This is a hitchhiker's guide to Apify’s culture. It is a work in progress and always will be. It lists various small day-to-day tactics and mental models that we use in Apify to be efficient and make collaboration between us easier. Although these tactics might seem simple, they are incredibly powerful.
This comes from the Essential startup advice from Y Combinator:
Look for a way in which you can accomplish 90% of what you want with only 10% of the work/effort/time. If you search hard for it, there is almost always a 90/10 solution available. Most importantly, a 90% solution to a real customer problem which is available right away, is much better than a 100% solution that takes ages to build.”
This is probably the most important thing for a startup to succeed because speed is everything. Done is better than perfect.
You’ve heard this one before. The faster we get things out, the faster they will bring value to customers, and the faster we get feedback. If you wait too long, you lose traction. People often overestimate what needs to be the "minimum" in a minimum viable product. Whenever it adds value to users, launch it.
There is just one important condition: the new thing must be BETTER than the current thing, not worse or with more bugs!
Another way people often say this (wrongly attributed to Ghandi): Be the change you wanna see in the world.
If you find a problem (whether a small bug, typo in the documentation, bad process, or something larger), before reporting it to someone else or waiting for it to get solved by someone else, ask yourself: Can I fix this myself? If yes, then just do it, otherwise the issue will have to be touched by many more people and consume much more time and resources of the company, which could be spent better elsewhere. Take ownership and responsibility for improving Apify. Every problem is also your problem.
See also ‣
This one relates to the previous point, but still, it’s worth mentioning it explicitly. But for which actions or decisions?
Jeff Bezos has a famous mental model for decisions, which he splits into “one-way doors” and “two-way doors.” The “two-way door” decisions can be relatively easily reverted if proven wrong, and those you can make quickly.
But “one-way door” decisions cannot be taken back, and those require more profound thought and often permission.
Use your common sense, which is which.
We're still a startup! Each of us needs to be resourceful and break walls if needed. It's often far quicker to get something done yourself than to delegate. Let's never become a nameless bureaucracy where nobody is responsible for anything and only offers excuses why something cannot be done.