These are my takeaways and personal perspectives from a Fishburners ‘Learn From A Burner’ presentation in 2017 given by Will Davies of Car Next Door, a car-sharing startup acquired by Uber in 2022. Note that very little editing has been done and that these notes aren’t comprehensive.
“The sketchier our flyers look, the better the results.”
Will started his talk by pointing out that the following three pillars were the key factors to the success to date for Car Next Door (CND). The notes below are my attempt at capturing his advice:
1. Building The Car Next Door Team
Get really strong on the WHY of your company. It’s important not only for yourself as a founder but will be the glowing beacon that draws in everyone to your business – including customers, investors, and even staff.
Regarding staff, ensure you have a careers page that always accepts inquiries. Great people are looking for jobs even when you’re not actively hiring, but you want to have a way for those people to find you and join the team.
When you are actively hiring, though, reach out to everyone who seems reasonable for the role. Nobody is committing to anything at the start of the process, so you might as well go wide and see what sticks. For that reason, you have to ensure the recruitment process tests for the skills they will need.
Having a solid, repeatable process is vital to recruiting the right people without it taking forever. Here’s a brief overview of Will’s process:
Put the job out on every channel you can (e.g., social media, get staff to push it, Fishburners channels)
- Have them answer a specific list of questions instead of writing an unstructured cover letter (use this to assess how well they write)
- Have a phone conversation with them and have them answer some specific questions about the business and themselves (use this to assess how well they communicate over the phone and how well they know your company)
- Have them come in for a face-to-face interview (use this to assess who they are as a person)
- Have them do a half-day trial that’s very structured and is a solid parallel to their actual role — some of the work should be non-real, but some should be actual, real-world work (use this to assess their actual competency, work ethic, and work style)
- At the end of their trial, go for lunch or a beer with the team (use this to assess how well they fit with the company culture)
Once you’ve hired the right people, it’s important to build a good work culture consciously. One tool Will uses to do that is empowering staff to give a $50 thank-you bonus to other team members regularly.
- Have them give them in the weekly meeting
- Have a cool template that explains what it’s for (something physical they can take away and be proud of after the $50 is long gone)
- Just add it to their paycheque to keep things simple from an accounting perspective
“I’ve got a “mailing list” (manually sent) of ‘Potential Future Investors’ that I email every month telling them what’s happening good and bad. These people are added from wherever I find people that somewhat fit the profile of a future investor. That way, when you want to actually raise capital they’ve already come along part of the business journey.”
2. Getting Stuff Done
In any career, productivity is important, but in the world of startups, it’s the difference between going big and going broke. Will shared some of the tools he’s implemented in Car Next Door to help himself and his team stay focused and get sh!t done.
Everyone on the team has the following:
- A 90-day plan (Google Sheets)
- A recurring tasks plan (Google Sheets)
- A personal to-do board on Trello which has a backlog list and a 5-project maximum ‘work in progress’ list (also a list for each of the subordinates to delegate into)
- Create a list of tasks to push forward each of the 5 projects this week (put it in a Google Sheet and put a priority ranking on each one)
- Every week, go through your list of tasks top to bottom (by priority) and allocate time to work on them directly into your calendar so your entire week is planned out in your calendar
Having a rhythm and structure isn’t always easy in startups since the target is constantly moving, and there are always more things to do than time to get it done. Instead of trying to calm the chaos, it’s important to bring structure and rhythm through things you can control, like meetings and strategic planning sessions. Will had the following recommendations:
- Have a structure and routine for meetings and ensure they are rigorously held. Have an agenda.
- CND holds an annual 2-day retreat for the team
- Quarterly 90-day planning sessions
- Weekly 1-on-1 accountability
- Professional development – 3/2/1 every quarter (meet 3 people, read 2 books, and go to one development event) – reward people for doing this
“Investors are impressed that we always have our monthly accounts done (P&L and Cashflow), plus it means you can actually make informed decisions.”
3. World-Class Systems
Will covered the importance of having properly documented systems for every aspect of your business. (Check out my own system for writing systems)
I’ve personally heard from someone who worked for Car Next Door that one of the most amazing things about the company is that if everyone on the team got hit by a bus (obviously hoping that won’t happen!), anyone could pick up the systems manual run the business with very little trouble.
The CND systems manual is managed in Confluence. (I also use Confluence for all my business systems after getting this advice from Will)
From his perspective, “systems” describe anything people have to do.
It’s important that everyone is empowered to update systems – get everyone in the habit of hot-fixing anything that’s wrong or could be improved.
New team member onboarding is heavily planned and gives them a checklist to work through (this is essentially a list of processes to run from the systems manual).