This one goes out to my fellow eventualpreneur coders.
We’ve always known we’ll go back to entrepreneurship someday.
We’re taking time to learn & build a margin of safety, though.
The concept of intrapreneurship always intrigued us on that front, that in some cases we’ll find higher personal returns launching a product from within an existing company. But why is this kind of thing so rare? We are working against the gravity of specialization in bureaucracy.
Where is the blueprint for Intrapreneurship? Where are the mentors? I can’t find them either.
The truth is that we struggle to find our way in the Scaling phase of companies. I called it Product Engineering for a while, but that was hard to differentiate from normal software engineering. Earlier this year I tried calling it Design-gineering. We’re junior designers but with senior skills in information architecture, scaffolding, flow.
We are definitely not only programmers though. We are business design-thinkers in our hearts; analysts, performers, salespeople, and strategists too. We can’t go too long ignoring some of these other aspects before some form of depression starts to creep in.
Focus on the growth gaps. For now, focus on the high leverage parts of the growth loop & advocate for them. That may mean saying no to the large (and often still fun) retention focused features to focus on top of the funnel agility. Or vice versa. In the long term, top of the funnel may be more suited to our talents and personal goals as they are closer to the metrics, design, and business.
When the business can sustain it, we’ll be primed & ready to take on new product development.
If Startup = Growth, then Intrapneurship must = Growth too.