Building Businesses

Overview

Building a business is the practice of assembling a functioning commercial entity from disparate parts: an offering, customers, people, systems, and capital. Like construction and software, it is a building discipline. Like both, the quality of the foundation determines the upper bound of the upper floors.^[1]

Burbridge has built businesses in both physical trades and software. The work is recognizably the same.

Parallels to Other Building

CONSTRUCTION	SOFTWARE	BUSINESS
Site survey	Discovery	Market research
Foundation	Architecture	Offering + pricing
Framing	Backend	Operating model
Rough-in	Plumbing code	Back-office systems
Finish	UI	Brand + experience
Inspection	QA	Customer review
"Load-bearing wall"	"Legacy module"	"The one person who knows how it works"

Burbridge's Approach

Burbridge approaches business-building with the same discipline as any other build. Specifications are written down. The material — customers, suppliers, the team — is respected, not forced. Completion is judged by the same test outlined in On Completion: Could you hand the thing to someone and not apologize for it?

Notable businesses built by Burbridge include at least one construction-adjacent enterprise, at least one software-adjacent enterprise, and a number of operations the Council of Builds considers "tastefully ambiguous."

Operating Tenets

• Solve a real problem. "Wouldn't it be cool if" is not a problem statement.
• Price for the work, not the aspiration. People can tell.
• Hire people who can build. Everything else is teachable.
• Operations is framing. You cannot finish-carpenter your way out of a bad operating model.
• The balance sheet is a material. Respect it. Do not argue with it.
• Reputation is slow to build and fast to lose. Build it every day.

"If the business doesn't work on the spreadsheet, it won't work in the world. Fix the spreadsheet first." — Burbridge, in an early meeting

References