but essential paradigm underlying great software companiesGokul provides 4 reasons why bottoms-up sales can be a great business model: Here’s why great business software companies are self-serve first. 1. Unbounded acquisition: Self-serve adds rocket fuel to customer acquisition in three ways: stronger top of funnel, rapid global scale, and unique acquisition tactics. 2. Superior experience: A self-serve first business customer experience is intrinsically better because it’s been designed to be used like the best consumer software. 3. Lower operating costs: The per-customer support cost for self-serve first companies is much lower, since most support issues are handled by customers themselves. 4. Agile mindset: Working at a self-serve first company builds an inherent scrappiness.
- The CEO’s most important operational responsibility
Gokul begins by quoting Ben Horowitz: “Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.” He goes on to cover: • Why communication architecture matters • Evergreen communication choices • Communication choices with a daily, weekly or fortnightly cadence • Communication choices with a monthly, quarterly or annual cadence
- Values-based Firing
Gokul explains how there are three types of reasons to fire someone: performance, policy violation, or values violation.Values-based firings are the least common, but are needed to reinforce company values.
- Running an All-hands
Gokul uses Square's all-hands meeting as a template for explaining how to extract the most value from the time spent in an all-hands. His tips break down into: • An All-Hands should be run as soon as a company or group stops fitting into a single room. • Company All-Hands should be run weekly until the company reaches several hundred people, then move to a fortnightly cadence. • Group All-Hands should be run monthly or quarterly. • The leadership team should be deeply involved in curating the content for every All-Hands. • All-Hands should have a three-act structure: celebrate people and accomplishments, drive alignment around mission, strategy and priorities, and provide a forum to ask and answer questions. • Start with Why: Kick off the All-Hands by talking about the company's purpose and how it will make the world a better place. • Strategy: Describe the company's winning aspiration, where it plays, and how it will win. • Initiatives: Highlight the top 2-3 initiatives that are relevant to the strategy, pertinent, and important. • Q&A: Provide a forum for people to ask questions in advance and vote on them. Allow for two spontaneous questions. • Provide food and drinks at All-Hands.
- Gokul's SPADE Toolkit: How to implement Square's famous decision-making framework
Gokul and the team at Square developed this framework to solve problems arising from consensus-based decision processes. The SPADE process covers the Setting for the decision, the People who take responsibility, approve, and consult, Alternatives, the Decision made, and an Explanation for it.
