Don’t wait for permission

I’m one more in at foursquare and I’ve started to figure something out:

• If you see something that needs to be done, you do it.

• If you have an idea, you start building it.

• If you wait for someone to tell you what to do, you’ll be left behind.

Prior to being here, I honestly didn’t have any idea what “startup culture” meant. I’d read some articles about how it’s “fast-paced” (isn’t everywhere?) but the truth is, I get it now.

If something isn’t working, rarely is somebody putting together a long-term strategy doc to address it. Someone just fixes it. If you have an idea, you don’t wait to present it in a meeting next month, instead you just throw it in the group chat, and by the time you check back, someone is already building upon it.

That’s a big change of pace for this boy from Missouri. But I love it.

Figuring it out as I go

When I started last month, I guessed that, like a lot of jobs, there might be some guidance or a ramp up or onboarding into what I should or shouldn’t be doing. That isn’t the case at all, because it simply cannot be the case. In a team this small, you absolutely must figure it out.

My whiteboard tracker of universities I’ve been reaching out to. Let’s not erase this.

My main project, foursquare for Universities, is all about getting colleges to integrate foursquare into campus life. I’m building out the comms, partnering with them to create official pages, designing custom badges, and getting students excited to check in. But it’s not like there’s a handbook for how to do any of this, because no one here has done it before. That means it’s up to me to build out the strategy while I am executing it. It also means sometimes it won’t work, but as I’m figuring out, that’s part of taking the risks necessary to grow.

One of the biggest shifts for me has been adapting to that mentality. You don’t have to be 100% sure an idea is perfect before you put it out there. The point isn’t to be right, rather, it’s to create momentum.

A month ago, I thought I wanted to work at a startup. Now, I know I need to!