In corporations, as you move up the ladder, you get more and more general. Your goal is to specialize less, and manage more. In startups, it’s the reverse. The goal is to get more and more specialized in your role.

At the beginning, the team must all be generalist. I was (…am?) the product manager, business development lead, marketing/pr, VP finance, HR, operations, and vision person. Simon does all of tech, he codes, he strategizes, he runs QA he works on back end development and front end code. He builds APIS and manages all tracking. Matt designs everything, from wireframes, to emails we send. He would select colors, would pick fonts, would adjust copy and determine tone and feel…He would see broadly what the essence of the product must be, but be able to nit pick minor pixel errors….And that’s just the stuff within our functional areas…We all overlap, we all give each other feedback…

We all had to be great at the big picture, but also be able, willing and nimble enough to get dirty in the details. We would have to be able to learn to prioritize, cut, remove, edit when there was too much going on…and also be able to fight for pieces of what is essential to product, the story and the company. As a young startup, we all still do many of the tasks above, but now we are growing, the goal, is to get LESS general. I will cut out HR/operations, accounting and PR…Simon will bring on an expert in back-end and mobile developers… Matt will do less copy editing and email maneuvering and more wireframes, and overall branding…

It’s striking how different this is than life in a corporate environment. In corporate, you want to do less detail, want to take on more and more, have more direct reports, mange up more…you try and move away from specialization.

In startup, you move towards a place where you can remove yourself from the process and it still works! You take yourself out of roles, you hire people that take things off your plate so you can do less! That’s what you aim for… ironic, no? You build something and your goal is to have it work without you!

I got to the office yesterday and my team (five engineers) were having a meeting without me… at first I felt excluded! And then I realized I was doing my job.