036: How I Failed to Launch a Tech Startup with Laurie Ruettimann

Have you ever effed something up so badly you’re not sure if anything will get better ever again? Laurie has. In this candid, bonus episode, she shares her biggest failure – a product called GlitchPlan that was supposed to help you do pre-mortem on a situation. What’s that? Laurie explains the concept and talks about how she’d been doing it herself for a lifetime. It was a sure thing, or so she thought.

• Laurie explains what the concept of pre-mortem is and shares some very painful moments in her past where she was forced to use it to make life-changing decisions. It’s one of her core mantras: if you can see it, you can beat it.
• Laurie and her partner pulled together a team of 5, all of whom were experts, but all of whom were also employed elsewhere. Except Laurie. That was the first indicator of failure. Laurie talks about what her life was like being a CEO of a company whose employees weren’t engaged. But the employees weren’t the only ones to blame. Laurie talks about how she failed them.
• One of the next indicators of failure Laurie shares was that, in hindsight, if your tech team won’t even use what they’re building, there’s something wrong. Laurie was using it, though, and her pre-mortem problem lists weren’t being avoided. They were happening right before her eyes. In other words, she used her own product to watch its development fail. Oh, the irony.
• Laurie ended up firing part of her team, but she wasn’t finished with GlitchPath just yet. After some reflection, she brought together another set of people – and she has great experience as a recruiter. But she said something in her job ad that had people coming out of the woodwork to gripe at her. It was just two little words and it was the best thing she did during the entire GlitchPath experience.
• Version two of Laurie’s team was amazing. Except for two things. The team wouldn’t use it. Again. Laurie tells the story of development of a product no one wanted to use. The second problem? No one else wanted to use it. Laurie reveals the interesting reason why; it has to do with fear at work.
• Laurie’s third goal was to integrate GlitchPath into other apps and tools on the market: Slack, Asana, Basecamp, etc. Her two lessons there were 1) most companies use weird project management, and 2) none of those tool companies would every buy her out, which she had hoped for from the beginning.
• Laurie still loves the pre-mortem concept, but GlitchPath was a dead end. She brought her team together and killed it for the second, and final, time. She shares the big lessons she learned from GlitchPath, personally and professionally.

Enjoy this bonus episode? Do you want more like it? We’re thinking about putting together a community where you’ll get all normal content PLUS juicy tidbits, stories, access to Laurie, and an inside look at how she’s fixing work. Let us know! Email us at hello@letsfixwork.com.