I’m just going to say it.

You are doing way too many things.

But I am too. If I’m being transparent, my work and process was way different when Tundra Angels had a 6-12 members and we had one or two portfolio companies.

Now, we have nearly 50 members and 22 portfolio companies.

We want to help each of our portfolio companies. We want to help them raise capital, or navigate a challenge, or chat through terms on a potential funding round, etc. This means that the work stays the same but the inputs are far more plentiful.

It makes me think about something subtle - no VC hardly ever gets to the level of granular detail in their due diligence on how that founder spends their time.

Yet, my hypothesis is that how founders spend their time can be a secret weapon.

I am writing this, not as someone who has mastered time or am highly contributory with every work day. I’m writing this as someone who is learning, and yet has seen the execution paths of countless founders, and am continually learning and adapting from it. And I wanted to share some raw thoughts here.

I’ve seen that there are three dynamics at play that I am calling the Three T’s in Startups.

The Three “T’s” in Startups

An early stage tech startup is a extreme context where extreme variables are at play.

✅ A small Team, in a constrained Time frame, is trying to maximize as much Traction as possible in order to raise the next round of capital from investors. ✅

Breaking this down…

✅ A small team… (constrained inputs)

in a limited time frame… (constrained time frame)

…to maximize as much traction as possible... (maximized outcome)

in order to raise the next round of capital from investors. ✅

This is one reason why tech startups are so incredibly difficult.

Inputs Create a Fog of War

On any startup journey, inputs are plentiful. Even if it’s not inputs from external sources such as customers, investors, etc. There are plentiful internal inputs - which features should we pursue? What should be our focus?

I’ve observed that as the number of inputs increases, something counterintuitive happens.

The rising number of inputs gives the impression that more needs to be done.

I’d argue that that’s a myth.

✅ I have found that more inputs doesn’t mean you need to rise to the level of the inputs. If means that you need to be much more ruthless about the inputs that you actually pursue. ✅

For me at least, the rising number of inputs creates this fog of war or a thick haziness as it relates to the path ahead.

Yet, high number of inputs requires much more ruthlessness than before. Ruthlessness that is required to cut things out and say “no” to.

One of the reasons that I’m writing this article now is that this rising number of inputs dynamic has been a dynamic that I’ve seen for quite some time.

But I’ve found that it wasn’t the businesses that needed to change. It was I that needed to change.

It was the way that I was managing the inputs.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a different mental model that I’m nowhere near perfect in implementing, but I wanted to share it here as I’m learning and implementing in real time.

Two dynamics here:

• Shrink the surface area of success.

• Find the lever and the fulcrum

Shrink the Surface Area of Success

For most founders, they are overachievers. Thus, the founders’ default setting is to wage the war on too many fronts.

In contrast, I think about this concept of the surface area of success.

✅ The surface area of success is how you define where you are going to play to be successful. ✅

How small or how expansive you define the surface area of success is proportional to sum of the inputs that you take in - the decisions that you need to make, the relationships that you need to manage, the number of things that could go right or wrong, etc.

You have a small surface area of success, you have fewer inputs, you have fewer decisions that you need to make, you have fewer relationships that you need to manage, you have fewer number of things that could go right or wrong, etc.

You expand the surface area, you multiply the inputs that you take in, you multiply the decisions that you need to make, you multiply the relationships that you need to manage, you multiply the number of things that could go wrong, etc.

In a context of the Three T’s of Startups, a small team, which is often comprised of 2-3 people needs to be ruthless in making their surface area of success as small as possible.

Expanding the surface area of success in any startup is appropriate, but only at the right time with the right resources.

The Surface Area of Success in Action

I recently spoke with a small startup team that has a product with several customers and are generating reasonable MRR for the size of the team and the customer base.

The founders had a product that was clearly superior to what was out there and customers really enjoyed. They had a very tight and simple product for customers to engage with, purchase, and implement.

And yet, the founding team was fundraising with a use of funds in order to build out a different tier of platform features to then sell to a higher level customer base with a higher average customer value.

When I was chatting with the founders, I brought up this idea that, “Yo you have a sellable product, customer like it. The simplicity is astounding. Why not sell the living daylights out of it? Why are you looking to build more?”

I saw something and it made me concerned. My question was fundamentally tied to the fact that this team was two people with limited inputs.

Yet, the founders were looking to fundraise to build more, which inadvertently would have made them move to fight the war on another front. They would be expanding there surface area of success, but the team size of two would stay the same. Now, I get that they were looking to fundraise to hire additional engineers, but that wasn’t relevant.

It was a surface area of success note, a strategy note. Building more with their product inadvertently would have made them depart the simplicity that customers liked and made them buy in the first place!

When success happens, and a founder is faced with a decision like this, it’s not that these founders can stop battling on the customer acquisition front and start battling on the product building front.

No, they had one front and were adding a front that they were waging war on - but with the same team. They were inadvertently bifurcating their attention, bifurcating their contribution, etc.

Back to the Three T’s of Startups expression,

✅ A small team… (constrained inputs)

in a limited time frame… (constrained time frame)

…to maximize as much traction as possible... (maximized outcome)

This team was looking to bifurcate their inputs, but was still working within the same time frame, and still trying to maximize the outcome.

A small team with constrained inputs cannot wage war on multiple fronts. It needs to make the surface area of success as small as possible.

But in addition to shrinking the surface area of success, something else is done. Founders move to channel their constrained inputs on a lever and a fulcrum. That needs to be discovered.

Find the Lever and the Fulcrum

Leverage > Priority

Over the years, I have seen an interesting dynamic about the way my mind functions. (If your mind doesn’t work like this, then let me know!)

The mind is excellent at recalling things that need to be done. As our mind thinks about or reminds us of things that need to be done, most people start writing a to-do list.

I personally discovered recently that a to-do list in its raw form misses something critical.

Namely, a to-do list in its raw form is unweighted. All of the tasks are listed with seemingly the same importance level. Frankly, a to-do list is a brain dump of the things that need to be done. There is no weight to what should be pursued.

One of the things that I’ve seen from running Tundra Angels as a business but observing other things is that it’s natural to qualify tasks or projects as a “priority” or “important.” But I believe that ranking by priority or importance that falls short.

Priority optimizes for importance.

Yet, in the extreme context of the Three T’s of Startups - time, team, and traction - priority doesn’t cut it. In the extreme environment with extreme constraints of the small team, limited time frame, to maximize traction, there needs to be a different category - leverage.

I have recently been reading a book called The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth about Extraordinary Results.

One of the golden nuggets in the book is what the author calls the “Focusing Question.”

The focusing question is this -

"What is the ONE THING I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"

Over the months, I myself have used this focusing question, albeit inconsistently if I’m being transparent. But when I have used it, it doesn’t merely focus me on something that is important, but it helps me focus on the leverage point. It brings me on something outside of my own inputs, effort, and contribution.

My hypothesis is that startup founders that are small teams and having global success are utilizing leverage to the fullest degree.

As the size of startup team gets smaller, the leverage that is required increases.

✅ Exceptional founders are not doing more with less. Exceptional founders are accomplishing more with leverage. ✅

Move from time management to time leverage. 

Example from Gripp

I recently caught up with one of our portfolio founders, Tracey Wiedmeyer of Gripp. Gripp identified a problem in agriculture that there are so many assets or actions across an ag operation that exist in an off-line form - tractor oil changes, safety checks, forklift maintenance checks, etc.

Gripp aims to move the offline assets and actions that happen on an agricultural operation, online. With Gripp, users can put Gripp tags on any piece of equipment or process across the farm. When they scan the QR code, that asset or process is online and can be messaged about, tracked, flagged, and distributed to all stakeholders. It also includes neat features such as automatic language translation on text threads to allow for all users to be on the same page, on the same platform.

Tundra Angels invested in Gripp several months ago. They have a handful of people on the team at this point. So Gripp has vast potential across the entire ag ecosystem, but as Tracey said, “I cannot walk every farm.”

In our recent conversation, Tracey detailed how they are partnering with lots of one-to-many relationships in the market and empowering those companies, who are already walking every farm, to be one of the arms of the go-to-market motion for Gripp. For Gripp, these one-to-many companies represented fulcrums in the market.

In other words, Tracey and his co-founder, Jenkin Lee, found a fulcrum of leverage. They developed and activated a customer acquisition motion and became independent of their own time and contribution.

Closing Thoughts

Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

But in light of the Three T’s of Startups, if we were to re-work his quote and concept, it may sound like this…

The world that needs to be moved is the size of the surface area of success. Shrink that to be as small as possible.

The lever and fulcrum is the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary.

So what’s your world? And what’s your lever and fulcrum?

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