New Company Kick Off Canvas
Steal my “Joining a new company canvas.”
30/60/90 plans don’t really work when joining early-stage companies, where the playing field changes rapidly. Looking 90 days into the future is pretty much impossible (and a useless exercise),
But I do follow a certain structure to get up to speed quicklywhen I join a new company. Steal this Miro canvas!
Business & Product fundamentals.
What business & product goals are we pursuing. Have we achieved the right degree of focus here?
Where are those metrics at today, how have they fluctuated over time?
What’s the product vision, mission, and strategy?
What does the Go to Market strategy look like on a high level?
Get to know end-users/customers
What’s our #1 ICP? ( I usually have 1:1s with each member of the leadership team to understand their individual thinking)
Which personas are involved in the decision-making cycle (buyer, end user, decision-maker, etc.). Who are we building for? Which roles does our system know to facilitate this?
What does our current customer base look like? What’s the connective tissue between our best-retained users?
Product core-value / differentiator for ICP/end-user target audience
Conversion friction. What’s blocking users from taking important conversion actions?
Churn reasons. Why are users/customers leaving us
Sales los reasons. Why are we losing deals?
How does customer feedback come in?
This process involves ride-alongs and conversations with members of the customer-facing teams (Sales, CS)
Understand the product
Get demos from the right people
Eat our own Dogfood
Understand product limitations
Understand customer journey flows
Dive into user analytics
Understand the competitive landscape
Direct
Indirect
Aspirational (can be outside of our product category)
What’s our differentiator?
Ways Of Working
Understand the Org chart
Participate in Scrum events
1:1s with engineers/designers/ PMs
Understand deployment process
Get to know systems & documentation
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