In last class we had a guest lecture. The guest was Gunnar Hólmsteinn, the COO of QuizUp and founder (and CEO) of CLARA.
This lecture was interesting as Gunnar was trying to show to us how the startup culture is, what is important for startups and what you should do when you are starting a startup. It is very clear that Gunnar has good knowledge about the object.
Gunnar joined QuizUp 2 years ago and is now their COO, interestingly his career started in marketing (Coca-Cola). His first object was marketing-related as he began to talk about QuizUp and how to describe what QuizUp is.
- So what is QuizUP?
Gunnar began to talk about three things that you should have in your speech when describing your startup, those things are:
* Features
* Numbers
* Touchy-feely (yes, touchy-feely)
The Features part is the obvious one, and the one that probably everyone try to cover when they are describing or even selling their startup idea. This part covers what your startup is all about and how it works.
The next part is for the investors, that’s the number parts. If you want investors to be hot for your product, you better have this part pretty clear. For example: QuizUp have 75 million users that have played 5 billion matches.
The third part is the Touchy-feely part. This is the part where you personalize your product/service. Gunnar talked about how this part is becoming more and more important. This part is about stories and emotional parts which you can’t describe with your numbers or with your features. Example: QuizUp is delighted about the letter that they got from the married couple the other day. The letter is about how thankful they are to QuizUp for bringing them together.
Gunnar told us that it is very important to be very good at every single one of those factors. However, His emphasis was on the last factor in our lecture and how you can build up the touchy-feely part in your company. The touchy-feely part is connected to the companies mission and vision.
When Gunnar started at QuizUp the company was going through hyper growth and needed help with scaling. He sat down with every employee and asked three questions:
– What is going well?
– What is not going well?
– What is not talked about?
These questions were good both for the company and the employees, and the results were actually quite interesting for bother parties.
1. Fun, talent, inclusion, growth -> This was the bright side.
2. Objectives, information flow, areas of responsibility -> This was the dark side.
3. Retention, planning, vision and culture -> This was not being talked about.
From these answers Gunnar began to work with the staff and working on things within the company, and this is how people in QuizUp operate:
“ Every action we take is completely in sync with our vision and we question things that aren’t. We’re smart, rational, and we speak our mind. Taking risks is in our DNA and we’re not afraid to play big.”
They wait for nothing and get things done.
In the end Gunnar basically told us that if they stopped doing this their audience would leave.
I really like this. The employees have a clear structure in their workplace, what they stand for and how they make their decisions. On the other hand, having the employees so highly involved with the company operations gives them a lot of freedom that can be misused. The need for trust in QuizUp is high, but I like it, and I think this is the kind of environment that everyone wants to work in.
The next object Gunnar talked about was model called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I haven’t read the book after Patrick Lencioni but that book will probably get close to the top on my “to read” list after the final exams as Gunnar made some excellent points in his lecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=509V7Z9OUQA
It’s a crucial to have some structure when working and as a leader this model can be your structure in your workplace. The five dysfunctions of teamwork are:
– Absence of trust
– Fear of conflict
– Lack of commitment
– Avoidance of accountability
– Inattention to results
The structure of Gunnar’s lecture was that he talked for 45 minutes and than he did a short break in his lecture. In the break he would split up the class and give the groups an object to talk about. When he did this he was probably trying to get the class to share things and be more open for discussion.
The first object he gave us was to describe a beautiful morning. That was an easy and fun task. As the lecture went on the task would get more demanding and the final task was to talk about the last time you cried in front of another person. In my opinion the final task did not work very well. The reason for that is probably because Gunnar didn’t set an example himself before asking us to show vulnerability. As a leader the most important action is to demonstrate genuine vulnerability first, so that your team will take the same risk.
In general I really liked this guest lecture and Gunnar seems to be intelligent guy. QuizUp are doing some very interesting things these days and it was a privilege to be able to look inside their culture. Gunnar was very open about everything and it was always possible to stop him at any time and ask him questions. He even gave the class information about current problems that QuizUp are trying to solve (basically gave the class a huge opportunity). I have nothing more to add on, I learned a lot from listening to him and would most likely attend an event if he were a spokesperson.
hr1bergs 