The hardest yoga position to master is corpse pose. Savasana, the fancy name for corpse pose, is just lying on your back, not moving – completely relaxing, so your focus lies only in your breathing is really difficult. It only seems easy. The same could be said for all aspects of building and growing a business. Your real job is sharpening your focus to do simple things well, and where possible, better than anyone else.
At Vigilent, our software intelligently monitors a data centre to keep temperatures at a level where the computer equipment runs safely without the need to blast arctic air constantly and expensively.
It does not matter that solving that problem is compli- cated and counterintuitive. Our goal as a company is to stay focused and deliver a product that makes it simple for our customers. We also try to make smart, simple choices when it comes to building our business.
Our corporate investors, telecommunications companies NTT and Telus, both started as customers, so they are not purely financial investors. Their primary interest is getting a great product.
It is a huge act of faith for large customers to pick a smaller company for a component of their critical infrastructure. We are selling stuff that severely impacts their business if it fails.
Companies like NTT and Telus have a history of championing innovative technology. When they find a company they think has a great team, a great product, and a great track record, they realise how relatively rare that is and move to support it.
We need customers who are tough on us, and help us build a competitive product by being honest about what they really need.
Most of the features in our next two or three releases are because of conversations we have had with partners like NTT and Telus. We showed them some developments we thought were the bee’s knees, and they said: “Yeah, that is great, but we are not interested.”
So because we listen to and trust our corporate inves- tors, we are doing things we might not have done other- wise. We are also not doing things we originally thought might be good, but when tested against the needs of key customers, were not. For us, this leads to much better cap- ital efficiency. We do not waste time building things that our customers do not want.
Having companies like NTT and Telus as both partners and investors also produces insightful dialogue. Our engineering, marketing, and operations employees have daily interaction with their counterparts at these companies, which is incredibly valuable.
But for corporate investment to make sense, you also need commitment with the guys who approve the checks. So every few months we have more formal meetings with very senior management on both sides. They share broader business plans with us so that we develop solu- tions to solve specific needs. We are not just talking about new product features, but how we can help them to address the broader business challenges they face.
The most important thing we can do is deliver a great product, and listen. But it is not a one-way street.
Sometimes customers ask for things that will not solve a particular problem they have, and we tell them why that is the case. In this way we are all working together to solve the problem. And that makes for a good investment, as well, from their perspective.
You might be reading this thinking: “Build something of value for people who care?” This all seems really obvious. Like, what’s the big deal?
But I would argue that most businesses, especially early stage ones, fail because they do not do that.
They get enamoured with a particular technology and get way ahead of their customers. Or they get the technology right, but they cannot deliver it in a way that is cost-effective. Or they raise money from the wrong type of peo- ple, whose motivations and objectives are quite different from those of the other stakeholders.
So, yeah, this stuff is basic, but guess what? The basics are hard. Sometimes the simplest things you can do end up being the hardest to achieve.