A few days ago there was a very popular article about software engineer startup traps – taking cases, writing about startups in case you don’t take cases at the beginning, or you’ll fall into a pit. I quite agree with the thesis of this article.
I used to run a caseload company while working on software. Although the income has been good, I found the words of senior Xu Shijie on FB when I was halfway there
“Because no matter how competent you are, it’s essentially an industry where revenues have to grow in proportion to the size of your workforce. Its core competencies are scale, cost, and human resource efficiency. However, as a project owner, no matter how successful you are, your company will never surpass what an Indian company like TCS did back in 2004.”
At the end of the day, taking cases is a hard business to Scale and “grow”. In particular, the way of payment in Taiwan is completely different from the “common practice” in Europe and America.
If the negotiation is not strong enough and the control of cash flow is not good enough, it is very easy to fail. And the cash flow itself is a paradox. The customer issues you a cheque (not necessarily a cheque, but it may also be instalments), but your salary is definitely “spot” cash going into the employee account. One way or another, the owner of the receiving company will present a very large cash pressure. (I even know people who took cases with a lot of debt…)
(Especially if the customer deliberately changes the acceptance conditions, or there is some kind of unexplained dispute, or simply the company’s own project control is poor. And whether or not you make money doesn’t even have a positive correlation with your “development skills” or “project management skills”.
Okay, well, every case firm owner probably knows what I’m talking about. There are a lot of things that you can’t talk about on stage, that employees can’t know about, that you have to swallow. This is irrelevant, so I’ll skip it and come back to it later.
Today we are going to talk about how foreign companies scale their strategies. Recently, I used a service called SketechDeck. I think the strategy of this company is quite good and many Taiwanese companies can learn from it, so I share it with you.
I think one weakness of Taiwan service companies is that they stay in small workshops forever, so they can’t scale.
What is the small workshop state?
- Native method steelmaking, even if know the current process is not scientific, also do not have the heart to improve
- Never separate the wheat from the chaff. Even if we bring in strong employees, we do not have the heart to “save” the “technology” of the strong employees and improve the overall battle ability
- Not automation. Some processes are almost pattern in the company, but still insist on not developing simple automation technology. Once you hire every new person you start all over again, and every deal is freestyle. Cause quality instability, and slow expansion.
Do products have such a situation is already very fatal, if the case company or this situation also want to make products more fatal.
How do I know SketechDeck
I first learned about this company in Sam Altman’s Startup School class and saw the AD on the last page of his Slide. Sam outsourced his slides to SketechDeck to “beautify”. So I wondered, even looking back, what is this company doing?
It turned out to be a Design Firm. It’s interesting that when I first encountered SketechDeck, I didn’t realize that its “predecessor” was actually a “slide show” outsourcing beautification company. I thought he was a Design Firm. Because its price list says it provides these services.
OK. I thought it was awesome. Looking at this price list, IT seems to me that this company has done a good job in offering prices. Because these are “common types” of design, I can quickly know a project quote. There is no possibility of building something that will make a wallet explode. But I still have no Enroll.
It wasn’t until the company had an opportunity to Redo something. Designer at Inhouse is too busy.
The advantage of Designer with Inhouse is that there are things to do and they can communicate face to face at any time.
The downside is that
- If your Team’s NUMBER of RDS and development speed is much faster than Designer Team’s, the company’s product development line will be blocked.
- And if the Design Team did something “completely wrong”, the huge amount of RD energy would be wasted.
- Designers who have Sense to make a certain production level are hard to get in interviews. (I can really feel the “technology gap” between Taiwan and the US deeply in Silicon Valley, but I think this is due to the lack of practice opportunities caused by ecology.)
So I had the opportunity to outsource to SketechDeck to try it out. To be honest, the service of SketechDeck is “really not expensive”. Even the Fixed Price of the whole project is far different from that of Taiwan’s design firms.
What I like about SketechDeck is its stable Outcome and Deliver Speed. At that time, I outsourced two projects, one of which was completed in 5 working days (a Landing Page) and the other in 3 working days (a set of FB images).
This speed is quite amazing. Generally speaking, if you outsource a design project in Taiwan, you can receive the first version within 1-3 days, even if the designer actively cooperated with you, not to mention running several interactions to reach the Final delivery. This process can take more than three weeks to run away. And you don’t know if the designer will… Run away.
I would have been shocked by a few of them
1. Very fast delivery.
In their “exclusive” background, I wrote my requirements according to the customized form, described the style I wanted, the delivery format I wanted, and the number of samples. I received samples in the “next working day” soon. When I received the first “Sample” and gave my feedback, I received the modification in the “next working day”. The first time I submitted the requirement was on Friday, and the four-page design was finalized the following Friday (interinteraction only took 4-5 times).
It is said that their designers are all over the world, so they can make 24/7 shifts.
2. Clear and transparent valuation.
They designed an “exclusive” backstage. There are some defining problems, like
1) What do you want to do this time 2) The style you want 3) The company designs Guideline, color palette, Logo pattern 4) How many samples do you need 5) How many pages do you need in total 6) Do you have any specific font? 7) Do you have any suggested references? 8) Do you have a format for delivering? 9) Do you have a designated designer level? (The quotation for Junior, Normal, Senior and Director is different)
According to the information you fill in, give a Fixed specified quotation, with credit card payment in advance.
3. Easy to cooperate with the background, process, instant customer service response
1) Every time the designer submits a manuscript, I can see it in the background: V1, V2,…. 2) AFTER the delivery, I can directly comment on the design draft, I like this one, I don’t like this one, how to modify. 3) Customer service background. The designer may not be online, but their project manager or customer service will be. So if you have any questions about the project, please leave a message directly.
I sent out two cases, both done for me by the same Hungarian designer. In this process, I did not talk to her “direct entity”, but she did exactly what I wanted. It makes me feel good to give them the rest of the case.
Besides, every time I wake up and go to work, I have a manuscript waiting for me.
4. Unlimited parallel projects
The aforementioned annoyance is the lack of designers. SketechDeck bills itself as “their on-demand 24/7 design team.”
Instead of waiting for the Design queue, you can use them to make prototypes you want and wait for the RD team to make them when they are available.
(Because the design types were not all listed on the quotation form, I wrote to ask, and they said they did website design, UX and App process design)
What is SketechDeck? & How do they scale?
Later, I checked the background information of SketechDeck in TechCrunch and actually chatted with the Founder (because later we directly signed a monthly fee plan with him to calculate the hours). They started out as Deck, because he used to work at McKinsey, and they used Indian outsourcing companies to fix slides. He became SketechDeck because he thought it might be worthwhile to scale up the business.
Of course, now extend to Deck, except for the common Design. And the CEO wants to grow the business tenfold this year, saying he wants to turn it into the Uber of “design” (they sign up designers around the world, and Inhouse has case managers and creative directors reviewing finished products). They’re from YCW 2014. The company was founded in 2013.
Well, I don’t know what SketechDeck will eventually look like, though. But they do grow at a phenomenal rate. The whole design process went smoothly. The price is very competitive. I even personally want to sign with them.
A “case company” is able to “productize” processes while achieving high growth rates. His latter ideas, the steps and actions, are well worth following.
That’s why I wanted to write this article.