As we grow into our partnership based approach we need to ensure that context switching is reduced and we can dive deep into our DevOps, DataOps, and IT capabilities. The approach we should take is to hire decentralized general managers/technical managers to run each vertical who report to a Business Development or Engineering & Distribution.
This is based on Amazon’s two-pizza/single-threaded teams. By having decentralized teams completely focused on a singular objective leads to higher throughput as each team can focus on a singular vertical or product. Further, having a team with autonomy can lead to faster problem discovery for a particular vertical allowing us to create additional solutions and products.
Capabilities
opsZero is an engineering company, our products and solutions provide technical solutions and products. Our core capabilities are DevOps, DataOps, and IT which are the three things we want expand into across industries and verticals. To do so effectively we need to focus on three fundamental things:
- Capital. Ensure we are financially sound and continuously improve our rate of return and cash flows. We continuously generating additional value from our customers by getting more and more deeply integrated into their Cloud Infrastructure.
- Partnerships. Use a top down approach to build partnerships with companies serving specific verticals who we can complement with our capabilities to launch new solutions. These solutions are not grouping of opsZero products and services with our partners solutions.
- Engineering & Distribution. Use a bottom up approach by building products for engineers and other technical contributors. These products are APIs, Extensions, and Datasets. Use Cloud marketplaces for distribution to reach these technical audiences.
Offerings
- Solutions. Solutions are industry specific combinations of capabilities and partnerships. These are sold as a contract to companies. For example, opsZero CMMC would be a Solution as we are partnering with Meerkat, XQ, and using our IT capabilities.
- Products. Products are self-serve and targeted toward technical buyers. For example, opsZero Kubespot would be a product as it is a collection of modules that are used together to perform a task. opsZero OMYAC would be a product because it is self-serve, industry agnostic, and built for a technical audience.
Teams
To allow us to move quickly we should split the company into two groups:
- Core. The leadership team that builds and manages the common tooling and best practices for the company. The core team should be exceedingly small. This team has the yes/no for launching new solutions and products based on market data.
- Verticals. Products and Solutions are assigned single-threaded general managers. The general manager will be given the best practices provided by the Core team and will be responsible for growing the P&L.
The Product Teams financials are tracked and the return on investment is measured to ensure bad bets are shutdown and good bets are rewarded.
Core
The core team should be small and should make decisions quickly with the following roles:
- CEO. Yes/No on Capital Allocation decisions.
- Finance. Manage capital, finance and taxes.
- VP of Business Development. Build the core partnerships of the company and figuring out the companies to partner with to build new Solutions.
- Sales, Marketing, Design. Website, Branding, and Sales collateral.
- VP of Engineering & Distribution. Product development and cloud marketplace distribution.
Vertical
The Vertical Teams act as mini-startups focused on building and scaling their solution or product.
- The team lead is the General Manager for solutions and they report to the VP of Business Development. When we are selling a Solution it is important that the General Manager is knowledgable about the industry we are selling to the solution to and it is why they are the lead.
- The team lead is the Technical Manager for products and they reports to the VP of Engineering & Distribution for products. When we are building products the products are technical and require understanding of the Cloud so we need the products to be lead by a Technical Manager.
The units act independently to grow the business while working within the opsZero common infrastructure. The units have the following roles with additional roles based on the needs of the vertical.
- General Manager. Responsible for growing the P&L of the unit and work to build the sales and marketing needed. Usually, they should have experience in the industry they are selling to.
- Technical Manager. Responsible for delivering the product or solution. For a product also act as the lead to ensure that the product is built and delivered and new features are added.
- Programmers, Support, etc. Any additional people that need to be supported with the idea that they are two pizza teams.