Hijacked

I'm at this intersection where I'm looking at the specific needs of startups right now and the deluge of trends covering everything from how startups are bulding and iterating to consumer behaviour and expectation. While there's a lot of traffic flowing in every direction, I'm starting to see one theme pop out prominently: startups being hijacked in design and development.

At the start of this week I saw the hijack trend fitting startups that didn't have tech founders, and now that I've started talking about it with more people, I see it happening where founders have a tech background too. So I've officially labelled it 'Trend'. As one founder explained to me, the hijack happens for a whole personality-driven range of reasons that go beyond what's written in a contract. So let's shelf the 'why'.

What does a hijack look like? Basically, it seems to include some or all of these:

• Calls and emails aren't answered.

• Requests for changes go unanswered; or are acknowledged but not acted on.

• Key dates are missed.

• Features/actions/stuff promised isn't done.

• Project scope isn't as promised (less funtionality or allowance for feedback etc).

• Deployment doesn't include the revisions and/or testing as promised.

Any of this is incredibly common, as it turns out. And it's not limited to startups either. Every founder I begin to share this with, just to tell them they're not alone, gets all excited with recognition and wants to add to the list. 

The crisis point of the hijack is when the founder can't get access to his or site. When the files are in the hands of one person 'with the keys', as one founder said. Who isn't answering calls and won't hand over the site to the founder or another team. If I keep following this I'm sure Ill be able to write a book about it. I've seen a key sales season get missed for one startup which had an impact on everything for the business going forward. Another client gave up the chase for their files; even after hiring a lawyer and pursuing the legal angle, they lost all their data and ended up relaunching with a new site. Yet another moved ahead with sales despite having a product that wasn't as evolved as it should have been.