Recently Coinbase released a great memo on operating efficiently at scale.
I greatly respect Coinbase because they operate in perhaps the most unpredictable sector. One year they are growing 200 per cent YoY. Then a crypto winter arrives, and they need to shrink the business considerably. It’s very hard to adapt to such conditions at scale.
So I find their internal memos as some of the best written in the tech sector.
Here go my top five takeaways, alongside quotes from Brian Armstrong, CEO and Co-Founder of Coinbase:
Products are run as independent startups
The larger the company becomes, the more bureaucracy starts creeping in. It’s not easy to maintain a culture of innovation and frugality when that happens.
“We believe the right way to compete is to incentivise our product leaders to also run their product more like a standalone company. Companies must achieve profitable growth on some reasonable time horizon.”
Organise teams into small pods
Building on the previous point, the smaller the team, the more effective it is. There is no room for politics in small groups of people. Also, it’s clear to see who truly delivers on their targets.
“Within each product, we will be defining pods of <10 people working on a specific feature or area. If a pod grows to be more than 10 people, it will be time to split it in two and assign each one a more specific goal or focus.”
Ship products, not slide decks
It’s easy to get into a never-ending cycle of preparing proposals and fancy decks instead of shipping products or features. If you truly want to have a culture of execution, then you need to make it clear to each team what kind of output is rewarded.
Also Read: Funding Roundup: EventX bags additional US$8M; Coinbase, Grab execs join Ethlas’s US$2M round
“We’re experimenting with banning slide decks in product and engineering reviews. Instead of a slide deck, you can show:
- A dashboard with your metrics, hopefully, your team is looking at this at least weekly anyway
- Figma mockups
- But most importantly, show the product itself and use it live!”
APIs instead of meetings
The larger the organisation, the more people waste time on internal meetings. A simple solution is to have a process that forces each product and engineering team to publish APIs. In turn, that unlocks instant collaboration between different units.
“We need to move to a model where all product and engineering teams (not just shared services) publish APIs so that other teams can benefit from what they’re building without ever needing to schedule a meeting.”
Maintain an insurgent mindset
Armstrong said it best, it all comes down to having a founder mentality. A culture of ownership and accountability.
“Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to retaining the founder mentality inside the company and acting like owners. Most companies start off by being anti-establishment, seeking to right some wrong in the world. But as they grow bigger and more successful, they start to become the new establishment. They get complacent, feeling that they’ve won, and bureaucracy sets in.”
–
Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page
Image credit: Coinbase
The post Top 5 lessons from Coinbase on operating efficiently at scale appeared first on e27.