AWS Startup CXO Mixer - How To Scale Up Your Startup Fast But Not Break Things

I am glad to be part of the panel discussion organised by AWS.  It was a great learning experience and a great opportunity to connect and hear from other leaders who are using technology to solve user problems.
Also it was a great surprise to meet my ex - RBS colleagues as Panel moderator  from AWS ,Vikas Bajaj.

   Reference - https://awsstartupcxomixerpune.splashthat.com

I am putting down some of the key points that we discussed both on and off the stage.

Obsession with Customer 

Key is to Know Your Customer and help them by solving their problem by the use of Technology , don't go other way around that develop best Technology solution w/o understanding your customer. Customer should be centre of everything we do.

Fail Fast Learn Fast

It is important to focus and spend time and energy on innovation . Innovation is key to success, however its important to do it on more measured and controlled fashions. Accept failure and move on if the experiment not working.

Industry connection with Collages 

Some of us discussed this briefly ,  we think there is a big disconnect between education system and the industry need. There is a big opportunity for collaboration between collages and startup eco system especially around research and POC type of projects. This will creates a win-win opportunity for both. On a personal capacity , I have  started some discussion with my collage (IIT Kharagpur) alumni group.  We may explore this option with few collages in this region.

AI/ML Tech 

These tech are extremely useful and can help in building good user experience , so must be used effectively. For example, we (Early Salary) are in lending businesses , geo heat map density for new loan application can sometime help trigger potential fraud activity, this in turn helps us serve our users better by keep control on risk.

Resources/Skill Gaps  

You may not always get the kind of skill set you are looking for and you may not have all the resources that your ideally want to have, this is true not just for start-up but also for established companies. So the question is how can we get most effective outcome from what we have in hand.

  I think OKR is one of the effective tool that can certainly helps. However  the challenges is, its implementation is not as easy as it seems to be.  This can become counter productive if used wrongly. Sometimes, we missed to get organisation objective and focus too much on individual performance.  If you are considering OKR than it worth spending sometime reading the book - Measures What Matters (Written by seed investor of Google )

Cloud - 

It's no briner today to use cloud , its make scaling , DR mgmt etc easier. This gives you time to focus on your core business. It is good to consider serverless technology like AWS Lambda for easier scaling , but its important to understand best practices around it to use it more effectively.



I am happy to hear your thought on the same.