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Showing 8 posts tagged changetheratio

How to Stop Talking About Diversity and Actually Do Something About It - TechfestNW, August 2015

In August, I was invited to TechfestNW in Portland to share thoughts on how startups, communities and event cities can not only talk about Diversity, but take action daily to improve it. This is a video of that talk and the fireside chat that followed. 

In this talk I provide two small pieces of action that everyone, not just those considered underrepresented, can take to increase diversity in their companies. 

The talk is around 15 minutes followed by a Q&A by the talented Mara Zepeda, CEO of Switchboard, artist and visionary. 

Thank you to TechFestNW, Mara and the Portland community for being incredibly receptive and open to make changes to support an inclusive environment. 

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How to create a company culture that embraces diversity

This post is the third in our “Lessons from the USV Diversity Summit” series. In December, USV hosted our first Diversity Summit. Below are some of the most helpful insights we gathered about how to take action.

If you’re just joining the conversation, you can find previous posts Part I: “Lessons from the diversity summit” here and Part II: “How to start talking to your team about diversity” here.

Take inventory

If you want your company to embrace diversity, the first step is transforming your corporate culture. Your first step is assessing what the current culture is like.

What exactly does culture mean? People sometimes use the word “culture” to refer to company perks like game rooms, free lunches, or vacation days. And while those benefits certainly have an effect on teams, they aren’t themselves culture. Culture is about how your team communicates.

At its core, your company’s culture requires three things: its mission, its vision, and its values. What problem does your company solve? How does it solve it? And upon what values do you base the decisions you make?

The mission, vision, and values are unique to each company, and each will no doubt be rewritten, revised, and revisited many times over the lifetime of the business, all the while shaping and influencing the culture of the company.

So to make sure that your corporate culture is welcoming toward diversity, you need to revisit your mission, vision, and values to assess how you’re communicating them to the people you employ, serve, and represent.

Beware of inadvertently sending messages that conflict with your values

Start by conducting an “external culture audit” to get a picture of how your company presents itself to the outside world. Imagine you’re a consultant and you’ve been asked to evaluate the company’s corporate culture from an outsider’s point of view. First, visit your company’s website and consider what messages are being sent by your landing page, job postings, careers page, and social media accounts.

  • What words does your company use to describe itself?
  • What visuals are provided—photos, logos, or graphics?
  • If there are photos, how would you describe the people shown? The environment?
  • Imagine you’re a world-class candidate for an engineer/sales/marketing/HR job landing on your company’s website. What would you find appealing and what would be off-putting?
  • Consider how different types of people would respond to the messaging on your site. What if you don’t drink? What if you’re a parent? What if you only want to work with the best talent? Are there things on the site that would make you feel uncomfortable or unsure about whether this is the place for you? If so, ask yourself this question: Is your company intentionally trying to filter out certain kinds of candidates, or is it accidental?

Now, the most important step: Are there conflicts or inconsistencies between your company’s stated mission and the way it comes across online? Does your company’s Twitter feed accurately reflect the mission, vision, and values of the company, or is it filled with off-color jokes? Does your company’s digital presence successfully reflect the values you want to celebrate?

A lot of well-intentioned companies inadvertently deter the most diverse candidates not because they don’t care about diversity, but because they fail to control the subtle messages being sent by their public-facing materials. Last year, for example, I did an external culture audit for one of our portfolio companies. I found a lot of conflicts between how the company viewed itself and how it was presenting itself to the outside world. Conflicts will inevitably creep in, so be vigilant and make sure to get feedback to ensure the company’s voice aligns with its values.

Values-Messaging Conflict: The Case of RunKeeper

In a comment on a previous diversity posts, Emil pointed out that RunKeeper, a company that makes an awesome fitness app, may be sending mixed messages to its users. RunKeeper is not a USV portfolio company, but I’m a big fan of their product and I’ve heard only good things about their team. Let’s take a look at their website, one page at a time, and consider where there may be an unintended conflict in their messaging.

As you can see above, RunKeeper clearly states its core values, addressing the issue of inclusiveness directly.

(link: UX Job Description)

I love these candid job descriptions. It’s easy to get a sense of the fun, lighthearted tone of the company. There are some inconsistencies, however. The job post doesn’t list the core values, but there are some hints about what it takes to fit in. So the question is this: If you’re not into The X-Files and arguing about beer, can you still work there? Would you think twice about applying? What if you’re not into TV, but you’re a fantastic UX Designer? Would you still apply?

There’s no doubt that teams within companies have their own idiosyncratic ways of getting along with each other, and I have no doubt that the above description really does capture the kinds of personalities that make up the UX team at RunKeeper. And it makes sense that they’d look for someone with a similar personality who’d fit in easily.

But the problem with a job listing that describes what the people on the team are like—and subtly demands that anyone applying fit that same mold—is that it creates a bias against people from different backgrounds, excluding people who don’t fit the profile of the existing team. The message is, “This is what our team is like, and we want to hire someone just like us.” But if you want to increase diversity, that’s not the message you want to be sending. What you should be saying is, “We’re an inclusive environment looking for top talent, and we want to welcome you to our team no matter what your background is.”

How to align your messaging with your values

The good news is that there are straightforward ways to communicate your company culture by speaking about the things you value, not just the things you do.

Take Simulmedia, an advertising technology company. Simulmedia has been thoughtful about making sure the job descriptions on its website include the company’s mission, vision, values, and culture. The same language is used consistently on every job description. (Yes, they’re hiring).

The thoughtfulness of the language in these descriptions subtly reinforces the idea that Simulmedia values hard work and play, but it’s through multiple mediums and the emphasis is on team or individual perks: “While we work ‘startup hard’ we also believe in letting loose via Happy Hours, team activities, and an unlimited vacation policy.”

So write a list of the values you want to convey in your own company’s job listings. Check out how other companies communicate their culture.

Another great example is SoundCloud. They recently published a new jobs page. They discussed the project at the Diversity Summit and I think they successfully delivered a more inclusive and very SoundCloud experience. The took the extra step to use their platform to talk about the company culture by share audio recordings from employees.

The internal culture audit

After the external culture audit comes the internal culture audit, which can be more challenging. Running a business means communicating all day long, which often means that speed gets prioritized over thoughtfulness.

To conduct the internal audit, keep your company’s mission, vision, and values in mind as you consider these questions:

  • How is good news communicated at your company?
  • How is bad news communicated?
  • How is feedback given or collected?
  • What happens if an employee violates a core value when they’re in a meeting with colleagues? With a customer?
  • How do you describe your company culture to friends?
  • How do you describe your company to people you’re trying to recruit?

Do your answers align with your mission, vision, and values, or do they conflict?

Ask your colleagues the same questions. Are their answers the same as yours or different? Where are there conflicts, are they coming from a subset of employees who are dissatisfied? Are they the same or different? Explore the disconnect and see if the company culture is evenly distributed.

Right fit your mission, vision, and values

The purpose of the internal and external culture audits is to understand what the company truly is and believes. The audits will signal whether the company is acting in alignment with it’s values.

If you want to make your company more diverse, you need to say so explicitly in your official statement of values. The only way things will change is if you’re new values are actually recognized. If not, it’s time to revise the way business is done.

Most mission, vision, and values come from senior leadership, so it’s important to include top managers in your list of findings and recommendations. Keep the team small for the first version, opening up the process to feedback from the wider team in time.

Your company’s mission shouldn’t change very often, but its description can fluctuate, especially given how fast companies today grow and change. During my time at USV, I’ve always been able to get a read on the health of an organization by asking various employees to explain what the company does. If their answers vary widely—like if one employee says, “We’re a Facebook app that books flights” while another says, “We improve travel with social recommendations”—there’s a disconnect. It’s a signal that communication of the mission is getting muddy.

Inclusion is a practice, not a statement

Values may need closer inspection too. Is the behavior of your employees consistent with your company’s core values? Almost every company has a stated value that captures the importance of diversity. The problem with diversity is not with the values companies have, but with the execution. Inclusion is a practice, not a statement.

Although not in the USV portfolio, BufferApp came up as a great example of a company living its values. Buffer values “defaulting to transparency,” which they embody by publishing a full transparency report that includes real-time revenues, salaries, and equity. The value they place on transparency is demonstrated with visible behavior.

Our summit attendees celebrated Buffer, but most were not in a hurry to implement this kind of transparency at their own companies. Values are important, but can overlap at the edges. The best way to navigate values that seem at odds is to provide more context or multiple values. AMEE balances the trade-offs between transparency and privacy, values that can seem at odds, in their principles and values: “We have 5 main values that guide our decisions: Open, Honest, Transparent, Simple, and Respectful of Individual Privacy.”

Companies need to live the mission, vision, and values they set forth. If they don’t, they should change either the values or the corporate culture so they align. Diversity initiatives need to be part of the company’s values. Revising the company’s values statement is only useful if the company lives in accordance with them.

Putting values into practice

Once the vision is laid out, it’s time to put it into practice. Small changes add up to make a difference. Companies in our portfolio have had success printing posters with the company’s values and hanging them in every conference room. The posters get referenced during difficult discussions, helping ground the conversation in what the company values and not just what one individual believes.

A company’s mission, vision, and values should also be posted on its website, included when onboarding new employees, shared at the beginning of town hall meetings, and compared against employee 360s performance reviews. Consistency is best complemented with feedback loops. Whether it’s surveys or informal asks, find ways to get feedback from customers, clients, and candidates on how you’re performing against your values. Values are a tool to help set a standard across the organization of what’s expected, celebrated, and prioritized. They have the biggest impact when they are part of the everyday communication of the company.

Distributed diversity initiatives

Once you’ve made sure your mission, vision and values are in alignment, it’s time to start implementing diversity initiatives. In our summit, the most often-mentioned way to start is to create three small working groups to tackle different issues and set a budget.

The working groups should focus on increasing diversity in three areas: internal, external, and recruiting. The most common reaction is to push all implementation to HR. Don’t do this. Do not make diversity only an HR issue.

Return Path, an email deliverability company, found success breaking diversity initiatives into three internal working groups: Retention, Recruitment, and Communication. They saw even more progress when people from cross-functional teams participated.

Tumblr took a similar approach. Instead of making diversity an initiative siloed within HR, they have cross-functional working groups. There are members of the HR team, but the team is not limited to it.

The same construct works for larger companies too. Morgan Stanley, for instance, has one diversity and inclusion council, but three sub-committees:

  1. Recruiting/pipeline
  2. Internal employees
  3. External relationships

These sub-groups work best when they have a clear mission, support from senior leadership, and a dedicated budget to get things done. The council as a whole has a budget allocated to it, and the funds are split among the three sub-committees. Having a straightforward structure makes it easier for employees to pick up a project and run with it based on which sub-group they support.

Many startups are wary of setting a budget for diversity sub-committees. I asked Lisa Lee, Pandora’s Diversity Manager, how she suggests how highly cash-conscious startups should allocate funds. She advocates having a budget, “It’s important to do diversity work. You don’t need a massive budget. There are so many ways it can still be done. ” So whether it’s the cost of a team lunch or a team offsite, remember that making a financial commitment to get things done is a way to invest in change. Look for ways to put that money to work.  We’ll cover those in the last two posts in this series.

Consistency and iteration

Diversity is never done. Adding it into the company culture requires time and constant evolution. But the earlier you start, the easier it will be to grow with your company.

Whether you’re an early-stage startup or a larger company, take inventory of your culture, build diversity into your values, organize teams to implement initiatives, and hold people accountable.

In our next post, we’ll explore more ideas on how to integrate diversity into your recruiting and onboarding processes.

Something to share?

We want to hear from you! If you or your team have something to add, please share in the comments below or on Twitter.

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How to start talking to your team about diversity

This post is the second in our “Lessons from the USV Diversity Summit” series. In December, USV hosted our first Diversity Summit. Below are some of the most helpful insights we gathered about how to take action. If you are just joining the conversation, you can read the first post here.

Start somewhere

Who starts the conversation around diversity? Who will be the first one to say something, out loud, to your team? How do you start that conversation?

Talking about diversity can feel awkward. Many of our attendees found themselves  leading the charge at their companies simply because they were the first person to speak up about it. Others had their leadership role bestowed upon them because they happened to be the first person on their team to represent diversity.

A lot of our attendees told stories about how their company first “discovered” they had a diversity problem. Sometimes the team’s lack of diversity was pointed out by an outsider: “So how does it feel to be the only female engineer in your company?” Other times it was something people realized for themselves: I noticed I was the only black person  at our all-hands meeting of 100 people.” Occasionally, diversity came up because employees realized there was a mismatch between the team and its customers: “As a team of  ten white male engineers, we don’t represent the market or our customers.”

Most of the time, it was up to the diverse member of a team— whether they were a minority with regard to gender, race, or background—to take up the diversity initiative themselves. This can create the impression that diversity is important to that person simply because they want more representation for people “like them.”

We asked our attendees to tell us about their fears and concerns. Here are some of the sentiments that emerged:

  • “I’m a woman and I’ve never been discriminated against, but I know others have, so I’m making sure that behavior doesn’t continue for others.”
  • “I’m Latino, and I know a number of talented engineers of all backgrounds. I don’t want them to feel like an outsider like I did when I joined.”
  • “I’m the only male on my team, and I don’t want my opinion to be perceived as, ‘this is what all men think.’”
  • “I was the first female engineer, and I wanted to show other female engineers that they would not feel alone here, the way I felt alone when I was the only one.”

Waiting for minority team members to start the conversation themselves is dangerous, because if there is no diversity in your team, how will you ever start? So don’t wait. Start the conversation now.

If your goal is to be the best place for top talent to work, it should be the best place for anyone—even if they don’t work there yet.

We’re all in this together

No matter who or “what” you are, diversity belongs to all of us. To frame the discussion about diversity at our summit, we discussed unconscious bias early in the day.

We are all different from the next person. We all have biases that we use in our decision making, biases that come from  our upbringing, our life experiences, and our interactions with the culture and the world.

Leaving it to the professionals, we played a portion of Google’s video on unconscious bias. The video explains the importance of bias awareness in how a tech company successfully makes decisions. The video is worth watching in its entirety.

The concept of unconscious bias gives us a shared language to frame our personal experiences. Instead of saying “we,’” “them,” or “us,”—or using general statements like “men like to…” or “as Hispanics, we…”—we instead each framed our own thoughts around bias, conscious and unconscious.

Here are some examples: “I’m biased in favor of  iPhone users, since I’ve always used an iPhone and never an Android.” “I’m biased in favor of  NYU grads, people who grew up in North Carolina, and middle children.” It’s okay to have these biases, but letting them go unnoticed is where we get into trouble. If I only want to interview candidates who come from NYU, I’m letting my personal bias affect decisions for my company. If I believe that people who have been entrepreneurs just “fit the culture better,” I may not realize that I’m biasing a hiring decision. The idea might sound logical, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

In your conversations, you may find it easier to talk to your peers about diversity if you have thelanguage to talk about differences, rather than generalizing. Instead of saying, “I only hire SVA grads,” you might try substituting, “In the past, I’ve had a bias toward hiring SVA grads.” Modifying the language you use in your mind can make the difference between weighing a decision and having your mind already made up.. It’s the difference between being open to discussion vs. being closed.

We found that establishing a shared vocabulary empowered us to speak up, be empathetic, and encourage without turning the conversation into an “us vs. them” type argument. Unconscious bias training is a great way to kick off diversity discussions, but it is only the foundation of a larger conversation. There are more unconscious bias resources listed here

Allies and open conversations

The most cringeworthy stories we heard about at our summit came from people’s efforts to try to “get people talking about diversity.”

One company had held an all-hands meeting to discuss diversity. Anyone could weigh in, share ideas, and speak up about what they wanted changed. To ensure that employees were building off each other instead of battling, the facilitators required everyone to say “yes, and…” instead of “yes, but…” The conversation generated a lot of ideas but left everyone exhausted. At the end, everyone had to come up with one word to describe how they were feeling. Most people chose words like “uncomfortable,” “tense,” or “stressed.”

In hindsight, brainstorming sessions that have more than 50 people are rarely productive. Extroverts excel, introverts hang back. Leaders speak up while newer employees proceed with caution. It’s not the right forum for most topics, and it;s not a great forum for diversity discussions either. The meeting generated conversation, but nothing moved forward until a smaller group took the lead and started to make changes.

Starting with a small group proved to be a successful strategy for several other companies as well. Two different companies set up lunches to try to bring women in engineering together and ask: “What can we be doing better?” One company found that just creating a space to discuss the question already helped the attendees feel supported and heard. At the first meeting, only women were invited. Once the safe space had been established, the second lunch was open to anyone. Ultimately, the meetings led to several positive outcomes: (1) women in the company were encouraged to attend the Grace Hopper Conference, the leading conference for women in engineering (2) the company started requesting a Code of Conduct from conferences attended, and (3) the company pledged to have more diverse hiring panels.

Several companies advocated starting the process by assembling a small group of people to brainstorm about objectives, then bringing in more people only after the small group had a handle on what they wanted to accomplish. The small groups don’t need to be limited to one type of diversity. It’s enough to start with a small, diverse group of individuals who all share the same mission: to increase diversity on their teams.

Defining Diversity

Once you’ve gathered your small team of allies, the next step is to define what diversity means to your company.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has an extensive (and evolving) list of classes who are protected from discrimination. Since discriminating against members of these classes is against the law , it’s probably a good place to start. But you don’t have to stop there.

Here’s Stack Exchange’s philosophy on diversity in the workforce. This statement can be found on all of their job listings:

Diverse teams build better products
Legally, we need you to know this:
Stack Exchange, Inc. does not discriminate in employment matters on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, military service eligibility, veteran status, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or any other protected class. We support workplace diversity.
But we want to add this:
We strongly believe that diversity of experience contributes to a broader collective perspective that will consistently lead to a better company and better products. We are working hard to increase the diversity of our team wherever we can and we actively encourage everyone to consider becoming a part of it.

Another company defines it as “Diversity of Thought.” They built off the EEOC guidelines, but expanded it to include diversity of skillsets, education, and interests. They took what was required legally and added to it to make sure it felt authentic to their company culture and their existing team. Diversity belongs to everyone at the company, not just a subset of employees.

Start small, start today

One of the break-out sessions from our summit was “Talking about Diversity without Tension.” There were a few takeaways from that discussion. There will be always be tension, even in a small group. Trying to avoid tension may actually be counterproductive. It’s more important to have the conversation than to try to avoid it.

The best way forward is to start small. Assemble a small group of people to start the discussion in a safe space. Invite a professional trained in diversity or unconscious bias to join you. Or bootstrap early conversations with online resources. We’ve collected a few recommendations in the Diversity Hackpad here: Unconscious Bias Resources. Whatever the size your company, start your small group conversations today.

The next post in this series will explain how to take the small group conversations and extend them to the wider company culture.

Something to share?

We want to hear from you! If you or your team have something to add, please share in the comments below or on Twitter.

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Lessons from the USV Diversity Summit

At USV, we often get our portfolio companies together to discuss topics of interest, as well as challenges and lessons learned. In 2014, we held 42 such portfolio get-togethers. In December, we hosted our first Diversity Summit. The focus of the discussion was to increase organizational diversity to gain competitive advantage.

At the event, we had 28 attendees from 13 different companies with a range of job functions: Engineering, People, Community, Sales, Business Development, Legal and Product. Everyone had the same goal: to increase diversity in their organization.

I wanted to share the insights we learned and what we found helpful to take action.  

Why is diversity important?

To prepare for our event, I connected with Lisa Lee, Pandora’s Head of Diversity. She shared the importance of setting context around the topic in a professional setting, especially since conversations can easily drift into discussions on social justice, privilege and entitlement. Those topics are worthy to inspect, but they detract from the organizational conversation of increasing diversity for business success.

To set context, she advised addressing two key questions early in our discussion:

  1. Do you want your company to increase your company’s competitive advantage? Extensive research has proven that more diverse perspectives leads to more innovative ideas and better financial returns.
  2. Do you want your company to one day serve millions of people? It helps if you know how different people in the population think. If companies want to last, they need to think about this early.

Grounding the discussion in these questions early on will help ensure a productive conversation about diversity in your organization, both in strategy and in practice. The topic is vast, but you don’t need to be an expert to start making changes. If you want to learn more, go find experts willing to help.

To help get up to speed quickly, here are the most cited research studies around the benefits of organizational Diversity. The research can be summarized into the following:

  • If you want to create the most innovative ideas, you will benefit from diversity of perspectives within your workforce.
  • If you want to increase the financial returns of your business, encourage gender diversity on your executive team and board.
  • If you want to build a massive company that serves a global population, consider the diversity of your workforce in order to best serve those customers. 
  • Having diversity of perspectives can create more innovative ideas, but will likely expand discussions and debate.

Because diversity is such an important topic, it must be prioritized early in a company’s life.  As Lisa put it, “I’m a believer that you have to start thinking about diversity early, otherwise it just becomes really, really difficult the bigger that you grow. What you want is to grow your company where diversity is one of your core principles and core values, because trying to inject it later on is inorganic and it’s off putting to people.” Start today.

Challenges of making change

One of the biggest challenges of successful diversity initiatives is simply opening the discussion.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Intel and HP shared their workforce diversity numbers publicly after Tracy Chou, a Pinterest engineer, called for more transparency about their diversity efforts. Even though these companies are making progress, the media and social media reactions are largely negative. There is media finger pointing at what isn’t achieved yet, not focus on what is being done.

Diversity challenges are across the tech sector, from startups to venture capital. At USV, we know we’re far from diverse. Fortunately, we have learned a lot and we want to continue to encourage progress internally, within our portfolio, and the broader tech community.

Diversity initiatives are currently happening behind closed doors. Best practices are siloed and we’re not learning from each other.

An open diversity conversation lifts all boats. It’s what the tech community embraces: transparency, failing out loud, sharing strategies, cheering on those who are making changes, and using post-mortems to learn from things that didn’t pan out.

Diversity at work

Even within the walls of a single organization, it can be difficult to raise the topic of diversity. When asked amongst our summit attendees, the challenges raised were: discussing and defining diversity, creating a plan, and prioritizing initiatives to move forward.

To address these challenges, our group came away with a number of different approaches that I’ll expand on in more detail in this blog series. These include:

  • Getting Started: having the discussion, language, and online tools
  • Company Culture: embracing diversity, inclusive mission vision values, and performance
  • Recruiting: tactics, expectations, interviews, job postings, resources, and external organizations
  • Constant Evolution: Feedback, measuring success, training, and materials

Diversity is an urgent and important issue; the best time to start is now. Let’s open the door on this topic.

Diversity is never done

To wrap up our day, we had Maximo Patiño, Associate Director of Admissions and Diversity Strategist, join us from CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, bringing 14+ years of diversity leadership and advocacy. He answered the questions left open from our discussions and affirmed we were heading in the right direction. His most profound advice, however, was this: “diversity is never done”.

Just as innovation is not something you “achieve” it’s something you constantly strive for and try to inspire, diversity is never done. Both a relief and an inspiration, diversity is an initiative that will constantly be part of your company. The goal then is not to “fix” or “solve” diversity, it’s to encourage it.

Something to share?

If you or your team have something to add, please share in the comments or on Twitter.

For the full list of Diversity Resources, including the research mentioned above, you can view the list here


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Get off Idea Island

This post is part of this week’s Startup Edition to answer the question: What advice would you give young entrepreneurs?

image

Are you wrestling with an idea that won’t escape your mind? A startup you can imagine yourself running and growing into something real?

How many people have given you feedback on this idea? Have you told your closest friends about it? Your family? Have you sought out experts in your chosen field to get input?

One of the biggest mistakes I see new entrepreneurs make is not asking for feedback on their early ideas. Talking about an idea will help it mature into something real. You can have an idea your entire life and never execute on it. Don’t let fear stand in the way of making it a reality.

Don’t be too afraid of thieves. If you are really concerned about a competitor being able to beat you at your own game, you’re doomed from the beginning. It can be scary to put an idea out there but the experienced entrepreneur is already doing it.

Find peers in your chosen field. Approach the conversation from the standpoint of curiosity, “What do you think about X?” Odds are, someone has thought of your idea before and have a reason they did not execute. They probably have enough going on, don’t see it as the right fit for them or don’t think it’s a good idea. By asking their thoughts you’ll be more knowledgeable as to why not. This should help further build confidence in why you should do it if you see things differently.

Don’t allow a fear of rejection stop you too early. What if they think your idea is stupid or crazy? Phrase your idea in terms of: ‘I’ve been thinking about …’ or 'what if this existed…’ or ‘would you use x if it were offered..’ to help make the conversation about the idea and not just you. Truth be told, not everyone is going to like your idea. Even if you become a giant like Twitter there will be people who don’t understand it and criticize it. But continue getting feedback even if most disagree with your vision. It will make you stronger.

Execution above all else. Getting early feedback on your idea is important, but don’t allow on-going discussions to keep you from executing. You should be utilizing Lean Startup methodology to get your idea moving but collecting feedback as it grows.  

What business ideas have you been hiding? Share with me in the comments or on Twitter @br_ttany.

Want to read more advice for young entrepreneurs? Check out this week’s Startup Edition.

Photo of Valiyaparamba Island.