Hi @LydiaNicoll , Great questions!
Culture is definitely something that should be prioritized from day #1. We are big proponents of that here at HubSpot. In fact, we did a whole presentation on this very subject in Paris last year. If you'd like some resources on this, let me know and I can send them over.
As far as processes go, they evolve over time so as your team grows, processes will look different, so I would recommend keeping that top of mind and iterating as necessary. From my own experience running a startup, process was best early on but absolutely critical as we grew the team.
In terms of alignment, when a startup is just a small team (1-5 people), alignment is important but it's more natural because it's all-hands-on-deck all the time. As a team grows and there's not just one person handling marketing and sales and the team is all helping with customer success (which is often the case at first!), alignment is absolutely necessary and processes need to be in place to create that alignment and to continue it at scale. So while there isn't an advantage in waiting, the necessity of having it escalates as the company grows.
For your question on managing expectations, you're absolutely right. You don't want to under-deliver and that concern is very fair. However, especially in the early stages, most startups are still iterating on their product so while it may feel like under-delivering if you can’t create precisely what they are looking for, by knowing from the start what they want, with each iteration you’re able to move closer to it without wasting time on other things that maybe the customer doesn’t want.
Our biggest advice is: practice being customer-centric right from the start. That’s how you will build a customer base that wholeheartedly believes that you care about them and their needs and are going to do your best to meet them. You can only do that if you sincerely know what their needs are. If you don’t ask the customers what their ideals are and just give them what you can manage, that’s putting the startup first rather than the customer. And maybe what they desire is something you can easily build! And if it’s not, perhaps dig into how you can feasibly meet their needs. Bottom line: the better you know their needs, the more you can ensure you meet them and the less time (and money) you’ll spend on things they won’t want.
Plus, by taking this approach, it may end up costing you as a startup less in the long-run. There’s a lot of content about the lean startup methodology (one explanation here) that plays into this approach. Highly recommend checking it out!
Hope that helps!
.png "HubSpot Employee"){kind=icon}
