Focusing on what matters first
I’m two months into my internship at foursquare, and just being exposed to startup culture has taught me more than I could’ve learned in school alone. When I first started, and as I picked up on the pace of things, I learned that startups don’t wait. If you have an idea, you don’t ask for permission—you start building. If something needs to get done, you figure it out and do it. That was a huge mindset shift for me.
But now, I’m starting to realize something else: It’s not just about getting things done. It’s about getting the right things done. And that’s a completely different challenge.
You can’t do it all
I’ve been leading the foursquare for Universities project, reaching out to schools, refining the messaging, and figuring out how to drive adoption. But beyond that, there have been plenty of other smaller projects, meetings, and new ideas being thrown around. Working with external contacts, stakeholders, or someone mentions something cool we could do, and suddenly, I’ve got a to-do list that is scary to look at. For me, this means feeling overwhelmed and shutting down, which, in a startup environment, can’t happen.
That’s when I saw how product team was doing things.
How startups prioritize
Sitting in on a few foursquare’s product meetings, I learned about this stupidly simple way they roadmap their upcoming work:
Now: The things that absolutely need to get done right now.
Next: The things that are coming up soon but aren’t urgent.
Later: The things that might be valuable but don’t need attention yet.
This reminded me of something I’ve seen on my own team, which is that, when it comes to being creative, sometimes constraints can actually help with that. We’ve held a few brainstorming sessions put on timers (my boss calls it “time-boxing”), and this helps to keep things reigned in and realistic. So when I realized that I’d been treating everything like a "Now" task, in reality, some things were better suited for “Next” or “Later.” So I just started applying that to my work and now I’m seeing that I can be a little more intentional with what I’m trying to get done and when.
Finally, I’ve noticed that people at foursquare don’t always automatically say yes to everything. Rather, they are more strategic about what we take on. It’s similar to the "Yes, and…" method my team has used (like in improv, which I did in high school by the way—it’s harder than it looks). Instead of immediately jumping on every idea, the best people build on what matters most first and let other ideas sit until they’re ready to move forward.
I’ve realized that saying “not yet” isn’t the same as saying “no”. Rather, it’s about making sure you’re focusing on the right things at the right time.