Or John Doesn’t Know S**t about Crypto:
a mostly accurate overview with only a few misleading generalizations
​
It was great presenting to the Notre Dame Tech Forum on a few central crypto concepts:

1. What is money?
2. So why was Bitcoin invented?  
3. Wait, isn’t this all just a scam?
4. Blockchains and Distributed Apps –  powering the future !?
5. Distributed Finance – get a loan without talking to a bank
6. Enterprise Blockchains – so companies / problems I’ve heard use this?
7. Distributed Autonomous Organizations – the future of human society !?

​
​Below is the presentation and here is the recording of the event along with the presentation.
​

My favorite overview of DeFi that I have read so far is Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain- and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets written by Fabian Schar and published by the St. Louis Fed. (Although a few things seem a bit out-of-date since it is a year old and Whiteboard Crypto on YouTube is a tad bit more accessible.) 

Here are a few of my takeaways from reading this article.

DeFi replicates existing financial services in a more open and transparent way. In particular, DeFi does not rely on intermediaries and centralized institutions. Instead, it is a blockchain-based financial infrastructure with open protocols and decentralized applications (DApps). Besides a rich instruction set DApps or smart contracts can also acts as custodian for crypto assets.
 
(DApps or smart contract theoretically could be any arbitrary computer program since they run on Turing complete blockchains (all but Bitcoin); although they are very inefficient. The ability to run more complex smart contracts is one of the biggest differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum block chains.  Blockchains like Solana are designed to address the inefficiency or scalability problems of blockchains like Ethereum).   
 
Native protocol crypto assets (BTC, ETH or cryptocurrencies ) are used to operate the blockchain. 
 
Crypto assets that are tokens are units of value that blockchain based organizations or projects develop on top of existing block chain networks. Token standards include ERC-20 for tokens which can interoperate with Ethereum's ecosystem of decentralized apps. ERC-720 are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) used to tokenize ownership of any arbitrary data. For example they can be the digital representation of a physical object such as a piece of art.
 
This means that tokens can serve a variety of purposes: including governance tokens for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), tokens that allow the holder to perform specific actions in a smart contract, tokens that resemble shares or bonds, and even synthetic tokens that can track the price of any real-world asset.

As you can see above, besides settlement layer (blockchain native protocols) and asset layer (including tokens) there is a protocol layer containing decentralized exchanges used by other DApps, an application layer, and aggregation layer to connect several applications and protocols

In decentralized exchanges, users do not need to deposit their funds which is the case with centralized exchange. Instead, users maintain control of their assets until the trade is executed. Trade execution happens atomically through a smart contract, meaning that both sides of the trade are performed in one indivisible transaction, mitigating the counterparty credit risk. Depending on the exact implementation, the smart contract may assume additional roles, effectively making many intermediaries such as escrow services and central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) obsolete.
           
​Decentralized lending platforms and loans are an essential part of the DeFi ecosystem. Defi loans do not need to rely on trusted relationships via one of two methods. One method is credit being provided under the condition that the loan must be repaid atomically, meaning that the borrower receives the funds, uses, and repays them—all within the same blockchain transaction. A second way is loans can be fully secured with collateral. The collateral is locked in a smart contract and only released once the debt is repaid.

One type of collateralized loan platforms allow the user to create collateralized debt positions; in other words the user gets new tokens back by collateral locked in smart contract (or in the example below, just USD). For example MakerDAO is a decentralized protocol that is used to issue the USD-pegged Dai stablecoin.  First, the user deposits ETH in a smart contract classified as a collateralized debt position (CDP) (or vault). Subsequently, they call a contract function to create and withdraw a certain number of Dai and thereby lock the collateral. 

There are also collateralized debt markets. Instead of creating new tokens, it is also possible to borrow existing cryptoassets from someone else - either pooled (subject to supply and demand) or P2P (person to person).

Decentralized derivatives are tokens that derive their value from an underlying asset's performance (tokenized versions of stocks, precious metals, alternative crypto assets), the outcome of an event, or the development of any other observable variable.
 
For on-chain asset management whenever someone invests in an on-chain fund, the corresponding smart contract issues fund tokens and transfers them to the investor's account. These tokens represent partial ownership of the fund and allow token holders to redeem or liquidate their share of the assets.
 
In summary, the opportunities of DeFi are based on

• Efficiencies: While much of the traditional financial system is trust based and dependent on centralized institutions, DeFi replaces some of these trust requirements with smart contracts. The contracts can assume the roles of custodians, escrow agents, and CCPs.
• Transparency: All transactions are publicly observable and smart contract code can be analyzed on chain.
• Accessibility: Theoretically open to anyone, the risk of discrimination is almost inexistent due to lack of identities.
• Composability: Any two or more pieces can be integrated, forked, or rehashed to create something entirely new. Anything that has been created before can be used by an individual or by other smart contracts. This flexibility allows for an ever-expanding range of possibilities and unprecedented interest in open financial engineering.

 
The risks include:

• Smart contract execution: Users have to be aware that the protocol is only as secure as the smart contracts underlying it; leaving it vulnerable to coding errors or exploration (by analyzing the transparent underlying code).  Most users won't be able to read contract code, understand its potential security concerns, or understand the data payload - and there is no central administration to adjudicate issues or risks (although there are insurance and other similar services).

• Operational security: While blockchains are permissionless and not reliant on a central government or authority; ironically governance and some control is often held by a small groups of people (usually the project's core team) and smart contracts are reliant on external data.

• Illicit activity: Pseudonymity can be abused by actors with dishonest intentions. Regulators can (or should) regulate a decentralized infrastructure, there are two areas that deserve special attention, namely, fiat on- and off-ramps and the decentralization theater.

• Scalability: (This is why I am intrigued since by Solana which is built with native parallelism; Solana scalability >> Ethereum scalability)

 
DeFi has unleashed a wave of innovation. On the one hand, developers are using smart contracts and the decentralized settlement layer to create trustless versions of traditional financial instruments. On the other hand, they are creating entirely new financial instruments that could not be realized without the underlying public blockchain. Atomic swaps, autonomous liquidity pools, decentralized stablecoins, and flash loans are just a few of many examples that show the great potential of this ecosystem.

It was great presenting to the Notre Dame Tech Forum. 
Everyone got to tell me:

What Do I Have Wrong about
What You Need to Get Right
To Grow a Company?

The five things I think you need to get right include:
​

• Find Product Market Fit  (inspired by @ Marc Andreessen)
• Optimize Marketing / Sales Funnel 
• Create Customer Success  (inspired by Nick Mehta)
• Build Company Culture (inspired by Dan Coyle) 
• Use KPIs for Continuous Improvement (main metric from Dave Kellogg)

​Below is the presentation and here is the recording of the event. 
​

Platform and APIs can also lead to happier or at least more easily retained customers (leaving you may also mean leaving or at least changing how they interact with vendors from your partner ecosystem) and a lower cost and higher win rate for big prospects.   The customization afforded in an on-premise world can be more easily replicated for SaaS when there is a platform.  Often you have to say "no, that is not on our roadmap" to a big prospect who needs some specific capability (often for big enterprise prospects it is an integration into a legacy system). However if you have a platform your answer can more likely be "yes, you can do that via our APIs, let's show you how or introduce you to a third party integrator."  (This is certainly one of the few times you'd say "wow, the cloud is finally catching up to on-prem.")

​Later technologies such as blockchain could usher in new era of api-driven business models as Joe Liebkind contends. However much like the same way that 25 years ago we couldn’t imagine the value and capabilities the web delivers today; we have little ability to understand how the proliferation of blockchain’s distributed, trusted, transactional capabilities will impact our economy (more on this in an upcoming blog post). 
 
HOW
Whether building from scratch or undertaking the long, difficult journey to transform current (often on-premise often monolith) software to being services and API based; it's going to be tough.
 
In short, you need to consider your platform business offering like any other business offering

• What are the objectives or strategy
• How are you going to design, build, test and deliver it
• How will your customer use it
• How will you manage and maintain it throughout its lifecycle

​(Themes emphasized by Carol Russell and Forrester’s Randy Heffner)
 
Another way to consider the business plan for an API or platform is the API Model Canvas (created by Manfred Bortenschlager based on the Lean Canvas).

Platform strategy can also be considered through the lens of developer experience.  In an often quoted 2012 speech by John Musser at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, he said that the
​5 Keys to a Great API are

• Provide a valuable service
• Have a plan and a business model
• Make it simple and flexible
• It should be managed and measured
• Provide great developer support

Every platform requires developers; here are a few tips to provide great developer support and build a vibrant developer community

• Develop inbound SEO acquisition and brand to attract developers
• Create scalable content (tutorials, guides, API references)
• Build community and boost champions
• Have a dedicated developer support and onboarding team (You need people focused on the success of the big partners that your PM and BD team recruited to expand your offering.)
• Understand your audience (and not all of them will be developers. The decision makers and stakeholders in partner companies will include CROs, business  development executives, and CEOs!) 

​Platforms and Product Led Growth
Platforms can help you expand or build your offering and your company in a variety of ways: by organically or inorganically becoming a multi-product line company (good luck doing this without being a platform company), by enabling system integrators (SIs) and value-added resellers (VARs) to implement or extend your SaaS offering, by enabling product partners to provide integrated related functionality, and by allowing you to more easily integrate with supplier partners that provide functionality.​​

(or at least just listen to a select few when considering long term SaaS product strategy)

SHORT TERM SAAS PRODUCT STRATEGY
You should definitely be listening to clients, partners, internal stakeholders, prospects, and product metrics when considering what to do next with your current products - your short term product strategy.  As discussed in SaaS Product Metrics, the KPIs for these products could include win rate, customer adoption, customer NPS, short term revenue, and alignment with the your company's (short term) KPIs and metrics. 

However your short term SaaS product strategy is often focused on market penetration; it is usually a bottom's up view of how to maximize the value of your current products in your current market (your current customers and customers like them).  The Ansoff Matrix, one of the frameworks mentioned in Notes on Software Product Strategy, illustrates that there are other perspective you can consider for your SaaS product strategy.

LONG TERM SAAS PRODUCT STRATEGY
You can consider what future products you can sell into your current markets by creating a (future) product development strategy.  Also you can consider how to modify your current products to sell into future markets as part of your market development plans. (Both of these strategies are easier if you are a platform company; API-centric cloud platforms enable developers to more quickly build complementary products).  
As part of this longer term product strategy you should consider 

• Company vision and longer term company strategy
• Market forces (For example conside Porter's Five Forces framework which is discussed in Notes on Software Product Strategy:  competitive rivalries, power of suppliers, power of customers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitute products). 
• Competitors in these new markets and for these new products
• Ideas from a few of your best and most visionary customers about
  • how your core capabilities can provide value in other parts of their business (future product development)
  • how modified versions of your products can help these customers grow in other geographic / vertical markets.

In other words, you need to build your perspective on a given market and how your offerings and distinct value proposition fits into this ecosystem. 

And remember you need short term deliverables for longer term strategic goals agreed upon across your company as there will always be pressure to use that capacity to accommodate short term revenue requests.  There will always be an inherent tension between the Sales team who is paid to deliver monthly and quarterly results and the Product team who is paid to consider quarterly and yearly impact.  

And there will always be less capacity than you think. 

Core SaaS Company Metrics include:

• Customer Acquisition Cost
• Annual Recurring Revenue
• Annual Contract Value (or Net New ARR)
• Churn (attrition)
• Cash Flow

https://blog.hubspot.com/service/saas-metrics
https://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/
​

from: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/

Tien Tzuo CEO of Zuora says that there are only three metrics that really matter for SaaS companies:

• Retention Rate (how much ARR you keep every year)
• Recurring Profit Margin (ARR - Churn - non-growth spend)
• Growth Efficiency (how much does it cost you to acquire $1 of ACV)

http://www.slideshare.net/Zuora/zuora-always-on20123-saas-metrics-that-matter-12301579
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/3-key-metrics-matter-new-subscription-economy
​

Product Metrics:
As a product manager or product business owner you should choose from these core SaaS company metrics and a variety of other metrics to understand the performance of your product.  Track both the metrics themselves and the trends in your metrics such as:

​Marketing & Sales Performance (for different markets / segments)

• Customer Acquisition Costs (including marketing lead analysis and sales funnel analysis)        

​from: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/

General Product Health

• Main Value Proposition Metric:                                                                             Is your product achieving its described central benefit for your principal (or various) persona?  “Administrators can now save 50% more with our offering… End users can do this task 75% faster...”
• Other Product Usage Analytics:                                                                             In-product analytics help you see if your product is behaving and creating value as expected. Product engagement tools such as Pendo, Google Analytics, or Adobe Analytics can facilitate this analysis. Often enterprise SaaS or transactional applications are trying to lower the amount of time a user spends to complete a task unlike consumer or engagement apps which are trying to increase the total time a user spends in an application. 
• Overall Financial Analysis:                                                                                   This includes many of the metrics already mentioned and others such as Gross Margin, Customer Lifetime Value, and metrics which represent whatever other assumptions were made as part of the business case and pricing strategy.
• Internal Team Metrics:                                                                                           Obviously a broad variety of metrics could be considered including team sentiment and key stakeholder metrics such as feature release quality for Dev Ops or story points for Agile teams.
• Software Quality and Support:                                                                                Examples include open tickets (per customer), time to close (different priority support tickets) and open bugs. 

Further References:

• https://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/articles/15-product-management-metrics-you-should-know
• https://280group.com/product-management-blog/25-metrics-matter-mobile-product-managers-2018/
• https://www.gainsight.com/blog/calculate-6-key-customer-success-metrics/
• https://productcoalition.com/critical-metrics-every-product-manager-must-track-c5f1e46e3423
• https://medium.com/product-breakdown/product-management-analytics-what-metrics-should-you-be-measuring-241609b1950d
• https://svpg.com/the-role-of-analytics

Recently in my blog on Product Frameworks, I mentioned some of the common components of a product strategy.  Previously I published some product strategy notes from the class I taught at Stanford in their Continuing Studies department.  (Also here is a video of me discussing Platform / ISV strategy while at Salesforce.com).

Basic Strategy Model
When I taught my class, the basic strategy model was:

• Where should we go?  Using market analysis & competitive analysis, financial plans, and success metrics.  
• Why will we be successful there? Using core competencies, mission, and competitive differentiation.

​Market & competitive analysis sources include:  clients, analysts, competitor websites, and other internet / published sources; and they can be utilized in one or more of a different frameworks such as (mostly from Gorchels The Product Managers Handbook)

• Market Segment Analysis (percentage of company sales, percentage of industry sales, market attractiveness, size, growth rate, etc.) 
• Basic Competitive Analysis (including competitive analysis via advertised positioning)
• Competitive Analysis Alternatives (direct competitors, substitutes, etc.)

This analysis can help you make decisions both about a specific product and about investments across a product line or portfolio. 

Product Portfolio Decisions
Other frameworks that help you make your portfolio investment strategy decisions include Porter's Five Forces for Market Competitiveness

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by Kim and Mauborgne 

 
​Boston Consulting Group's Product Portfolio Growth-Share Matrix

​Ansoff Matrix

However the trade-offs are rarely that simple as we need to consider a variety of factors:

• New Product vs. Mature Product
• New Market vs. Existing Market
• Short Term vs. Long Term Revenue
• Usage vs. Revenue
• Client A vs. Client B
• Research vs. Development
• High Risk vs. Low Risk

Agile Product Strategists
As stated in the Product Frameworks blog post, with the advent of Agile methodologies another viewpoint is that product strategy activities are owned by Product Strategists (External Facing Agile Product Managers):

• Understand market needs and competitors offerings
• Talk with customers; work closely with Sales, Marketing, Services and Product Marketing
• Position product and create roadmap
• Own launches, pricing, beta programs, and product revenue
• Consider next major release and next MRD

Lean Startup
An even more recent take on product strategy is what is prescribed for start-ups by Eric Ries in Lean Startup (Amazon, Medium, Wikipedia)

In short, startups have a vision and employ a strategy to achieve their vision (business model, roadmap, product roadmap, point-of-view about partners, competitors, customers), the product is the end result of this strategy.  Products are always evolving, sometimes strategies change, visions almost never change.

(from LightCastle Partners)
​​ 
An MVP for a proposed solution or product should be quickly defined and then  actionable (not vanity) metrics should be used to quickly iterate and incrementally improve a product for a better product market fit (Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop).  The two most important assumptions are the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis.   Your MVP will have to be geared towards early adopters who understand the kinks haven’t been completely worked out for your innovative product.

Previously I listed a few product management resources including 

• Marty Cagan's book "Inspired" which I review here
• A list of product mgt associations, consultants, blogs, and courses 
• A few product management and business strategy books 

In those resources there are product frameworks that can help you consider what are the right activities at the right time during a product lifecycle. These include:

280Group's Optimal Product Process

Brian Lawley and the 280 Group has some great PM training and resources.
​​
Pragmatic Marketing Product Management Triad

(As previously mentioned, Pragmatic Institute is well known for its training.)

SirriusDecisions Product Marketing and Management Model

(Recently I discussed some of these frameworks with a few colleagues including Kathleen Marzahl and Rick Xu). 

One theme often found in these frameworks and in other descriptions of product management is a delineation between technical (execution, internal facing) and strategic (external facing) activities.

Often in Agile methodologies there are:

Technical PMs (Internal Facing “Agile Product Owner”)

• Lead daily stand-ups, get issues resolved that are in the way of developers making progress
• Own product specifics (PRD, specific requirements) and backlogs
• Work on dev/test/release process (or ultimately a DevOps culture with frequent releases) and bug log w/ Tech Lead
• Consider the next minor release

 
Strategists (External Facing Agile Product Managers):

• Understand market needs and competitors offerings
• Talk with customers; work closely with Sales, Marketing, Services and Product Marketing
• Position product and create roadmap
• Own launches, pricing, beta programs, and product revenue
• Consider next major release and next MRD

Here are a few additional resources that detail this distinction
ProductPlan Product Manager vs. Product Owner
Aha Product Manager vs. Product Owner
Agile Product Manager vs Product Owner at SmartSheet

Similarly Marty Cagan says establishing a strong product culture requires 

• Innovation culture: compelling product visions, strong product managers, empowered business and customer savvy teams product teams often in discovery
• Execution culture: urgency, high-integrity commitments, accountability, collaboration, results orientation, recognition, strong delivery management, frequent release cycles 

In "The Culture Code - The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups" Daniel Coyle quotes a Harvard study of more than 200 companies which measured the impact of a strong culture: net income increase of 756 percent over 11 years.

Coyle says that culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do. Coyle suggests that what you should do is build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose.

Build Safety

Clear signals of "safe connections" generate bonds of belonging or identity.  "We are close, we are safe, we share a future"

Coyle quotes Alex Pentland from the MIT Human Dynamics Lab, “Modern society is an incredibly recent phenomenon. For hundred of thousands of years, we needed ways to develop cohesion because we depended so much on each other.  We used signals long before we used language, and our unconscious brains are incredibly attended to certain types of behaviors. As far as our brain is concerned, if our social system rejects us, we could die”

Pentland’s studies show team performance is driven by five measurable factors:

• Everyone in the groups talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contribution short.
• Members maintain high levels of eye contract, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.
• Members communicate directly with one another, not just the team leader.
• Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
• Membership periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to the team.

Other Tips Coyle provides to "Build Safety" include:

• Over communicate your listening (avoid interruptions)
• Spotlight your fallibility early on; especially if you are a leader (to create safety). Leaders need to actively invite input
• Embrace the messenger (of bad news)
• Preview future connectors 
• Overdo Thank-Yous (express gratitude)
• Be painstaking in the hiring process
• Eliminate bad apples
• Create safe, collision-rich spaces
• Make sure everyone has a voice
• Pick-up trash (shows humility; shows you are serving the group) 
• Capitalize on threshold moments (that signal we are together now)
• Avoid giving sandwich feedback (make it two separate processes, people either focus entirely on the positive or on the negative)
• Embrace fun

Share Vulnerability

Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway through which trusting cooperating is built. A series of small, humble exchanges "Anybody haven ideas?" "Tell me what you want", and "I’ll help you" - can unlock a group’s ability to perform.

Braintrust meetings at Pixar and AAR (After Action Review) by Navy Seals can be uncomfortable and candor filled: Where did we fail? What did each of us do and why did we do it?  What will we do differently next time? AARs can be raw, painful, and filled with pulses of emotion and uncertainty

Ideas from IDEO on what questions teams could ask themselves to help improve include:

• One thing that excited me about this particular opportunity is ….
• I confess, the one thing I’m not so excited about with this particular opportunity is …
• On this project, I’d really like to get better at …

Other tips Coyle offers to "Share Vulnerability" include: 

• Make sure leader is vulnerable first and often. “I screwed up” are the most important words any leader can say. Laszlo Bock, former head of People Analytics at Google, recommends that leaders ask their people three questions:
  • What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do?
  • What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often?
  • What can I do to make you more effective?
• Overcommunicate expectations
• Deliver the negative stuff in person
• When forming new groups, focus on two critical moments: the first vulnerability and the first disagreement
• Listen like a trampoline: not just nodding, but adding insight and creating moments of mutual discovery 
  • Make the other person feel safe and supported
  • Take a helping, cooperative stance
  • Occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions 
  • Make occasional suggestion to open up alternative path.
  • In conversation, resistance the temptation to reflexively add value. Don’t immediately say “I have a similar idea” or “this is what worked for me”
• Use Candor-Generative practices like AARs and BrainTrusts
  • What were out intended results?
  • What were our actual results?
  • What caused our results?
  • What will we do the same the next time?
  • What will we do differently?
• Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty: By aiming for candor - feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful - its easier to maintain a sense of safety and belonging to the group
• Embrace the discomfort (like in AAR) 
• Align language with action (use the language that is reflective of your culture)
• Build a wall between performance review and professional development 
• Use flash mentoring
• Make the leader occasionally disappear

Establish Purpose

Successful groups use their language and their stories to over communicate why they exist (the difference they make) and how individuals contribute to that difference.

One exercise that uses this principle is mental contrasting; motivation is not a possession but rather the result of a two-part process of channeling your attention.

• Step 1) Think about a realistic goal that you’d like to achieve.  It could be anything: become skilled at a sport, rededicate yourself to a relationship, lose a few pounds, get a new job.  Spend a few second reflecting on that goal and imagining its come true.  Picture a future where you’ve achieve it.
• Step 2): Take a few seconds and picture the obstacle between you and that goal as vividly as possible.  Don’t gloss over the negatives, buy try to see them as they truly are.  For example, if you were trying to lose weight, you might picture those moments of weakness when you smell warm cookies, and you decide to eat one (or three)

So aligning motivations can change someone's performance. Similarly replacing one story for another can impact performance.  In one study, when a test randomly identified a child as having "unusual potential for intellectual growth" and those "results" are shared with their teachers; the students test scores and IQ scores increased.

Real-time signals through which team members were connected (or not) with the purposes of the work consists of five basic types:

• Framing - conceptualize the team mission
• Roles - why each role was important
• Rehearsal - teams did elaborate dry runs
• Explicit encouragement to speak up
• Active reflection

Other tips Coyle provides to "Establish Purpose" include:

• Name and rank your priorities
• Be ten times as clear about your priorities as you think you should be
• Figure out where your group aims for proficiency and where it aims for creativity
• Embrace the use of catchphrases:
  • “Create fun and a little weirdness” (Zappos),
  • “Talk less, do more” (IDEO)
  • “Work hard, be nice” (KIPP)
  • “Pound the rock” (San Antonio Spurs)
  • “Leave the jersey in a better place” (New Zealand All-Blacks)
  • “Create raves for guests” (Danny Meyer’s restaurants)
• Measure what really matters
• Use artifacts
• Focus on bar-setting behaviors

Saying from Pixar's Ed Catmull about culture include:

• Hire people smarter than you
• Fail early, fail often
• Listen to everyone’s ideas.
• Face to everyone’s ideas.
• Face toward the problems.
• B-level work is bad for your solution
• Its more important to invest in good people than in good ideas