This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube video titled "The Plusses and Minuses of Scrappiness" created on July 29, 2020, featuring Debbie Sterling discussing the challenges and benefits of maintaining a scrappy approach in business, particularly in the context of her company GoldieBlox. She reflects on the importance of focusing resources effectively and the lessons learned from trying to manage multiple under-resourced projects simultaneously.
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Staying scrappy was never the problem. We did get a lot more resources. Our problem was we were trying to do too many things with too few resources. So we always, in the early days, we really just had a focus problem because the vision for goldieblox was so big. You know, it was not just, I want to have toys. It was like, I want to have toys and a TV show and a feature film and mobile apps and I want, you know, eventually I want to have stores. And you know, it was just, I wanted it to be a global franchise as big as, you know, Barbie and Disney Princess and American Girl. And in the early days, we were just trying to do so much. So what ended up happening was we had, like, what we should have done, which is, you know, hindsight 20 20, but like, what we really should have done was sequence it out a little bit better so that we really nail one thing first. And then once that sort of, that part of the business is stable and up and running and profitable, then we layer on the next thing and then we layer on the next thing. But instead we had like five projects at a time, all of which were under resourced. So we always stayed really scrappy. And what's kind of amazing about it and what I've learned though, through this is, for example, we decided we wanted to launch a mobile app which could have been its own company in and of itself, right? And for us, it was just sort of like an add on because we wanted to have an. We wanted to get into the app space business. And so we had this tiny scrappy team. I mean, we literally had like a friend of ours from Seattle who we knew could make apps. And he, like, moved into my husband in my apartment and like lived and slept on our living room couch for two months, pulling all nighters, working with a team in Poland to make the app. I mean, it was like insane. And, um, but it ended up winning iOS iOS app of the Year. And I was on stage doing a keynote at wwdc. So, like, it's like, I think what I've. What I've learned here, one like, yes, like properly resource the projects that you do and kind of sequence things out so you're not doing too much because that's like what every startup messes up on. And ours was very much so. But on the other hand, I have learned that keeping it scrappy can be a really good thing. Because I've had other examples of projects where you would think, like, okay, well, we have a bunch of resources now, we have more money, so you start growing the team and putting more people on it and then all of a sudden all of these people bog it down. And I've found that. And we do this now when we're working on a project. Like even my, my toy team is very small. Like my internal toy team is very, very, like amazingly small. You wouldn't believe, but we, we bring in contractors and new ideas and thinking, but the in house team is very small and that enables us to move really quickly.
