On the TechWaterloo stage ×1
Latif Nanji of Roadmunk presents 4 Weird Things I Do as a Founder
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechWaterloo stage in 2016. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Latif ↗
In their words
Startups are effectively long-form improv. A group of people stand on stage, go to the audience and pick out a word, and for the next hour they're tasked with doing scenes on that one word. That feels like a startup to me.
We recognized that doing cultural things like this are not a trade-off to business. We actually got more work done in this month, and as a result we had our highest sales month ever in history.
Manage your time extraordinarily carefully early on, and close your first customer as soon as possible. We didn't get our first customer till nine months in. I think I would have found a way to close the deal in three months and built off what they said.
Around the web ×1
Quick answers
Who is Latif Nanji?
A Toronto founder. He co-founded Roadmunk, whose software let product teams turn a pile of ideas, deadlines and dependencies into a visual roadmap, and was its CEO through the early growth years; Tempo Software acquired the company in November 2021. Before that he co-founded Pokerspace and worked as a product manager at Miovision in Waterloo; sources disagree on how long, so no figure is given. What he does today is not stated in any public source, so nothing is claimed here.
Why did Roadmunk take the whole company to Costa Rica?
Three reasons, he told the TechWaterloo stage in 2016: to actually do the thing founders talk about doing; to let the first ten employees build relationships before the company grew; and to give everyone a month focused on the core strategy for the next one to three years. The month produced the company's highest sales to that point.
What are the 'weird things' he did as a founder?
Improv classes at Second City, which he said rewired how he handled ideas in a room; sensory-deprivation float tanks once a month to come at a problem from a new angle; biographies rather than business books, for perspective on days when the work was grinding; and the month abroad with the whole company.