OCV partners with company founders to provide guidelines and suggestions intended to help you be successful. Our guidelines are informed by previous experience, and we’re consistently adapting them as we receive new learnings and information.

Our handbook is our source of truth for official recommendations. Giving OCV visibility into decision-making can help us provide the guidelines and suggestions we think will be informative and make you successful. When working with OCV, we ask founders to:

  1. Consult the OCV handbook early and often and use it as a first line of support.
  2. Trust that there are careful considerations behind each OCV recommendation. If something isn’t clear, please ask why.
  3. Keep an open communications channel. We work with teams across countries and cultures and understand that words can be lost in translation. Open communication will help us better appreciate each other’s concerns and come up with the best possible solution together.

Even though OCV companies operate differently from the traditional venture-funded model, founders are still the final decision-makers. As CEO/CTO, you run the company. OCV does not override the decisions of the highest C-level person at the company.

Ultimately, you are accountable for the decisions and outcomes of the company. As a leader, all decisions and outcomes stop with you. The CEO makes final decisions and can never point up. You don’t want to be in the position where you are explaining to your reports that the reason you did something is “someone higher up said to do it.” For example, a company has layoffs and the CEO says “The board made us do it.” That would be a very weak stance to take. Either you own the decision or don’t do it.

Habits of Successful Founders

Accountability

As the leader of a new company one of your most important jobs is to set and meet company goals. OCV is your accountability partner. We’re here to help you learn to set and reflect on your goals.

OCV companies set ambitious goals, and it takes dedication to action to achieve them. Founders are accountable for setting the company's direction, pace, and progress. It’s up to you to set company goals, consistently reinforce the company values, and set the tone and pace of progress. We expect founders to set an ambitious goal every two weeks and achieve 70% of it.

If goals aren’t being met, values are being ignored, or progress isn’t made, you are accountable for fixing it. When the suggestions made by OCV are not aligned with the direction of the decisions made by the highest C-level person at the company, any resulting consequences should be resolved by the company. OCV will expect companies to take accountability for any mistakes: YMYC - your mistake, your cleanup.

Avoid framing company objectives in terms of what your desires are: “What I want is”. "What will benefit the business is" is the preferred approach for business leaders when discussing company objectives, as it directs the focus towards actions that will contribute to the business’s overall success.

Do things that don’t scale

“Do things that don’t scale” is the opposite mentality of “build it and they will come.” It means that in the early stages of building a company, founders will need to do a lot of manual work to build momentum that will make your start-up take off. It’s the most common advice given at Y Combinator and can be the difference between success and failure.

Paul Graham’s article on the subject states, “Almost all startups are fragile initially” and the question to ask of early-stage startups is not “Is this company taking over the world” but “How big could this company get if the founders did the right things?” And the right things may seem counterintuitive.

Building a culture of momentum:

  1. Solve problems manually until you can automate them. For example, recruiting users manually. You can’t wait for users to come to you, you have to go find them. The same is true for early marketing.
  2. Growing 20% WoW. Lean into the power of compound growth. Rapidly compounding growth from an initial customer base that is lower can drive large numbers of users and revenue.
  3. Delight your customers. Go out of your way to make the customer experience exceptional. Writing handwritten notes may note scale but adopt the mantra that “if you go out of your way to make existing users super happy, you'll one day have too many to do so much for.”
  4. Exceptional attention to users. Over-engage with your early users and aim to get something in front of users early. Feed the feedback loop. “It's not the product that should be insanely great, but the experience of being your user.”