When we humans can’t see what our co-workers are doing, we tend to under-appreciate their results. When we can’t show our co-workers what we are doing, we feel unappreciated. When someone exerts the effort to make you a gift you feel much more fulfilled than when a gift is store-bought.
If we are lucky, we occasionally feel the power of human synchronization. Working in a group of people whom understand each other and can draw from each other’s experiences and skills is good. There is tremendous power in getting several people to face the same direction and operate as a unit.
Young software companies, many times, have a tendency to develop a focus for product to the exclusion of broader corporate design. This is not unpredictable given that most software company founders are highly-skilled engineers whose leading commercial capability is solving very complex math problems.
When members from different functional teams (product, marketing, sales, and services) meet regularly to discuss what they are doing, what works, and what they need, they have a tendency to better understand each other. Not only do they appreciate and feel appreciated, their “better understanding” plants the seeds of “trust.” This empowers the organization to look into itself as a source for solving problems rather than a place of culpability. We know where we are and we can predict (rather than just react to) how things are going to happen. The power of prediction and understanding raises the value of founders’ stock and fends off unproductive ownership dilution.
A lot of money has been made from “adequate” technology. Software is nothing more than a medium around which a collective of people may chose to build the machine of human interaction. System design for human interaction is the real product of young software companies. Understand this and you make money. Get yourself ready.