1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,070 - So you're a tiny little company. 2 00:00:02,070 --> 00:00:05,070 It's you and your two co-founders. 3 00:00:05,070 --> 00:00:08,080 You're working on your first prototype, 4 00:00:08,080 --> 00:00:11,030 and that first product that you're going to go to market with 5 00:00:11,030 --> 00:00:14,010 is sort of front of mind. 6 00:00:14,010 --> 00:00:17,020 What are you going to look like 10 years from now, 7 00:00:17,020 --> 00:00:20,070 when you're a company with a thousand or 1500 people, 8 00:00:20,070 --> 00:00:22,080 you've got customers all over the world, 9 00:00:22,080 --> 00:00:26,010 you've got a broad and diverse product set? 10 00:00:26,010 --> 00:00:29,050 Now, spending a lot of time thinking about that 11 00:00:29,050 --> 00:00:32,010 is probably not the best use of your time at this stage 12 00:00:32,010 --> 00:00:33,050 where you're spending 100 hours a week 13 00:00:33,050 --> 00:00:35,050 trying to get that first product out, 14 00:00:35,050 --> 00:00:38,030 but spending zero amount of your time thinking about that 15 00:00:38,030 --> 00:00:39,090 is a mistake. 16 00:00:39,090 --> 00:00:42,000 The reason it's a mistake is that you want to have 17 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:44,070 a sense of where you're going with the product 18 00:00:44,070 --> 00:00:47,060 and your product family, you want to have a longterm vision 19 00:00:47,060 --> 00:00:50,020 and sort of the notion of scalability of that product 20 00:00:50,020 --> 00:00:51,090 is really important. 21 00:00:51,090 --> 00:00:54,020 Scalability is a word that's used a lot 22 00:00:54,020 --> 00:00:57,000 in the technology field in terms of the scalability 23 00:00:57,000 --> 00:00:59,020 of technology that's being created. 24 00:00:59,020 --> 00:01:01,030 You know, can you build this in such a way 25 00:01:01,030 --> 00:01:03,040 that many people can use it? 26 00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:04,080 Think about a company like Facebook 27 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:06,030 when it was just at the very beginning 28 00:01:06,030 --> 00:01:08,030 and it only had people from Harvard using it, 29 00:01:08,030 --> 00:01:12,010 to Facebook today, and the amount of technological energy 30 00:01:12,010 --> 00:01:14,010 that had to go into the product to make it scalable 31 00:01:14,010 --> 00:01:17,030 on that dimension, but it works with any kind of product. 32 00:01:17,030 --> 00:01:19,080 You're coming out with a new type 33 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:23,000 of vegan jerky, 34 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:25,070 you like beef jerky but you've decided you're vegan, 35 00:01:25,070 --> 00:01:28,080 and all the existing vegan jerky sucks, 36 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:30,040 and you've decided that you're going to create 37 00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:33,060 the next great vegan jerky, and the neat thing is 38 00:01:33,060 --> 00:01:38,060 that if you wander down the aisles of Whole Foods today, 39 00:01:38,060 --> 00:01:43,090 there are non-beef jerky, type, dry meat substitute things, 40 00:01:43,090 --> 00:01:45,070 but you don't like any of them and you know lots 41 00:01:45,070 --> 00:01:48,010 of other vegans that want that. 42 00:01:48,010 --> 00:01:51,090 If you're only selling into your local grocery store, 43 00:01:51,090 --> 00:01:54,000 and you're only selling into your local market, 44 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,020 and the product that you're building is really expensive 45 00:01:57,020 --> 00:01:59,070 and difficult to build and package, 46 00:01:59,070 --> 00:02:01,080 there will be no scalability. 47 00:02:01,080 --> 00:02:04,060 On the other hand, if you can envision what it's like 48 00:02:04,060 --> 00:02:09,000 to be in every single Whole Foods store in the world, 49 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:11,020 and if you can envision how it would be like 50 00:02:11,020 --> 00:02:13,000 to sell directly from your website 51 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:14,060 and directly through Amazon, 52 00:02:14,060 --> 00:02:16,030 and the packaging of the product, 53 00:02:16,030 --> 00:02:19,090 the distribution of the product, the pricing of the product, 54 00:02:19,090 --> 00:02:21,060 all of a sudden, it will change 55 00:02:21,060 --> 00:02:23,020 what you're actually building on day one 56 00:02:23,020 --> 00:02:25,090 and what that product looks like. 57 00:02:25,090 --> 00:02:28,040 Understanding how to scale your business 58 00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:30,040 is something that you'll learn continually 59 00:02:30,040 --> 00:02:32,050 over the life of your business, 60 00:02:32,050 --> 00:02:34,060 but starting with a view of what it could look like 61 00:02:34,060 --> 00:02:36,070 when the business is very very big, 62 00:02:36,070 --> 00:02:39,060 is a really useful place to begin with, 63 00:02:39,060 --> 00:02:43,000 as you're coming to market with that first product.