Plan Your Projects Like a VC

Venture Capitalists (or VCs) are pros at structuring and securing deals. They’re quick on their feet and know how to pivot. They can manage multiple investments and know how to network, always increasing their contact list. VCs are typically great advisors for CEOs. That’s why thinking like a VC will make a difference when project planning. Contrastingly, it’s been shown that business owners are known to avoid making tough calls, and deferment makes problems more complicated. It’s another reason why we’re all for Doing the Hard Things First.

With project planning, it’s important to remember that emotions can easily drive behavior and that we justify our actions with logic after the fact. This is what we want to avoid. That means you will want to pause and not move forward with the first idea that comes to mind. The more impulsive the decision, the more likely that it’s feelings based.

Here are some project planning strategies that work for us:

Get The Receipts

And by receipts we mean data! Data breeds insights, and the more information you have the more liberating the process. No wonder 71% of VCs come from backgrounds that are rooted in data collection, such as Engineering, Social Sciences, and Finance. First, you’ll want to ask yourself: ‘What am I trying to solve for?’ Everyone involved in the process needs to be on the same page and understand the problem before taking action. A common question that a data set can solve for is, “How are people interacting with our brand?” Once you determine the data that you need in order to answer that question, you can move forward to select the best research options and resources available to you.

Do The Work

Identify what it means for this project to be successful. It’s likely that there will be multiple answers to this question, and that’s great. The more potential outcomes that you come up with the better. Louis Copey agrees, saying part of his job includes surveying multiple outcomes. 

“Most of our daily job as VCs consists of identifying uncertainties and spending time on trying to build a strong enough conviction on what the distribution of outcomes might look like. Why? Because this drives investment decisions,” says Point Nine Capital VC, Louis Copey.

Meeting Makers Make It

Create a Growth Advisory Board. This is a group composed of all of the people who are important to the growth of the business. The Growth Advisory Board meets quarterly and it’s time set aside for members to review, discuss, and make decisions. With a Growth Advisory Board, it’s important that everyone votes; there are no votes cast by absent parties and no one can be caught up at another time. The meeting makers make it, meaning you have to show up to be seen.

Keep It Simple

Andrew Chen says, “Make sure your roadmap reflects reality. When it comes to your product roadmapping, yes you can definitely brainstorm and ship a bunch of +10% increases, but you need to add a discount factor to your spreadsheets to reflect reality.” No project is going to be perfect, but hopefully, over time, your processes will progress. For more information on how to organize your projects sign up for a free trial.