If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m obsessed with finding ways to work faster and smarter.  I’ve talked about designing and brainstorming faster with my whiteboard and Balsamiq’s mock up tool.  I spent over 600 words describing how I organize my email inbox, and I can’t wait for Ativiti to launch so I can share even more ideas about process.

Given all that, it’s no wonder I enjoy working for a startup.  From my experience, it’s the ultimate test in your ability to get a lot done in very little time.  There are always a million things you have to do.  There’s absolutely no way you can accomplish everything.  How do you figure out what gets done and what doesn’t?  When no one is telling you what to do, what’s the most important thing you should be doing?

From my experience with this and previous jobs, there’s the things you have to get done, no matter what, and then there’s everything else.

Things that have to get done, no matter what.

In most normal jobs, “the things that have to get done, no matter what” take up most of your time.  In a startup, though, these things are the least of your worries.  At a startup, the things that have to get done, no matter what, are the things that you’ve figured out already.  You know your payroll process.  You know your QA process.  Make them as fast as possible.  Make them take up 10% of your time.  You have to spend the rest of your days figuring out your new marketing strategy, the next product launch, the bug fix, and …

Everything else.

If 90% of your time is spent on everything else, what does that time look like?  How do you figure out the next most important thing for you to work on?  Your work has to constantly move a process forward, a contract forward, a task forward, the company forward.

Are you creating something new?

Working at a startup means you have the potential to create something new just about every day.  You can’t actually create something every day, but that’s the potential.  It takes a lot of prep work to create something new, especially to do so correctly.  Creating requires a process — brainstorm, refine, plan, build, refine — and with each step you’ll have to ask yourself the same question, what’s the most important thing I should be doing?

Are you doing something that will bring attention to your organization?

No news is bad news for a startup.  Find a way to get people talking about you.  There’s many ways to bring attention to your organization — create something new, improve your page rank, generate buzz on the blogosphere.  If you’re doing this, you’re always doing something important.

Are you creating something that’s lasting and replicable?

You’re creating something new.  We’ve established that.  You’re also creating something that may have to last.  You need to assess whether what you’re creating is a one-time activity or not.  Pulling a report is never a one-time activity.  Writing a feedback email isn’t either.  Obviously, this has to be balanced with a startup’s short-term need for speed and agility, but a little planning up front helps ensure longer term success.

Are you improving an existing process?

You’re taking a process from the person who first created it.  The problem is, you’re not someone who just takes a process as-is.  You want to question and improve it.  With enough people thinking like this you can quickly go from a guy writing a payroll check to an electronic, efficient direct deposit payroll system.  Be sure the time spent fixing your process justifies the effort, though.  If it takes several hours to reduce a back office process from three clicks to two, it might not be worth undertaking right now.  It might still be worth fixing, but not until a million other things are taken care of.

Are you developing something you can pass to another team?

You not only have to create things that can be passed to your own internal teams, you may need to make your work presentable to another team in your company or another company altogether.   You can’t simply give the administrative assistant a payroll task without re-explaining your process, highlighting any exceptions.  Your specification has to be written unambiguously in order for development to pick up where you leave off. What’s acceptable for internal team distribution often requires a new draft entirely for other teams.  Factor this extra effort into your planning.

Are you learning something new, something that you can re-use?

You know what you’re doing right now.  But do you know what you’re doing a year from now?  You should have an idea.  What will you need to know then that you don’t know now?  A few pilot programs now will make it easier for you to answer that question later.

Are you fixing something that’s broken?

Fixing something that’s broken helps make sure you’re not wasting time on things that don’t fit these criteria.  Remember what I said above, though, the effort mustn’t exceed the reward.

Finally, in this economy, there’s the most obvious question you should be asking yourself whenever you prioritize your work –

Is this going to make us any money?

Forget everything else.  If all else fails, focus on generating revenue.  In this economy, there’s nothing more important that you could be doing right now.

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I’ve been working on a longer-than-usual post recently and have felt bogged down trying to get it done.  It likely wont be longer than my typical posts in terms of word count, but it’s certainly taking longer to research as I keep stumbling upon more useful information and more products I need to test out.  Rather than keep Enter Venture idle any longer, I’m going to take this opportunity to make Enter Venture a little bit more personal.

So I was talking to my mother yesterday and…  (No, not that personal.)

Rather, this blog has been desperately lacking in the About page department since its inception.  Only recently did I even have an About page (which was an obvious mistake).  When I reworked the Enter Venture theme, one of the last things I did was to write the About page — it’s no easy task putting your life down into a few paragraphs.  In fact, it’s something I’ve tweaked up until the writing of this post.   So that begs the question, what do you think?

I’m Patrick Cushing, the lead (read: only) editor for Enter Venture.  I’m originally from Boston but now hang my hat in San Francisco because I’ve realized its much nicer to be able to visit the cold / snow rather than live in the cold / snow.

For an overly costly education (read: I’m still paying for it), I went to Columbia’s Engineering school and picked out the most interesting major I could find in Biomedical Imaging Engineering.  It was certainly interesting — how could brain images not be?  Four years later though, I realized I had little interest in things bio or medical and asked my then employer, D. E. Shaw, to send me to India to work with their software office.

In India, I began my education in all things web as a member of their Creative Services team. It was here that I found CSS / HTML to be much more enjoyable than brain image smoothing algorithms in Matlab.  I came to manage all things wiki at the India office and developed an affinity for trying to organize chaos.

After India, I sought something entirely different and found it with NYC Government as part of their Strategic Operations team working on their NYC Business Express project.  Working for NYC Government made me appreciate what it takes to build software in the enterprise — especially one where green screens still exist.  It was also the first time I felt like an adult, but I suspect wearing a suit every day will do that to anyone.

I’m currently working for Wikinvest on their Product and Marketing team where my days include everything from reaching out to bloggers, testing new products, writing & editing content, writing scripts to parse XML files, and helping to expand coverage internationally.

A few months ago, I wrote about my love for my whiteboard and how it was the best $75 I’d ever spent.  Back then, I had a large, 3′x4′ whiteboard that, along with brainstorming and keeping lists, allowed me to put together a fairly detailed website mock-up.  Since moving to San Francisco, however, I’ve had to downsize my whiteboard, and I just can’t get into the same amount of detail with my smaller whiteboard as a result.

Then, I found Balsamiq Markups. Balsamiq Markups is like my whiteboard on steroids — yet, still much, much better than that.  Balsamiq is an Adobe AIR application that allows you to quickly prototype a site using common elements found on a web page like buttons, tabs, search, etc.  You can quickly and easily re-size elements, group them together, or lock them on the page.  (My whiteboard never did that.)

Balsamiq Mockups deftly combines a rough, hand-drawn sketch look with a smooth, Visio-like ability to arrange elements on a page.  For designers, this will save them from getting into Photoshop right away.  These mock-ups allow you to get a feel for space and alignment without needing to commit to color, design, or typography.  For everyone else, Balsamiq provides one of the easiest ways for you to get into the web design game too.  Developers can test out what they’re trying to build, product managers can test out new ideas — heck, even corporate executives can figure this thing out.

Because Balsamiq’s so easy to use, it’s a great tool for soliciting group UI discussion.  You can quickly iterate on an idea using multiple versions of a mock or by simply changing your design on the fly.  On top of all that, it’s actually fun to use.  When was the last time you picked up a new software product and said that?

To see for yourself, try out Balsamiq’s online demo.  You’ll quickly get sick of being told you’re using a demo, but you’ll also quickly find yourself feeling like you have the design skills of Steve Jobs.  For $79, you can have that feeling all you want with their full version.

As a blogger, I was granted a free license in exchange for an honest review (it meets my advertising tolerance level), so in that vein, here are a few things I think could be better:

1. The toolbar could use some improvement.  It takes up a substantial portion of the screen yet it seems like I’m always trying to find an element.  Sections labelled “Big” aren’t that helpful.  The issue’s alleviated by placing elements in multiple sections, but better labeling and smaller icons would certainly help.  Maybe a scrolling list with a single preview of the image?  I have ideas about this
2. The fade away toolbar that rests on the editing screen is also a bit tricky.  I often didn’t know what was hidden behind this section.  When it appears, it always seems to be in the way.  When I need something, I can’t always figure out where it is.  For example, clicking on the down arrow to bring up all icon options was not entirely intuitive.  I think there’s room for this to be in the top bar to save space on the editing screen and make it more visible.
3. Last, I’d say ditch the notebook look.  You don’t need to reinforce the fact that Balsamiq mirrors a sketch, and the notebook-on-a-web-page look feels very first generation blog to me.  Balsamiq couldn’t be further from first generation web and the rest of the editor should reflect that!

Thanks Balsamiq!

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