Wise Startup Blog

This first week after Spring Break, Grooveshark has been re-aligning our public relations, marketing, advertising, business development into busnipublimarketising — simple enough for ya?

So I decided to put together a quick How To build a killer 90 day plan:

1. 1. Get a big whiteboard, some Red Bull / Sparks (beer+energy), your team, and 5 hours

Brainstorming. We’ve heard it thousands of times, but you really need to start out with a blank slate. Write down any idea, no matter how stupid, etc. It can be tough to actually stick to this idea, as there’s always someone in the group that tries to shift the focus to one specific idea and it’s own merit, but just try to drown them out or tell them they have an investor calling to get them out of the room and keep the creative juices flowing. After you’ve spent yourselves, take a break and resume meeting up later that day or the next day.

2. 2. Take a step back and look at the big picture

With all of our really cool, crazy ideas, we now have to think rationally. How does this all fit into our big picture? We’re planning out an intense PR push for the next couple months, so we have to see how each of these ideas would fit into a big picture plan. From this, we can start to frame out the 90 day plan.

For example, the first month, we’re going to make make major announcements about lead investors, signing a major label, the second month, we’re going to discuss our open API, a new product release, etc. Now, with all of these announcements, we have a number of projects that would fit in (gantt chart anyone?) with the press release timeline. Be sure to tick off the projects that make sense with your timelines so you have an idea of the priority of different projects.

3. 3. Take your ideas and categorize them, expand on them, and eliminate the crap

Now that we have our huge ass list of ideas, now we move onto categorizing, removing, and improving on our ideas. Taking that break is essential as it allows our brains to relax, and let the ideas sink in and fester (excuse the word, my thesaurus is lost). When revising all of your ideas, start putting them into a digital form so that you can easily adjust/send/delete them. I personally like to use a draft email and just add the list as I go, other people like simple text editors — doesn’t matter. And our team, we like to choose a project lead for each separate project. This way we have accountability, responsibility, pride of ownership, etc.

4. 4. Gather your entire team and get them pumped up

Order out a huge plate of food from your local 5-star restaurantuer or if you’re a startup like us, get the ramen boiling… Since this will most likely be the biggest push of your company’s existence (every 90 day push should be “the biggest”) make sure to prepare your team and get them excited about the next 3 month’s of their lives and make sure they kiss their wife and kids (or roommate, in our case) goodbye as their ass is going to belong to the company.

5. 5. Be prepared for your entire 90 day plan to be shit in 2 weeks

As with any plan we’ve ever created, it’s a guarantee that it will be rendered completely useless in 2 weeks or less. Whenever we think we have a clear strategy of where we’re headed, we land a major investor, discover the iPhone, run out of money, get flush with money, etc. Regardless, it’s always helpful to plan things out just so that you’re prepared for what’s coming next. From personal experience, I’ve found that people who play things off the cuff and improv things to be a hell of a lot more successful (and relaxed) than those people who are constantly calculating and planning. Caveat included: those people who manage to improv everything are extremely well prepared in a variety of areas (through reading the news, talk to users, , thus equipping themselves for relatively everything.

Do you guys have any tips for a killer 90/60/30 4 year plan? (not involving Hooters)