Every second counts

Recently I traveled to Jakarta for the Tech in Asia Conference. I like attending the conferences because they attract high quality attendees, the content is insightful, and there are plenty of great side events for you to connect with investors and other founders. Having attended several Tech in Asia events across Southeast Asia over the past three years, I feel they deliver the best conference experience across the region.

This past trip was particularly packed with events and meetings. As soon as I landed in Jakarta, I headed straight to the Angels + Founders event with my suitcase in tow to listen to pitches from startups based in Indonesia building sustainability solutions. The next morning, I geared up for the first day of Tech in Asia before heading to the TINC + AppWorks Demo Day in the late afternoon, then another networking event right after that called Innovation Night 2024 in the same location organized by Kopital Ventures that lasted well into the evening. Day two of Tech in Asia was significantly less frenetic that the first day, but also occupied by several meetings and an afterparty to close out the Tech in Asia Conference.

Throughout all of this back-to-back activity and conversations and meetings, I could not help but wonder to myself at various moments of the three days. Why was I here and what was I looking to accomplish?

There is a show called The Bear that I have become mildly addicted to. In one of the quieter moments during the second season, Ritchie finds Chef Terry peeling mushrooms in the kitchen of her restaurant. He joins her and they have a bit of chit chat about the joy of mindless tasks, how she started her restaurant, and their relationships with their parents. Before she is called away, Chef Terry talks about her father and how he kept meticulous notebooks full of seemingly unimportant observations that he found special, and that he would sign every entry with a phrase. Ritchie never hears the end of the story, but realizes what the phrase Chef Terry’s father used when he looks up at the digital clock on the wall and the sign underneath that says, “Every second counts.”

In the hectic world of restaurants, you cannot afford to waste time. The world of cooking is one of precision and timing. This especially true of fine dining where every aspect from food to presentation to temperature requires exact coordination among chefs and waitstaff so that meals are presented to customers on time and in the ideal state to be enjoyed. Each individual on the team needs to make every second count.

There is a deeper meaning however to the phase “every second counts.” It is the realization that every second is a moment that is here and then immediately gone forever. What Chef Terry’s father was saying is that every person has a choice in how they use that second because it happens regardless of how they chose to spend that second. In other words, it is a mantra to live in the moment with purpose.

In startups, we also become hyperaware of time. The clock is ticking down once we make the decision to start a new venture. Maybe it is the clock on reaching product-market fit or investor patience on your progress. There are clocks ticking down time to closing customer deals or hiring key staff. It can also be your personal clock on how long you are willing to commit to the startup before calling it quits.

That time is not infinite. Founders also have a warped sense of time, thinking certain things will be faster than they are such as fund raising while other things will last longer like their financial runway. There is this constant pressure to move faster, to do more, to go further otherwise we feel like we are falling behind deeper into the abyss to never catch up. Many founders freeze up at this point, frozen by fear and uncertainty as to how to proceed until they give up defeated by paralysis.

The best startups are constant momentum machines. The founders are pushing the envelope on what can be done, trying things, breaking things, building things. There is a speed and rhythm that you can sense where everyone on the team is also moving at pace, like how a professional road cycling team coordinates their movements to draft off each other so they compete at the most optimal level without wasting an ounce of energy.

Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, compared startups to sharks. A shark is always in constant motion and dies once it stops moving. Startups that are not moving quickly die. You can observe a startup dying when they stop shipping consistently, delay regular investor updates, and spend more time on internal debates and processes. They go from “founder mode” to “waiting mode”, hoping that by some miracle outside forces or fate can save the day. When this happens, it is game over for the startup, they have already thrown in the towel.

You got to make every second count in a startup. However, you also need to think about how intentional you are with the seconds you have. Are you focused on speed or are you considering the purpose of your time spent?

Thinking back to the past week in Jakarta, my time was filled with activities. I packed my schedule. I used every available moment to get as much as I could from the conference, side events, and meetings. I made every second count, leaning on my bias for action. As much as I enjoy Jakarta however, I could have skipped the event, and the decision would have had no impact on my long-term plans. I am not building my startup in Indonesia and most investors attending Tech in Asia are focused on Indonesian startups. I made every second count, but it was not necessarily time well-spent.

The one thing I consistently hear from startup founders is the struggle of time. When you work for someone else, you generally have one thing you are focused on around your expertise. The biggest shock for first-time founders is realizing that they are responsible for all the things and how overwhelming that can be. Even with co-founders, the amount of stuff each founder needs to do each day becomes a balancing act of what you do and what you ignore.

This is why fast decision making coupled with speed of execution is so important. It is not just about being quick, you have to ruthlessly prioritize how you spend each second so that it aligns with your purpose. Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake and known for his intense and high-output leadership style, shared in his book this perspective on managing one’s time:

In an early-stage startup, it feels like everything is the priority. However, the actual priority and purpose is survival. Because there are never enough hours in the day and resources available to do everything, you need to be clear why this thing on your calendar, the invite to that event, the meeting with some person, the email sitting in your inbox, and the million other things looking to steal your attention are important.

When I think about how to juggle the madness of startup life, I view each task from two lens; alignment to purpose and time horizon. From this framing, a lot of things that would otherwise occupy my day get pushed to the side because does not help with my bigger objectives or can be pushed to a later time. Ideally, on a daily basis, you can dedicate the bulk of the day towards the actual purposeful work that moves the needle closer to accomplishing the one priority that allows your startup to survive.

The question that usually comes to mind is what is the priority? For me, it is clarifying the fundamental concepts which I will build my startup upon and getting feedback. For you, that might be validating the market, or building the MVP, or getting those first customers. Whatever it is, make sure you are laser focused on just that one thing.

How are you spending your time to make every second count? What are some things you would rearrange in your schedule so you have more time for purposeful work?

Mark Birch

I am excited to head to Cape Town, South Africa next week! It's been two years since my last trip when I spoke at the AfriArena Grand Summit and several other events. I think the highlight though for me was the interview I did for CNBC Africa to talk about the growing African startup ecosystem (oh, also hanging with some chill penguins)!

This year, I am back in Cape Town for the AfriLabs Annual Gathering 2024 from November 5th to 8th. AfriLabs brings Africa’s innovation community together to collaborate and drive digital transformation across the continent, acting as a hub where African innovators, policymakers, investors, startups, and thought leaders from around the globe can convene.

I am honored to be invited by the AfriLabs organization to participate in this year's gathering to share my insights on what it takes for startups in Africa to become the next unicorns and how African startup ecosystems contribute to enabling more startup exits.

Thanks to Anna Ekeledo, Felista Aku, Jennifer Okeke-Ojiudu, Bede-obong Umoh, and others for the kind invitation to participate! If you are attending AAG 2024 in Cape Town next week, or are in Cape Town and want to chat, let me know and I would glad to meet up!

I have some additional travels coming up in Taiwan for Meet Taipei and a super cool Taiwan HackerHouse event happening in the south of Taiwan in the city of Kaohsiung which kicks off with a Meetup, then a whole week of building cool stuff!