I head product and engingineering for Grofers, the fastest growing online grocer in India. Grofers has grown by over 8x from $60MM in GMV to nearly $500MM in the last two years. A big part of this success has been the ability of our team to go from idea to execution rapidly.
While we are leading the pack right now in terms of innovation and growth, we are competing offline with giants like DMart and Reliance, and online with Alibaba (via Big Basket), Amazon and Walmart (via FlipKart). We cannot outspend - we must out-innovate.
So I have two goals in my job: To scale and to innovate.
Unfortunately, these two goals are by nature opposing forces. The more people you add to systems, and the more complex you make those systems, the harder it is to move from idea to execution. Ideas are not worth much now, there are few defensible positions and what few are there, do not remain long. It all comes down to who can differentiate fastest.