Some reflections on building the builder/startup community at UCLA, a predominantly consulting and big tech focused school.
One of the best things here was that there was a ton of early interest and hype, that we mostly socially engineered. It took a lot of planning and effort, but we got a ton of solid applications (~200) ish.
But this kind of leads into one of my first bigger mistakes: growing too fast.
We had just started this quarter and trying to hyperscale to a larger club of 40-50 people was too difficult. The typically 80/20 rule applied here, and 20 percent of our members are definitely 80 percent of the output. We took in a lot of half in half out people, some that didn't have the skills even, and people that just didn't have the right mindset to be part of an org like this.
It took a toll on our opportunities as a club (not as cracked so we didn't get as many eyeballs on us), made it super hard for me personally to manage (had to write a whole bunch of code myself and do a lot of micromanaging in terms of the project groups and stuff), and basically running all the operations for the entirety of the org.
I'd say it was tough, but definitely a great learning experience for me. Somethings I MUST get better at in order to be successful at a point (in starting my own company) is learning how to fire fast. In order to keep a culture, we need to set it early and right. People that weren't putting in the same work or effort shouldn't get the benefits. Getting rid of people who weren't a good fit fast is crucial to the survival of an org (just like a startup).
Another thing is I needed to vet candidates harder. Interviews are all talk, you can easily lie about what you're going to do and what your goals and aspirations are. But one thing that you CAN'T fake is actually building. There's people that say they want to build and then people that ACTUALLY build cool stuff.
someone told me that PROD would interview candidates based off of how much they could build of an idea in a week, rather than just take their word for it. Actions speak louder than words.
overall running VEST has been a super cool experience that I think is teaching me a lot + will continue to teach me even more about managing people and being a better leader.
so basically:
- don't grow too fast and take people you don't NEED
- recruit much better
- remove people fast