TTM or TTC ?

A manager walks into an office where a handful of engineers are working on a jigsaw puzzle.
“Hey guys, in leisure mode? I assume you’re a head of schedule?”.
One of the engineers looks at him and replies:
“We’re not sure. It’s quite complicated and we’ve been trying to put this puzzle together for three months now.”
“You’ve got to be kidding” the manager replies. “How much time do you think you still need to finish this” he says, nodding towards the puzzle.
“Well on the box it says 4 to 6 years, but I guess we can do it in under 3 years”.


The joke shows that time to market is a relative thing. Even when you’ve implemented a process that will generate absolute short time to market durations, it doesn’t mean cash comes pouring in after that. A lot of time is lost between launching a product to the market and critical mass sales. Why? Because the adoption of new products is delayed by two main causes. Companies forget to “design for sales” and sales channels are not ready to win customers for new products.

The result is that the product needs redesigns, additional debugging or other rework. Shareholders are told that the the company is one quarter behind on the execution of the plan. This quarter (in many cases the “lost quarter” becomes a period of 6 to 12 months) is a very expensive period, because it results in a cash shortage which was not budgeted for. Shareholders are asked to cough up more money. Founders are diluted. Payroll is slashed. Managers decline payment of their salaries. Creditors (many of whom are called partners) get frustrated by overdue payments. None of this would have been necessary.

The seven keys to shorter time to cash for high-tech start-ups are:
1. Focus, Focus, Focus
2. Have a Winning Strategy by being smarter and faster than the competition, finding weak spots in competitive tactics and strategy, and only then hitting when you’re ready to win
3. Explicit Culture which allows you to remain frugal, yet result soriented and which binds the desired people to the company.
4. Processes which allow you to scale easily and operate flawlessly
5. Execute!. Where keys 1 to 4 provide the architecture of your start-up, execution caters for the results. Execution is built into your plans and progress can be easily reported and analyzed.
6. Design For Sales.
7. Win Customers through an aligned marketing and sales strategy and proper sales management.

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