“If you cannot clearly articulate the vision of the future that you are trying to create to your people and the market in a way that they care, you have a problem,” Brendan says. Hersh Tapadia, co-founder of Allstacks and recent guest on the Billion Dollar Tech podcast, is an example of someone who has done this successfully. On the campus of IBM where Hersh began his career, he went around asking the fundamental question of what the engineers in the company were doing and why it mattered. When no one could answer, he quit. This ultimately led to his co-founding Allstacks, which recognizes the contributions of engineers to their company via deliverable metrics, which then helps the engineers affect change in their company and yield their power.
Key components of Hersh’s success have included, again, asking as many people as possible what was and wasn’t working at the moment and then taking that feedback data, and not only providing solutions but one that hadn’t been done before, thus differentiating his company in the process.
Hear Brendan expand on highlights from his conversation with Hersh, including how many people you should really talk to and how to avoid getting tossed in the wrong bucket.
Quotes:
“Hersh went around IBM trying to understand what the fuck they were doing. What are we actually doing here, and how does what we’re doing contribute to the broader goals of the company?”([1:58]-[2:06] | Brendan)
“I have almost never seen someone build in private and then say, ‘I’m glad we took so long to wait to get feedback because it would have gotten stolen from us. I have very frequently seen people build things that no one ended up caring about.”([4:06]-[4:21] | Brendan)
The companies that really go big fast are the ones that have some kind of lightbulb that is a dramatic improvement over what other people are doing in this space.” ([4:56]-[5:02] | Brendan)
Connect with Brendan Dell:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell
Instagram: @thebrendandell
TikTok: @brendandell39
Master Class: brendandell.com/masterclass
Buy a copy of Brendan’s Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926
Connect with Hersh Tapadia and Allstacks:
LinkedIn: @hershtapadia
Twitter: @hershtapadia
Facebook: @hershtapadia
Instagram: @hershtapadia
TikTok: @:hershtpadia
Website: http://www.allstacks.com
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About the Author
Brendan Dell
Brendan Dell is an author and the founder of The Daily Creative. As a freelancer he's worked with clients like Expedia, Cvent, Panasonic, Brother, Windstream and 100+ more to build unignorable tech brands. At The Daily Creative, he shares advice and lessons to help freelancers level up.
