Our second child was born in April 2017, and that became the catalyst for almost everything — building a product, founding the company called 10X.

Honestly, parenting a second child is very different from the first, and quite demanding. But there's an element of "we decided to make big decisions together at once." Looking back, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Even so — there is simply no time.

Obviously the company is still small, and I need to be at the front lines of product, business development, and hiring with both hands, head, and feet moving.

And unfortunately, shortly after founding the company, our newborn second child was found to have a skull condition requiring surgery. The surgery in April this year was successful and things are now progressing well, but in the meantime, eyes-off was impossible. My wife's burnout from continuing to provide care was the biggest concern, and I've been actively participating in childcare. I get home at 6:30 PM, do childcare, and go to sleep with the kids at 9:30 PM (which means I wake up early instead).

I'm not pessimistic about this situation. Taking as given the premise that "I don't have 100% of my time available for work," what matters is thinking concretely about how to generate speed. Here are three things I think about often.

1 / Spend the most time on asking questions

Spend the largest effort on selecting "what problem should we be solving" rather than "what to do."

As the company name says — don't make mistakes about what can achieve 10x. The accumulation of 1.1x is truly admirable, but the way I can most efficiently use "me as CEO" is probably "discerning which question to attack." I often use the metaphor "let's find where the oil is buried."

Don't open a gyudon shop with amazing skills.

2 / Align "what we know"

I believe everything important is in what can't be communicated via chat tools. Emotion, and context. Chat tends to lose both of these.

Important context should be communicated through documents so that "future stakeholders" can also access it. And on-site decision-making should happen in the office where emotion and facial expressions are visible.

Put all information on a road where it flows and accumulates openly. The company's goals, investor meeting notes, even what's troubling us at home — all open. Eliminate what's only in my head; align everyone's baseline. Eliminate communication loss now, and in the future.

Whatever loss still occurs can be solved by talking. I want that kind of premise to take root in the organization.

3 / Run the smallest possible experiment

A product before it's found its footing needs an accumulation of learnings, and whether you can maximize the number of those learnings depends heavily on experiment size. Large-scale development tends to generate a sense of accomplishment but also turns into gambling. I don't gamble. Instead I run many small experiments.

"Not building is best. Building as small as possible is second."

Summary

Whether this works hasn't been proven yet. I want to speak to that through our outputs (products). I have a vague sense that it's probably good. And as I wrote, I realized this can actually be practiced by people who have plenty of time too.