My challenge in Superhog is going to come with a lot more freedom and lot more responsibility than the previous positions I've held. The crown is heavy, and so it's both my time to shine and to not fuck up.
One of the habits that I value a lot, have almost never seen successfully applied in companies, and have seen successfully applied to some degree in Mercad~ao (thanks João) is writing things down. A lot. Everywhere. All the time. Organized repositories of text all over the place. Basically, every time you are about to open your mouth to say something, you should instead or also write it down.
I'll start on the eve of my arrival by writing down some thoughts on stuff I need to do.
- Social wise
- Make contacts: I need to have a couple of coffees with a lot of people:
* Global KPIs : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/EU9p7oaSBGRFoYGlJkfsMqwBt6sCRfF-jd0_3zkUYJxV2Q?e=k7ad02
* Data used in Sales and Account management : https://guardhog.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Guardhoggroup/EZXCzc8ftM5JrOm43UpCh5QBrB05Rrq6MDJ7-j-B8pjHJQ?e=4o4JnG
* Data used in Finance : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/ERZWA02zJlxAi8akJmzVz40BQ3sjwARt1EYUnP6Y4-sbZg?e=maj0dU
* Data used in Product : https://guardhog-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/ben_cotte_superhog_com/Ed1Wt4-T-9FIodoJEkmYUzMB3VzalxzPTsiYcrQOm1ik1g?e=qZhW9Z
* Invoicing Process : https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMirYfDg=/
- General direction. 2024 company goals. What's the philosophy? Growth? Quality?
- 3 main goal lines
- Make current operations work properly now that we have resources (backfill). Andrew's opinion is they where understaffed for long and that explains why things are not working out smoothly.
- Grow
- Through direct selling (business as usual)
- Integration with PMSs to white-label the solution and turn them into sales funnels
- Crazy R&D ideas, mostly around Guest-centric services
- How do you envision my team, who do I report to?
- Data is not a squad, it's cross functions
- Serves both Ben C and Matt, but with different styles
- We rely a lot on engineering and Ben R, so we need to tag along nicely and they need to keep us in mind.
Elaine leaves mid february.
Amanda joining and taking care of the financial processes and bookkeeping until a finance director joins in.
End of march is end of financial year. Next year books will be on Iplicity.
Actions
- Andrew is very concerned about the invoicing process and the choice of accounting tool and now I understand why. If any of those two, are not worked out properly, they will lead to a very nasty situation. I need to judge my role in those fast and get evereyone aligned.
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Stuff we couldn't go through, let's discuss next meeting:
- Is the P&L somehow decentralized?
- How do you and Humphrey split responsibilities?
- Things I've liked so far
- Good attitudes, good spirit
- Product is clear
- Lots of room for improvement
- If the product is making money with the current simplicity, we can surely do better
- Engineering culture seems great
- Data is in a bad shape, I don't have data
- Things that concern me
- "Quick", "all out" attitude
- Systems are growing uncontrolled, this will bite us in the ass soon and will hurt people's work
- The huge proportion of new joiners is going to be a cultural challenge
- Data is in a bad shape, I don't have data
- What do you think about my plan?
- Couple of weeks listening in
- Ceremony to kickstart the team
- Team proposal
- Backlog
- Building out our infrastructure as well as working on hot things. Balance between immediate stuff and building for the future
- Is there something that concerns you? Anything you are scared of? Any issue that keeps you up at night?
- I'll be eager to grab a lunch or to hear more about both you and Humphrey. I care about the plans at the top, it's one of the main reasons I'm here and not at a big corp
## Meeting with Clay
Onboarding and PMSs
- Every host gets manual onboarding. This is a pain point
-
- Goals:
- Hopefully we get it fully automated. 100%.
-
- Fully takes care of PMS integrations
Around 27 integrations currently
Most importants: Guesty, Rentals United, Hostfully, Lodgify, Hostaway
PMCs
Tradeoff between building on PMS that have a lot of clients, and PMSs that have a lot of clients with Superhog
Functions of a PMS:
- Shared calendar for listings across all channels
- Integrated revenue
- Integrated communications between customer service and clients
Payment step: screening, waiver, damage protection plan
ALL BOOKINGS GET A SCREENING, NO MATTER WHAT SERVICES THE PMC HAS HIRED WITH US
Who's your tech lead? Kareem, Egypt team. Good vibes.
How do you feel about your engineering team? All good, no complaints.
- Unrealistic prioritization. Not all questions deserve to be answered
- Overly strict centralization in Data team: if someone owns the data, has the data, and knows what to do with the data, the Data team is there to review but doesn't need to act
- Get another data engineer and two data analysts in place. Senior people that know what they are doing, not the right place and time to develop junior guys
