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Open Core Ventures Handbook/🧫OCV Philosophy

OCV Philosophy

Welcome to the OCV Philosophy page. Here we outline the principles and strategies that guide our operations and decision-making processes. By following these guidelines, we ensure efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability in our work. This page covers our approach to scaling, iteration, and decision-making.

Scaling: The 90% Rule

  1. 90% of what we do every day should follow a defined, standard process (documented in this Handbook). Over time, we aim to automate these repeatable activities as much as possible through technology.
  1. The standard processes should be designed to cover 90% of the core business use case (with considerations for “Iteration: Good / Better / Best model” below) - otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to scale.
  1. When possible, guide business activities/discussions/recommendations towards the standard process (the 90% bucket).
  1. Exceptions/edge cases should only occur less than 10% of the time. There’s no need to create elaborate processes for edge cases because they should be one-off and rare. If we’re spending more than 10% of our time solving for edge cases, we need to revisit Steps 2 and 3 above.

Iteration: The Good / Better / Best Decision Framework

We’re in startup mode. The first step is to focus on a minimum viable offering (”MVO”) - what “Good” looks like to achieve our objectives:
  • Accelerate / streamline hiring activities for OCV companies
  • Build out networks of trusted vendors and partners to support content, finance, legal, and other critical activities that will help OCV companies to reach their milestones
Ideas for the next level, “Better”, offerings should be tracked and planned for delivery after we have created a solid platform for “Good”.
The “Best” or the ideal version of our service model should serve as a guiding post that ties to OCV’s long-term vision.

Decision making: Directly responsible individual (DRI)

Efficient decision-making is key to moving quickly. We follow a directly responsible individual (DRI) decision-making framework over consensus-based decision-making. This helps us avoid analysis paralysis, removes ambiguity, and empowers project owners to maintain forward momentum. Apple and GitLab are two examples of companies using the DRI framework.
  1. Each project has a single DRI. The DRI is ultimately accountable for the success or failure of the project. They make the final decision.
  1. It’s up to the DRI to pull in the resources and information necessary to complete the project. A DRI rarely completes a project on their own.
  1. A DRI is responsible for consulting and collaborating with necessary stakeholders and providing reasonable timelines for contribution. A DRI is not obligated to act on feedback or input simply because it was given but should be prepared to explain why it was or was not implemented.
  1. DRIs are responsible for providing relevant context when sharing final decisions. However, DRIs do not need to build consensus around the decision.
  1. Disagree and commit. You may disagree with the decision of a DRI and respectfully voice your opinion but you cannot refuse to participate due to a disagreement.
Following the DRI decision-making framework puts emphasis on moving quickly to achieve results.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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