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The short answer is that these laws do not 'make it illegal to grow food.' Primarily, it's targeted against Chinese pet food killing little Fluffy the cat. It is the first comprehensive update to the nation's food safety laws since 1938, in the tail end of the New Deal. Significant exemptions are carved out for small, local, and organic food-growing operations, as well as those that primarily sell directly to consumers.Also, thanks User-9479191553426700399 for getting me to do an hour and change of research on the bill and related topics :)Long answer:For the 111th Congress, here is the THOMAS info for the House Bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:h.r.00875:And the Senate equivalent: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s.00510:It appears that the bill was passed in the House 21 December 2010, as part of an amendment to this bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR02751:Following which, it became Public Law no: 111-353 after being signed by the President on 4 January 2011, so during the lame duck session.One major change to the bill before it was passed was the inclusion of the Tester-Hagan amendment, the text of which can be found here:http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Tester-Hagan-amendment-Sept-2010.pdfand a summary here, via the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, whichrepresents small and independent farmers and ranchers:http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Tester-Hagan-amendment-Sept-2010.pdfHere is some extensive discussion about the bill as of 15 November 2010: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-11-15-food-fight-safety-modernization-act-harm-small-farms/PALLPart of the summary:As you will read in the following pages (yes, that's plural; please note that there are three pages for this epic discussion), they disagree, sometimes violently, about whether S. 510 will do more harm than good. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) were concerned enough about the answer to propose the Tester-Hagan amendment to S. 510, which exempts certain small farms and food-processing businesses from the requirements. (PDFs available http://tester.senate.gov/Legislation/upload/tester_small_facilities_amendment.pdf and http://tester.senate.gov/Legislation/upload/tester_direct_market_amendment.pdf from Tester's office.) Problem solved, right? Well no. Some think that the Tester amendment dilutes the bill or would let risky farms slip through thesafety nets.As a counter-argument re: the Tester-Hagan small farm exemption, this author believes that the regulations will provide a "chilling effect" on family farmers due to the complexity of provided necessary documentation to secure the exemption:Source: http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/why-tester-amendment-does-not-help.htmlThis is a constituent response letter from Senator McCaskill with an FAQ on the subject:Recently, the Senate passed and the President signed into law the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (P.L. 111-353). This bipartisan legislation, which I supported, provides important new protections for American consumers while also ensuring that family farmers, small producers, farmers' markets, and local gardeners are not subject to new federal requirements.I know that many Missourians have concerns about this legislation. For instance, many have raised questions about how this legislation will affect local organic farmers, their neighborhood farmer's market, or the garden in their back yard. As a lifelong Missourian whose family worked at a feed mill, I understand that agriculture is more than a primary driver of Missouri's economy; it is a part of our state's cultural fabric. I would not have supported any legislation that jeopardized this culture and this legislation does not.Finally, from the FAQ:Will P.L. 111-353 outlaw home gardens and family farms? NO.P.L. 111-353 does not outlaw home gardens or family farms. In fact, the bill explicitly states that the produce standards “shall not apply to produce that is produced by an individual for personal consumption.” In addition, the bill also contains an exemption from regulations for small facilities and small farms, which was purposefully included to protect America’s family farms. This includes food sold through farmers‟ markets, bake sales, road side stands, public events, community supported agriculture, and organizational fundraisers.Source: http://kevinforcongress.blogspot.com/2011/01/fda-food-safety-modernization-act.htmlMy take on this legislation is that is it primarily targeted against international food--read: China--that does not meet American standards. It gives the right to the FDA to initiate mandatory recalls if and only if a corporation fails to do so voluntarily, which was previously limited to infant formula.For the most part, this question is appropriately tagged with "Conspiracy Theories," as far as I can tell. It specifically exempts small farms and personal food growing by Americans from any additional laws or regulations.Another site argues that the impetus for the bill was the tainted pet food incident several months back:Also in December, Congress passed a major food safety bill(P.L. 111-353), led by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Bart Stupak, D-Mich., Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., which should provide much-needed additional safeguards for pet food and could strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of the egg industry. Among its many provisions, the new law sets safety standards for imported foods, requires importers to verify compliance, and gives the FDA better access to records and authority to impose mandatory recalls of contaminated products. This could help prevent problems such as occurred in 2007 when massive amounts of imported pet food tainted with melamine killed or sickened many pets. P.L. 111-353 passed the Senate in the wake of numerous recent outbreaks of food poisoning, including scandals involving egg contamination and filthy, inhumane conditions on factory farms, revealed in investigations conducted by the FDA and The HSUSSource: http://hslf.typepad.com/political_animal/Still to come is three years of implementation, according to United Fresh, the fresh produce association. Quoted:Implementing this law will require over a dozen separate rulemakings and at least 10 guidance documents. The implementation of the legislation will take more than three years.Source: http://www2.unitedfresh.org/forms/store/ProductFormPublic/ (FDA Food Safety Modernization Act White Paper)Apparently, this is the first major overhaul of the food safety regulations since 1938, in the middle of the New Deal.According to Ruell Chappell, the founder of the Well Fed Neighbor Alliance, which supports local food growing at scale--aka somewhere between Big Ag and local gardens--this legislation makes family-based farming more difficult. Ruell states:To be totally honest, they fear this will prove to be yet another example of Big AG supported legislation resulting in further elimination of Small Producers. My good friend and my General Counsel, Joe Maxwell, and my friend Russ Kremer, are working with me to try to make our local food system example a template for duplication . It is our goal to re-establish local food security ( there are only three days of food in Springfield at any given time), give birth to a sustainable local economy with jobs, improve the health of the community and reduce the amount of fuel needed to transport food ( currently our food comes a minimum of 1500 miles).Source: http://wellfedneighbor.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-response-to-senatorAs far as the law itself goes, it is comprised of four different titles and honestly, I'm not really feeling jazzed about reading the 89-page bill. Real quick, though,. the titles are as follows:Improving capacity to prevent food safety problemsImproving capacity to detect and respond to food safety problemsImproving the safety of imported foodMiscellaneous provisionsLegalese, naturally, but still useful for figuring out the broad focus of the bill. Of course, big government watchdogs should totally fear the "Requirement for guidance relating to post harvest processing of raw oysters." DUN DUN DUNNNN!! /grinI'll rely on the CRS summary found here: http://opencrs.com/document/R40443/2010-10-07/ Naturally, this paper is 90 pages, one more than the law itself *sigh* well, 39 pages of text and the rest of tables and supporting data.Also, OpenCRS is an amazing site, if you're interested in doing legislative research. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is responsive to congressional staff and members, and it is unfortunately opaque to constituents, except through their congressional office, who respond to constituent requests to provide reports. Luckily, OpenCRS works to gather CRS reports and post them online. However, most constituents are unaware of CRS, which is a shame.In the CRS summary, it states the follow:The bills seek to increase frequency of inspections, tighten record-keeping requirements, extend more oversight to certain farms, and mandate product recalls if a firm fails to do so voluntarily. Major portions of the bills are devoted to more scrutiny of food imports, which account for an increasing share of U.S. consumption; food import shipments would have to be accompanied by documentation that they can meet safety standards that are at least equivalent to U.S. standards. Such certifications might be provided by foreign governments or other so-called third parties accredited in advance. The House-passed bill and Senate amendment differ in how to accomplish these objectives. The bills have provisions for certifying or accrediting laboratories, including private laboratories, to conduct sampling and testing of food.This agrees with my earlier statement that at least one major focus of the bill is to provide oversight over food imports. In 1938, refrigeration was just coming into play, so shipment of quickly-spoiling food like fresh produce was much less common than it is today.Additionally:Food safety legislation is a response to a number of perceived problems with the current food safety system. For example, a growing consensus is that the FDA’s current programs are not proactively designed to emphasize prevention, evaluate hazards, and focus inspection resources on areas of greatest risk to public health.This talks about another major focus on current perceptions to limitations of the FDA, which is something the bill probably addresses.Now, none of this is directly relevant to the question about "making it illegal to grow food."The relevant section seems to be titled, "Mitigating Effects on Small Business and Farming Operations," pg. 22-26 in the PDF or as labeled pg. 17-22. As follows:Concerns among farm and rural groups about the potential effects of new food safety requirements on farms and food processors surfaced early in the debate over how to reform U.S. food safety laws. Most vocal were small farms and processors; organizations representing small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations; and small livestock operations.Atissue is whether numerous proposed requirements would be more costly and burdensome to small farms and other small businesses than could be justified by the potential public health protections such requirements are intended to provide.Several provisions in the House-passed bill and Senate amendment could potentially affect agricultural producers, including smaller farms and food processors, as well as organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations. The provisions that could have the most direct effect on on-farm activity, especially produce growers, would be the establishment of new standards for produce safety (§ 104 and § 105, respectively). In addition, both bills would require the issuance of updated good agricultural practices, among other bill provisions that could potentially affect small businesses and farming operations. These include facility registration requirements (§ 101 of the House-passed bill; § 102 of the Senate amendment); records access and/or inspection requirements (§ 106 of H.R. 2749; § 101 and § 204 of the Senate amendment); food traceability requirements (§ 107 of H.R. 2749; § 204 of the Senate amendment); hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls (§ 103 of the Senate amendment); targeting of inspection resources (Section 201 of the Senate amendment); and changes in the reportable food registry (§ 112 of H.R. 2749). For more information, see CRS Report RL34612, Food Safety on the Farm: Federal Programs and Legislative Action.The extent to which these other provisions might actually affect small business and farming operations remains unclear, since the specific business requirements under these provisions would be subject to agency rulemaking, as well as the discretion of the HHS Secretary.Considerations for small business could take many forms, including waiving certain requirements, providing additional time for compliance, providing grants and/or technical assistance to aid in compliance, and exempting certain types of businesses from meeting the requirements. Currently the FFDCA exempts some types of businesses from certain food safety requirements. For example, farms, restaurants, other retail food establishments, and certain nonprofit food establishments and fishing vessels are exempt from facility registration requirements under FFDCA § 415.Various approaches might be used to define whether a farm or food processor is a “small” business. Often, a definition may be based on a particular threshold value for a financial or business measure, such as gross cash income (or sales receipts), adjusted gross income (AGI), numbers of employees, or other measures. Gross cash income refers to the sum of all receipts from the sale of crops, livestock, and farm-related goods and services, including any direct payments from the government. For purposes of classifying farms, USDA defines a “small commercial farm” as an operation with gross cash income of $10,000 to less than $250,000 annually; “large farms” are defined as farms with gross cash income of $250,000 to less than $1 million. Under these definitions, USDA data indicate that 22% of all crop and livestock producers were considered to be small commercial farms. The share of small farms will vary depending on commodity. For example, among fruit and vegetable producers who might be affected by requirements under the House and Senate food safety measures, the share of small farms is roughly 10% of all growers in this category. Small business definitions for farms, established by the Small Business Administration (SBA), also are based on annual sales receipts but vary considerably from USDA’s definitions: among most crop producers, SBA defines as a small business those who make no more than $750,000 in sales per year.47 By these standards, more farms would be considered small businesses, with up to one-half of all crop and livestock producers defined as small.Elsewhere in farm legislation, adjusted gross income (AGI) is used to differentiate farm size. AGI is a common measure of income for tax purposes, combining income from all sources. Business income contributes to AGI on a net basis, that is, after business expenses. Thus, it is comparable to profit: sales minus expenses and also taxable deductions. In the periodic omnibus farm bill, an AGI limit is used to differentiate wealthier farm households as a means test for the maximum amount of income that an individual can earn and still remain eligible for commodity program benefits, including any direct payments from the government. The 2008 farm bill tightened these limits by reducing the AGI limit to $500,000 of non-farm AGI and $750,000 of farm AGI. Given that most business information is proprietary, data are limited on the share of commodity producers (farms and food processors) that have an annual AGI of less than $500,000. Information for U.S. farms indicate that farms with less than $500,000 AGI account for the vast majority (more than 95%) of farm numbers.For food processors, often different business measures are used to define small businesses. SBA definitions of small food processors are based on the number of employees at a business. Among most food processors, a small business is defined by the SBA as a business with no more than 500 employees. By this definition, nearly all (97%) of all food manufacturers would be considered small businesses based on U.S. Census Bureau data.FDA regulations also define certain small food processing businesses, but they are case by case and not inclusive. For example, FDA’s current HACCP regulations exempt small juice processors “employing fewer than 500 persons." Accordingly, available data indicate that as many as 84% of businesses that make juice would be not be covered by the HAACP requirements. Very small businesses would also be exempt, and so defined if they meet one of the following three criteria: “annual sales of less than $500,000, total annual sales greater than $500,000 but total food sales less than $50,000, or operations that employ fewer than an average of 100 full-time equivalent employees and sell fewer than 100,000 units of juice in the United States.” Producers of “raw agricultural ingredients of juice,” such as fruit and vegetable growers, would not be covered by the HAACP requirements.This section is talking about the definitions of small farms that would be exempted from most of the regulations, seemingly addressing the concerns raised by the Well Fed Neighbor Alliance. I'm not an expert of the subject, though. It primarily addresses the current state of things, while the next section covers proposed legislative action, subtitled "Legislative Proposals":Although both the House-passed bill and the Senate amendment contain requirements that might affect small business and farming operations, both bills also seek to take into account the needs of small businesses and provide for coordination of enforcement and education activities with others such as USDA and state authorities.The House-passed bill contains additional provisions that are intended to address potential effects of the food safety requirements on small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations, among other related provisions. In particular, it would exempt from the facility registration requirements most commodity producers that sell directly to consumers, including an “operation that sells food directly to consumers if the annual monetary value of sales of the food products from the farm or by an agent of the farm to consumers exceeds the annual monetary value of sales of the food products to all other buyers” (§ 101(b)(1)). The House-passed bill also would require that any regulations governing performance standards “take into consideration, consistent with ensuring enforceable public health protection, the impact on small-scale and diversified farms, and on wildlife habitat, conservation practices, watershed-protection efforts, and organic production methods” (§ 104(b)).Initially, S. 510 was modified by the Senate HELP Committee to require that the HHS Secretary “provide sufficient flexibility to be applicable to various types of entities engaged in the production and harvesting of raw agricultural commodities, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, and be appropriate to the scale and diversity of the production and harvesting of such commodities” (§ 103 and § 105, among other sections). Other committee modifications require consideration of federal conservation and environmental standards and policies including wildlife conservation, and assurances that these provisions will not conflict with or duplicate those of the national Organic Foods Production Act (also § 105).The Senate amendment includes additional provisions intended to address the potential effects of the food safety requirements on small business and other farming operations. These include allowances for HHS to exempt or limit compliance requirements for certain types of farming operations and food processors, along with provisions that would allow the HHS Secretary the discretion to exclude certain operations, if it is determined that these are low risk and/or do not present a risk of “serious adverse health consequences or death”; and assurances that any new regulations do not conflict with or duplicate other federal policies and standards, and that they minimize regulatory burden and unnecessary paperwork and the number of separate standards imposed on the facility (for example, the registration, HACCP, produce standards, and traceability requirements in §§ 101, 103, 105, and 204). In addition, HHS would be required to publish “small entity compliance policy guides” to assist small entities in complying with some proposed requirements, such as those regarding registration, HACCP, produce standards, and traceability. Implementation would be delayed for small and very small businesses (as defined by the Secretary) for the HACCP and produce standards requirements, and there would be assurances of “sufficient flexibility” for producers, including small businesses and entities that sell directly to consumers, for the HACCP, produce standards, and traceability provisions.Despite these additional considerations in the Senate amendment, Senator Jon Tester has stated that he intends to offer further amendments to address small farm interests if the Senate food safety measure reaches the Senate floor in the 111th Congress. Senator Tester first announced in spring 2010 that he planned to introduce two amendments to the Senate committee-reported bill, S. 510. Under one amendment, certain commodity producers would face limited trace-back and record-keeping requirements if the “average annual adjusted gross income [AGI] of such facility for the previous 3-year period is less than $500,000”; another amendment would exempt producers who sell directly to market if “the annual value of sales of food directly to consumers, hotels, restaurants, or institutions exceeds the annual value of sales of food to all other buyers.” These amendments were not ultimately included in the Senate manager’s amendment.In September 2010, Senator Tester, along with Senator Kay Hagan, announced an updated version of this amendment. The modified Tester-Hagan amendment would establish “modified requirements for qualified facilities” for so-called “very small” businesses, among other provisions for both small and very small businesses (to be defined in regulation). Under this proposed amendment, qualified facilities would not be subject to the facility registration requirements under FFDCA § 415; instead they would be required to submit to HHS relevant documentation showing that they have implemented preventative food safety controls and evidence that they are in compliance with state, local, county, or other applicable non-federal food safety laws, among other documentation. Such modified requirements would apply to producers considered “very small” and would include operations that have annual sales of less than $500,000 (defined not as AGI, but as the three-year average “annual monetary value of sales,” adjusted for inflation) and whose value of sales directly to “qualified end-users” exceeds all other sales. Qualified end-users would include consumers or a restaurant or retail food establishment that is located in the same state or less than 400 miles from the qualified facility, or that is buying food for sale directly to consumers. Implementation deadlines would also be delayed for small and very small businesses, following promulgation of any applicable regulations under the newly enacted law. The Tester-Hagan amendment also includes other clarifying language with respect to the exemption for direct farm marketing and sales. The provision further would require that HHS conduct a study of the food processing sector, in conjunction with USDA.Many farm groups have expressed support for these proposed amendments. However, one of the leading produce industry groups, United Fresh Produce Association (UFPA), is urging the Senate not to add “exemptions based on the size of the operation, production practices, or geographic location for food being sold in the commercial market” to its food safety proposal. In addition to broader industry concerns about the need to preserve consumer confidence in the safety of all marketed produce, another industry concern is whether small foreign producers might also be exempt, if small U.S. producers were to be exempt (given prevailing U.S. equivalency standards). Some consumer groups, including the Consumers Union, have expressed concern that the proposed amendments would create “too great a loophole” in the food safety requirements, among other concerns.The key paragraph seems to be the second one, specifically talking about "small, organic, direct-to-market, and sustainable farming operations, among other related provisions." These food-growing operations would be exempt if they sell directly to consumers, meaning your kids' road-side stands or the farm stands in Gilroy, CA would both be excluded from any of these regulations, as long as a majority of their sales came from direct-to-consumer sales. Additionally, I believe the Tester-Hagan amendment referenced in the final two paragraphs did eventually pass. EDIT: Re: Bill McDonald in the comments and inflation-adjusting AGI:Adds a new exemption for businesses that gross less than half a milliondollars (adjusted for inflation) and that sell more than half of their products directly to consumers or to local restaurants and retail establishments. These businesses must submit paperwork showing that they qualify for the exemption and that they comply with state and local laws in order to be exempt from the new HACCP-type requirements.Source: http://farmandranchfreedom.org/Tester-Hagan-explanationConclusionTo reiterate, it seems extremely unlikely that the scenario described by the question will come to pass through the passage of these bills into law. The primary focus is to prevent Chinese pet food from killing Fluffy, not stopping little Johnny from growing some fruits and veggies in the backyard and becoming little entrepreneurial Johnny by selling them on the roadside in home sweet neighborhood.

Stop drinking your own kool-aid. – If you are not brutally honest with yourself, you can’t make informed decisions that will truly improve your company. You will hide behind excuses and spin stories to yourself explaining away why you have to keep doing the rest of the things on the list. You can’t believe all the stories you tell. You need a healthy dose of skepticism (not the same as self-doubt or lack of self-belief) to make real forward progress.Stop being so busy all the time. – Does an early stage startup founder really need to spend time evaluating every HR alternative instead of focusing on customers and product? Some people think that being the CEO means being involved with everything. But what they are really doing is getting in the way and usually just slowing down progress. Surround yourself with smart people and delegate delegate delegate. There are only a few things you should not delegate in the early stages of a business like customer engagements, raising capital and finding product-market fit.Stop working yourself to death. – As the founder, you often feel like the world is on your shoulders and you have to be working 100 hour weeks to set an example for your employees. Startups are a marathon, not a race. The average successful exit takes 7-10 years. If you don’t take time for yourself and take care of yourself, nobody else will. Relax, take breaks, take walks, take days off, get massages, pamper yourself. You can’t take care of others if you do not take care of yourself first.Stop half-assing it. – On the other hand, I have tried countless times to build a startup idea as side projects, and it doesn’t work. I am not saying that it is impossible to start a startup on the side. I am saying that to make a real play at doing something investable, you are going to have to make the leap and do it full time sooner than you will feel comfortable doing so. It always works this way. Nobody will invest in you if this is not what you do all the time, no matter how good the idea is.Stop hiding behind fake traction. – Founders often highlight what looks good and hide what looks bad. This is fake traction. Like: “All of my users love my product!” Sounds great, but if you only have 12 users, your sample size is two orders of magnitude too small. If you find 1000 people who can’t stop talking about your product, you are on to something big. Or another is “I have 300 people on my waiting list to buy my product!” Awesome, how many of them are willing to pay you for it up front? None? Haven’t even asked yet?Stop counting your eggs before they hatch. – An investor who expressed interest in investing but hasn’t called back in a few weeks isn’t money in the bank. Close close close. Convertible notes aren’t perfect, but at least you can do a rolling close cheaply. A potential customer who says he may pay if your product did such-and-such is not money in the bank. Close close close. What will he pay for today?Stop trying to get around paying lawyers. – You are running a complicated legal entity that may take funding from individuals and VCs, and could eventually IPO or be acquired. This is not a mom-and-pop business, LegalZoom and RocketLawyer are not good enough. Do it right. Don’t even try to out-smart yourself here. Expensive in the short term? Yes. Worth it in the long term? ALWAYS. Your future self will hate you if you try to save too much money here.Stop trying to serve two kinds of customers. – You can’t do two things great. You don’t have the time, money, or resources to figure out the product-market fit for more than one product doing one thing. It is always so enticing to try to follow new opportunities that come up, but don’t fool yourself. You can’t be great executing two go-to-market strategies at once. The split focus will mean you will be at best mediocre, but probably terrible at both. If you really think the new opportunity is better, pivot the company and go all in.Stop believing that your product is your company. – Your company is the value your provide to your customers, not your product. Often your customers couldn’t care less if what happens behind the scenes was done by the best Scala code in the universe or a thousands monkeys… as long as it works reliably and timely. Your customer value and your team is your company, not your product. Focus on making your team happy and your customers happy and all else will follow.Stop avoiding your customers. – How long has it been since you last talked with a customer? On the phone or in person? Not to sell them stuff. Not to offer support. To listen. To build your relationship with them. To ask questions. Please don’t tell me it has been more than a week or two. A founder, and especially a CEO, has no excuse not to be in continuous communication with customers. Don’t have customers yet? Call your prospects.Stop avoiding your team. – There are often times you want to curl up and cry, but a leader can not hide behind his desk no matter how much he might want to. A leader must be visible in good times and in bad. Especially in bad times. When a child is scared and hurt he needs his parents the most. Your team is your company, keeping them happy is one of your top priorities.Stop pretending to be superman. – A leader doesn’t need to be perfect. Don’t pretend that everything is always fine and that you never make mistakes. You might think it makes you look strong and brave, or makes people look up to you. In reality, it comes off fake and inauthentic. You don’t have to flaunt your failures, but hiding them is unnecessary too. Just talk about them honestly and ask people how they think you could improve.Stop being so secretive about your idea. – You may be scared someone will steal your idea. Don’t. Just don’t. Such a beginner mistake, not even an amateur mistake, it is just a total rookie mistake. You will never find product-market fit by keeping your idea secret until it is perfect. You need to talk about your idea. A lot. To a lot of people. Because honestly, your idea probably sucks just as much as you are secretly afraid it might. One of the reasons many founders are so secretive about their ideas is because they don’t want to be told it is a stupid idea. This is just denial. Don’t be in denial. Anyhow, the people you are so afraid will steal your idea are too busy working on their own big ideas to steal yours.Stop falling in love with your idea before product-market fit. – “The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.” —Steven Pressfield. The more confident an early stage startup founder is, the more concerned I am for them. Of course they can’t just go around telling people they are scared to death all the time. But when you are an early stage founder and really in love with what you built, you will never seek the changes necessary to really make your product great. Read the Instagram Story to get a great example of a team who wouldn’t stop until they really found product-market fit. If their love of Burbn (predecessor to Instagram) had held them back, they would probably be out of business by now.Stop ignoring marketing. – Even before you launch your product, you should be marketing. By marketing, I don’t mean press releases and media attention. The best marketing is word-of-mouth. Getting people to talk about you. You only get word-of-mouth by creating real fans. You create fans by adding real value to people’s lives. You can add value to people’s lives in many ways besides your product or service. You can write tutorials and provide useful blogging content that isn’t directly related to your startup at all, but related to your industry. Some excellent examples of this include Signal v. Noise from 37signals, DigitalOcean Tutorials and The Buffer Blog. Create fans, not just users. Most startups don’t even try.Stop comparing yourself to other startups. – Startup envy isn’t a good enough motivator to get you through the tough times. Thinking that such-and-such startup was just acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars and you are so much smarter than them is not a productive thought. I have written about how to cope with startup envy before but it is better if you just prevent yourself from getting envious in the first place. In fact, it is probably a fantastic idea to stop reading Hacker News and Techcrunch altogether until after you don’t work for your startup any more.Stop ignoring history. – Trying to raise venture capital for the first time? You are not the first person to do this, read as much as you can and surround yourself with people who have raised money recently (not 10+ years ago, within the last 2-3 years). Trying to build a payment company but never built a payment company before? Don’t try to rediscover everything that worked and didn’t work for others, surround yourself with advisors who have done it before. Get introduced to Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. Read their biographies before you meet them. Pick their brains. Offer them stock in your new venture. Hustle smarter, not harder.Stop procrastinating the launch of your company. – Procrastination is just giving into your inner demons. You don’t want to know if it will succeed or fail, but all you are doing is shooting your own feet and cutting of your legs and arms. Go read The War of Art, now. I’m serious. Steven Pressfield calls procrastination a form of your own personal ”Resistance”. The closer to launching your startup, the stronger the Resistance feels. You will make up excuses, you will do anything to put it off another week, another month. You can’t find product-market fit unless you have a product to try to fit with.Stop launching too early. – Launching a “Minimal Viable Product” or MVP does not mean building the crappiest proof of concept and launch it as quickly as you can. Though “Lean” startups are a hot trend right now, many founders misunderstand what a MVP is. Build a product worth using, not a proof-of-concept. If an MVP was a proof-of-concept, it would be called POC instead. Build something that someone would pay for. This means making the product look professional and polished. This means finishing enough details that it doesn’t look like a fly-by-night endeavor.Stop avoiding thinking about revenue. – Stop comparing yourself to Twitter and Facebook that didn’t worry about revenue until many years after being founded. Stop saying you are the next Instagram. I’ll believe you about as much as I would believe you told me you are holding a winning mega-lottery ticket. Growth is great, and great growth can be wonderful to experience, but cash-flow is king for almost all startups. Don’t tell yourself that you are an exception, you are risking too much if you are wrong.Stop using your lack of funding as an excuse. – With today’s technology, you do not need to spend millions of dollars to validate most startup ideas. You can usually validate that people want to your product in some form or another, or even pay for it, with just a few thousand dollars. Haven’t built your product yet because you think you need funding first? Build another product that won’t cost so much. Haven’t started selling your product because you think you need funding first? Richard Branson built a billion dollar business without venture capital. You are making up excuses, go find solutions.Stop just following your passion. – Passion is an energy that can power and motivate you, but easily blind you too. Passion can blind you to truth; it can deceive you. I have seen many founders blind with passion. Passion can blind you to know when you need to pivot or change your product. If the Burbn founders had been overly passionate about their first app, they would have never created Instragram. The trick is to get passionate about product-market fit, not about the product as it is today. Keep tweaking until you find the fit. You will know when you found it, there won’t be any doubt. ”When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion.” –Scott AdamsStop asking people to sign NDAs before discussing your startup. – Early stage startup ideas are not worth protecting because they almost all suck. Yes, your baby is ugly. Sorry, but it is the truth. After you raise a few million in venture capital and you are setting up a meeting with a large public company, then you can ask to put an NDA in place. However even then, you will have to sign their NDA (they don’t do special NDAs for every startup they talk to) and thus you won’t likely get much protection.Stop lying to yourself when things are not right. – How long have you been telling yourself that the employee (you know which one I mean) is not pulling his weight and is causing more harm than good? How many times have you turned the other way hoping it will go away? STOP IT. DEAL WITH IT. TODAY. NOW. REALLY. You can’t afford to put problems off to the side at a startup. There is no time. Deal with your problems today, stop putting them off. Stop hoping they will resolve themselves. This is business, do your job. Deal with your mess.Stop trying to get away without knowing your unit cost. – Unit cost is how much your service costs you to run per customer. “But I’m a SaaS, Lucas!” Stop it, you are a business, right? You have customers? You have service bills? Take out the fixed costs, then divide the rest of your service bills by the number of customers you have. Find out how much it costs you to support one more customer on average. Make sure you are charging your customer a lot more than their unit cost, otherwise you are a charity, not an investible business. You can’t start calculating unit cost too early. It is key to understanding cash-flow and profitability.Stop believing that hiring sales people will cure your revenue problems. – Reality check: sales people don’t figure out how to sell your product. You do. The only reason you should hire a sales person should be because you don’t scale and you have been doing more sales meetings than you can handle lately. A founder/CEO doing sales calls? YES. Never done a sales call before? Doesn’t matter. Start now. It is your job to figure out how to sell your product. You need to perfect your sales pitch. You need to create a great deck that works. Once you know it works, you let a sales person shadow you until they can say the same things you do.Stop postponing the calculation of your cost of user acquisition. – Cost to Acquire a Customer (aka CAC) is one of the most important metrics an online business has. If you watch Shark Tank, you know they always ask entrepreneurs for the number up front. It has been extremely well studied by top tier investors like Bessemer who have published great resources on learning about CAC. To calculate CAC, you will need to know your business numbers inside and out, which you should already know. If you don’t, then figuring out how to calculate CAC will get you asking the right questions. Hire an accountant to help you double check your work and assumptions. Like lawyers, don’t try to skimp here, you future self will thank you. Like unit cost, you can’t start calculating CAC too early.Stop hiring contractors instead of employing great engineers. – It is so so so tempting to just say: “fuck it, I’ll just hire a part-time contractor to build out my prototype.” Don’t do it. don’t give in to the temptation. Hiring full time employees takes longer and is harder and can cost more, but the long-term benefits will always outweigh the short-term gains. A startup is not about the product, it is about the team. A great team will always out-do a great product. Hiring full time employees is about building a team. Hiring contractors is a band-aid full of dirt and bacteria. Startups are a marathon, not a sprint. It is more important to slowly build an excellent team, a motivated team, the right team… than it is to get your product out of the door faster.Stop ignoring your Ideal Customer. – “All novels are really letters aimed at one person.” –Stephen King, On Writing. That person is called the Ideal Reader. Novels are subjective, not everyone will like any given novel, so you don’t even try to please everyone. You try to please your Ideal Reader. Stephen King’s Ideal Reader is his wife. Whenever he gets stuck, he thinks of his wife and asks himself: what would make her laugh/cry/pee her pants? When you get stuck, always ask yourself: Who is your Ideal Customer? Who are you trying to make pee their pants?Stop picking such small problems to solve. – Will someone pay for your app that increases Twitter followers? Yes. Can you grow that into a $100M/year business? No. It is a small idea. It is a small market. There is nothing wrong if your goal is to create a small business that augments your income or might even support your whole lifestyle. But that kind of business will never get venture capital, nor should it, so don’t even try. You are wasting investors time and your time. A real startup’s goal should be to change the world for the better. If increasing Twitter followers is a temporary revenue-generating bootstrapping step to a next-gen marketing platform that improves the connection between brands and customers… that is a big problem to solve. That is an investible idea.You can download a free printable version of this list that you can put over your desk here: Free Printable Version of “30 Things to Stop Doing as a Startup Founder” PDF…These Quora posts are just the tip of the iceberg. If you liked this post, subscribe to the Craftsman Founder newsletter to get instant access to much more free content.

1. Put Customer Value FirstAlthough any number of factors may trigger a decision to modernize IT, one explicit goal is paramount: to deliver value. Every investment in technology should amplify the benefits for end customers, whether through better experiences, higher product quality, or operating efficiencies that reduce prices and add value.Start by developing a solid business case for the modernization effort, showing expected value and innovation. Explicitly include (and agree upon) the most important outcomes for customers. Articulate, with clarity and precision, how each facet of the new IT system will contribute. You should be able to point to measurable improvements in key metrics — for example, customer retention, user experience, sales, productivity, and recruiting.Use cross-functional teams to plan and design this modernization effort. Functional experts from areas such as IT, strategy, R&D, customer interaction, and operations can all work together in an agile sandbox environment to design the changes around a set of coordinated specifications. In this early stage, and throughout the initiative, you thus link leading-edge knowledge of the changing technology with deep, day-to-day awareness of the desired results. As you bring these teams together, you will establish a shared frame of reference — a common language to describe the features you want and the capabilities you are building. This also will help engage new stakeholders as they join in the effort.A major transportation company revamped its online system this way, improving the integration between the website that handled passenger bookings and the back-office functions that, among other things, routed travel. In its intensive sandbox sessions, the company set up temporary cross-functional working groups, which became known as “tribes.” Charged with planning and executing the modernization, the tribes included IT specialists along with people from finance, operations, and R&D.In the public sector, customer value translates to public service, but the principle still holds. When the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) in Canada’s capital city resolved to fundamentally transform its service delivery model to better connect with and serve the public, its leadership recognized that the change needed to be driven by the needs of frontline officers and the public. They put in place a robust process to ensure that these officers would generate and validate ideas for technology modernization and IT innovation. OPS’s initiative has been successful enough to be held up as an example for many other policing organizations contemplating similar transformations.Questions for putting customer value first:Why do we need to enhance or transform our technology right now?What problems do we expect to solve?How will this change deliver value to our customers?2. Simplify Your ArchitectureAs organizations have evolved over the past 10 years, the underlying architecture of information technology has tended to evolve with them, often in a haphazard and as-needed fashion. A single organization might have had IT systems based on a variety of coding languages, data structures, integration requirements, and support arrangements. The result was often a complex network of technologies: fit for purpose in each individual application, but difficult to adapt, refresh, and integrate. It often required significant effort to make changes, or even to understand the implications of changes on stakeholder needs and business performance.Get the strategy+business newsletter delivered to your inbox(sample)EmailModern modular platforms have changed all that. Standardization of software code and integration standards have enabled systems to interact more fully without requiring bespoke designs. Tools such as application programming interfaces (APIs) allow companies to develop interoperable components that fit together in standard ways and interact seamlessly. Formerly separate systems, such as those for payments or customer relationship management (CRM), can now be linked to a single, configurable platform, with the ability to share data across the enterprise.Instead of assuming a trade-off between simplicity and the features you need, look for systems that give you both. Many modern systems can combine simplicity at the back end with enhanced functionality at the front end. The leaders at GE Digital exploited this when they designed the modular platform that they use in-house and for customers such as airlines. Based on a cloud infrastructure and incorporating the Internet of Things, the system integrates applications built by other companies (such as Oracle), by GE’s customers, and by GE itself. GE followed the model of smartphone apps, but on an enterprise scale.Simplicity makes it easier to take advantage of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, which allows organizations to procure increasingly complex functions on demand from their existing software providers without needing to manage the implementation or underlying resources. As with the consumer smartphone apps revolution, the new enterprise-level SaaS apps compete on quality and ease of use. The best ones rise to the top, containing costs and providing better experiences for the people interacting with your organization. As you implement these systems, you’ll learn that most customers and employees don’t want an overabundance of menus and features. They prefer simple, flexible commands that move them quickly to their desired results.Embracing a simplified architecture requires a change in thinking, particularly when considering options for new systems and partnering arrangements. Establish clear IT design principles, focused on simplicity and strategic functionality. Shift from asking “How do we connect our components?” to asking questions about adding value, attracting customers, and making life easier for your employees.Questions for simplifying your architecture:How can we best simplify our technology systems environment?Where is the modularity in our current system environment? Is it flexible enough for our needs?What data and functionality will be accessible — from customers, business partners, and operations — when we better integrate our system?3. Design for Flexibility and SpeedModern organizations have a constant need to adapt within an ever-changing environment, requiring continuous innovation in products, services, and practices. Their systems must also have the flexibility to keep up.The technology systems of the past competed on functionality. They were designed to do one or two things very well, and the organization adapted to focus on those one or two activities. When the enterprise needed to change its focus, the structures and processes of the system held it back.Today’s more modular systems can be much more flexible. They can rapidly accommodate a range of possibilities for connection and configuration. So seek out modular platforms that can accommodate a wide range of plug-and-play functions for your business — including those that haven’t been designed or even imagined yet.Develop your own capabilities for the design and deployment of future-ready IT systems that can flex as needed for innovation. Learn to use them to quickly reorient your operations while retaining the quality of user experience that your customers and staff expect. For example, your sales and service staff can reconfigure your customer engagement systems as the market changes. Your CRM system can lead teams to think more creatively about identifying and approaching customers.To assess the fitness of new IT systems or upgrades, adopt a minimum viable product (MVP) approach. This approach consists of a “bare-bones” installation, covering the few features that are absolutely necessary to demonstrate the system’s value. Release an MVP to a small group of employees or customers, and ask those early adopters for responses — or better yet, observe them using the system. You will learn what features customers care about, what features they don’t, and what features are missing.The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning is also critical for flexibility and speed. Employees and customers are used to apps and search engines that guess what they are going to type or select. They understand and accept systems that learn their habits. Already, users expect as much from their enterprise software. A company whose systems understand users’ behavior, and guide them rapidly to work more productively, will gain their commitment.Questions for designing for flexibility and speed:What aspects of our existing systems are constraining our speed with respect to change?Are these aspects necessary? Are there better ways to change direction while managing risks?What kinds of unexpected changes have we needed to deal with in the past? What do they suggest about future designs?4. Engage with Your Workforce and CultureIT modernization is often seen solely as a matter of changing technology. But changes in technology sustain themselves only if people accept and embrace them. You must therefore align your new systems with the company’s culture — starting with a clear recognition of the new habits that people will need to adopt.An evolution in technology architecture may well involve a significant cultural shift, with a new structure and new competencies. Consider where the stumbling blocks may be. For example, do employees understand how to analyze the data your company collects while protecting your privacy? Do they have the operational skills to coordinate with external partners? Do they have concerns or qualms that have not been addressed? Armed with that information, your company’s leadership can determine what types of training, support, recruitment, and workforce changes are needed.Engage users of the new technology, encouraging them to play an active role in the transformation effort. At GE Digital, for example, managers fostered engagement by bringing in all stakeholders from 20 different departments to be certain the right voices were heard. They made sure that users felt they were part of the process, giving them roles to play in implementation and providing regular updates on the delivered benefits. As a result, employees who used the system felt invested in the outcomes. Engagement on that scale isn’t easy, but it is essential.There already are some powerful elements of your culture — including attributes of the company and behaviors that work well — that you can muster on the side of effective change. In addition, every company has “authentic informal leaders,” people at every level of the hierarchy who are already demonstrating the behaviors you need for modernization because they believe in the new direction. Find these individuals and work closely with them. They can tell you about the readiness of your organization to change, the places where resistance will occur, and the magnitude of effort required to overcome resistance. (For more guidance on organizational culture, see The Critical Few: Energize Your Company’s Culture by Choosing What Really Matters, by Jon Katzenbach, James Thomas, and Gretchen Anderson.)For a large insurance provider in Australia, the critical starting point for modernization was to create cultural acceptance of the idea “decommission the old and embrace the new.” To achieve this, the technology leadership provided a strong mandate for simplification, and communicated it consistently. The mandate helped rally the teams around a common set of priorities, decisions, and behaviors.At Ottawa Police Service, where there was a strong culture and deeply held values and beliefs, the new initiative sought to modernize critical policing applications with newer foundational technologies. Staff needed to be convinced that security and privacy issues could be properly addressed. As the technologies changed, PwC helped OPS put in place a strong and collaborative change management process, along with providing expertise in cybersecurity and public safety, to create confidence that the technical solutions were appropriate for use given the many regulatory, privacy, and security considerations. In the end, more than 150 police officers regularly contributed ideas. When the ideas were valued and implemented, that created a virtuous circle of more engagement, faster uptake, and still better results.Questions for engaging your workforce and culture:What do people need from the new IT systems to be productive? How do we know?How technologically capable is our existing workforce? What skills do they already have and what do they need to develop?What kind of cultural changes need to occur for new systems to be adopted? How do we create them?5. Adopt a Services Mind-SetThe traditional approach to technology treats systems as assets that a company owns and operates. A modern approach treats technology as a set of services that a company can consume and integrate as needed, without necessarily owning the systems at all. Companies can then select and combine services from a range of best-in-class providers, within an overall framework that suits the organization’s unique needs.This approach redefines the IT function. Where once you hosted and managed systems internally, now you oversee a more open platform. Services are outsourced and dynamically managed; when a service component is not effective, you can adapt or replace it. You no longer care as much about the source of a service; you care about how well it serves your needs and creates value. You judge its financial performance in operational terms — productivity and results measured against cost — rather than by return on asset costs and the costs of maintenance.One major bank redesigned or replaced a large number of critical systems within a five-year time frame. The refresh affected customer systems, analytics, product development, and core ledgers. When communicating the changes with the bank leadership, the IT group explicitly avoided describing their hardware and software assets; instead, they focused on the services they would provide to internal functions.This approach made it easier to add new IT functions. For example, when the group installed analytics packages, they naturally gravitated together to talk about new ways to use them. The same was true of new marketing tools and the new network for linking branches. Ultimately, the bank made its message about services public. It was investing in modernization, it announced, because it knew the investment would help the bank become the type of financial institution that its customers and partners needed.Adopting a services mind-set also promotes a more open approach to sharing value with service providers. By using your providers as ongoing partners in innovation, you can shift your focus from negotiating terms to collaboratively generating results.Questions for adopting a services mind-set:What are the essential technology services we provide to our organization?Are we organized and funded according to the outcomes we provide rather than the assets we manage?What other services could we offer in a cost-effective way if we were better organized to do so?6. Plot the Journey before StartingJust as successful transformation is a staged journey, so too are systems modernization efforts. In their article “The Four Building Blocks of Transformation,” PwC organizational change experts Al Kent, David Lancefield, and Kevin Reilly describe how iconic companies — the likes of Apple, IKEA, Starbucks, and Honda — have achieved their success through a fully coherent, differentiated, strategic identity. They methodically developed the capabilities and business models they needed to deliver this vision.Your systems modernization can help you do something similar. Having set a direction based on customer value (as in principle number 1), you now plot a systems modernization road map, that is, a sequence of milestones and markers that you can expect along the way. For example, you might introduce cloud-based capabilities early, so they can be used for other initiatives. Or you may need to modernize some legacy systems as a prerequisite for improving time-to-market for product launches.For a technology modernization at GE, the business units and geographies shared the responsibility to get core applications up and running. Progress was tied to explicit deadlines and goals, including “reduce quarter close time by 50 percent” and “cut 40 percent in IT expenditures.” Each milestone also included progress toward a predetermined set of core business needs: expanding market share, automating processes, deploying common platforms, rethinking shared services, and ensuring quick wins.When your organization is embarking on this journey, ensure up-front buy-in from key senior stakeholders. In his book Leading Change, John Kotter calls this the “powerful guiding coalition.” It consists of change champions from every key area of the business at all line management levels. This coalition helps to ensure ongoing business alignment.Although it’s planned, your IT modernization should not be rigid. Set it up as a self-correcting journey. In each step, you learn from previous iterations and discuss what could be done better next time.Questions for plotting the journey:What are the critical steps in our migration to a new system? Who will we bring together to implement each step?How will we adapt our plan to “course correct” when things don’t go as expected?Who needs to be part of our own powerful guiding coalition?7. Organize by CapabilitiesMost large and midsized companies cannot reorganize their legacy IT system all at once. Their efforts must be divided, prioritized, and sequenced, or they will be too large and complex to manage. Most IT modernization efforts are organized by project; they are short-lived efforts, framed by conventional enterprise software categories, and budgeted and delivered through development teams that disband when the project is complete. This leads to a short-term focus that can distract efforts from the most important goal: building the capabilities that deliver value.What if you organized by capabilities instead? Your organization’s most distinctive capabilities are the combinations of systems, processes, and functions that deliver value in a way that no other enterprise can match. Think of your systems modernization initiative as an opportunity to energetically improve these capabilities, drawing on your digital expertise. For example, Inditex (the Spanish apparel company best known for its retail brand Zara) has long had distinctive capabilities in customer insight, fashion-forward product design, rapid-response manufacturing, and globally consistent branding. In recent years, it has enhanced these capabilities with an IT modernization that included, among other things, setting up RFID tags for every item it sells. Now it also has an integrated online–offline inventory capability, so that any clerk in a Zara store can instantly locate a garment in a specified size and color, and arrange for it to be shipped directly to a customer — giving the company strengths in customer satisfaction that few other retailers can match.Your organization’s customer-facing products and services are central in this approach (it’s sometimes called the “product management–based IT operating model” [pdf]). You logically group applications and infrastructure by the business capabilities they primarily support. Then you find the necessary applications and hardware needed to fill the gaps in those capabilities, and (better yet) to refine and expand your conception of those capabilities, staying steps ahead of competitors.Organizing the IT operating model in this way offers many benefits. They include enhanced business–IT alignment, the ability to deliver faster innovation and greater value, more effective investments, and a simplified vendor landscape. Consider procuring a managed services and solutions provider with which to partner; they may be more familiar with the newer technologies and thus able to deliver more quickly and effectively than you can.When you organize by capabilities, you don’t have to worry about the different layers of the technology stack. They’re all in scope. Your IT organization is no longer wedded to legacy concepts; it can help accelerate a digital transformation by applying principles such as mobile access, API-based design, microservices, cloud-based infrastructure, and modular IT structures.Questions for organizing by capabilities:What are the most critical capabilities that differentiate our company and provide value?How will our IT modernization enable and enhance these capabilities?What technological solutions and vendors fit best with these critical capabilities?8. Be Agile and User-CentricWhen executing the modernization, look for ways to realize benefits faster. Avoid the “big bang” approach, in which you gradually build toward a single all-encompassing systems release, which can involve many months’ wait before results start to be seen. Divide the modernization road map into discrete delivery increments, releasing usable functions on a frequent release cycle. It’s better to be incomplete and rapid than complete and slow, as long as you obtain system user feedback frequently and let that feedback guide you to shift your direction. (Users of your systems could include customers, employees, and anyone else who interacts with your company, including regulators, suppliers, and community members.)Use established agile frameworks for design and development. These include scrum (consisting of self-organizing teams), disciplined agile delivery (a process for team decision making), the scaled agile framework (which aligns multiple teams), DevOps (practices aimed at reducing software development time), and lean IT (which is based on quality and continuous improvement approaches). Whichever frameworks you choose, train all stakeholders carefully in them, so they have a shared understanding of the practices involved.Even as you embrace agility, remain user-centric, that is, attentive to customer and employee responses, and responsive in the way you incorporate their reactions into your designs. Roll out new features in a way that allows you to test them on different user and customer profiles. For example, you might roll out two different features to members of the same customer group or geographic region to see if they trigger different responses.Establish a disciplined and consistent approach to user-centricity. You might track people’s behavior on your system by monitoring keystrokes, through surveys, or through direct observation of users struggling with the prompts on their screens or smartphones. Adapt and adjust your system iteratively, building your own capacity for interpreting user feedback. Adopt a continuous improvement mind-set, so you are always looking for opportunities to learn and make your system better. Seize those opportunities.Questions for taking an agile and user-centric approach:Who will benefit most from the changes, and how are they engaged?How do our analytics improve our knowledge of their experiences?How do we pivot and change our approach when we need to?9. Invest in Resources That Make the Change StickBefore commencing modernization, perform a careful analysis of the breadth and diversity of resources needed for a successful outcome. Project management and transformational leadership capabilities are as important as technical capabilities. Be highly selective in forming the team that oversees the effort. Choose people with a strong bias for change, a strong desire and ability to learn, a high tolerance for complex and uncertain situations, and a solid reputation for collaboration and teamwork.Financial resource allocation is just as important. Align funding to your highest modernization priorities. Be very clear about which areas you will not spend money on. Scrutinize your choices about desired features and technologies to ensure that financial resources are aligned with highest value.Avoid locked-in situations, in which a single vendor has control over your interactions (because, for example, your data resides in a closed and proprietary system). Insist on open APIs that can connect to a range of other systems. Experiment with open source software and make interoperability and integration a critical part of your technological due diligence. For example, if you use commercial off-the-shelf software, make sure it can link to a variety of databases, including open source products. Look for technologies that easily integrate and work together because of the languages they’re written in and the technology stacks they are built on.Think through resourcing for the legacy system to keep it running adequately while the new system is being built. Even during the transition, you may need to fund must-do modifications to the legacy system (for example, to meet new regulatory and legislative requirements). Ensure that funding for these types of changes, for both the old and the new systems, has been factored into the overall budget.Develop a plan for funding to decommission and retire the old system, and to move people to the new one. Include funding for learning and development. Be clear and up-front about the transition plan so that the team with responsibility for maintaining the legacy system understands how important their role is and what options are available to them. Provide incentives to make sure that these people remain highly motivated while doing what may seem to be unglamorous work.Questions for investing in resources that make the change stick:Which IT investments are linked to the greatest return?How do we realign resources to support the transformation while running the business?What skills will be needed with the new systems, and how do we build them?10. Partner Based on Shared Values and TrustThe technological systems that you are modernizing are key to your organization's future. Therefore, do not treat modernization — or the procurement of the goods and services needed to support it — as a transactional event. When selecting long-term partners, invest in special due diligence in excess of your standard evaluation criteria. Your goal is to find companies that can deliver mutual benefits and with which you can develop a working relationship that involves mutual commitment and creative collaboration as well as a fair deal.If you don’t get this right, not only could the project fail, but the switching costs could be substantial. Therefore, use informal as well as formal ways of gathering information. Seek out companies whose values you share and whose leadership has proven trustworthy. Evaluate the credibility of their work by looking at the technology systems they have built for themselves. Think about how well those systems support their own distinctive capabilities, especially those that would benefit you as their customer.A good example of how to find the right partner comes from ATB Financial, based in the Canadian province of Alberta. It was founded in 1938 as a government-owned corporation, with the mandate of providing the citizens of Alberta with sources of alternative credit. After a strategic review, the company’s leaders set out to stand up a cloud-native digital-first challenger bank. This challenger bank — Brightside — is designed to provide a unique value proposition to a group of consumers that ATB believes is underserved: digital-native and digital-savvy customers.Recognizing the long-term relationships they would need to stand up Brightside, ATB's leaders were very deliberate in the way they evaluated vendors. They started by developing a list of 37 potential partner organizations identified through PwC’s research and knowledge of the financial services digital landscape. The list was shortened to four through an RFI process using standard criteria such as technological considerations, the ability to meet requirements and commitments, references, financial health, and long-term viability.However, those criteria were just table stakes. The right partner also needed to share the values that ATB Financial held, and to verify that it could be trusted. ATB thus conducted site visits for each of the four semifinalists. It tested each company’s flexibility and speed by asking it to complete a proof-of-concept task, with only two days to work on it after receiving the specs. In addition, during the visits, the evaluation team spoke to employees at multiple levels.ATB ultimately settled on two: a first choice, and a second choice kept on standby. On a fee basis, the first-choice partner delivered a two-month pilot designed to build out 5 to 10 percent of the critical requirements. This allowed ATB Financial to fully evaluate how open the partner was to change, how fast it actually worked, what tools it used, and overall how compatible the two teams were. The system modernization has made considerable progress and is meeting all key metrics, and the companies’ superior working relationship is credited for much of this initial success.Questions for selecting a trustworthy partner with shared values:What are we looking for in a partner? What values are important to us?What criteria will we use to ensure that our partner has similar values?In committing fully to a partner, how can we build mutual trust?In modernizing your company’s technology, your goal is an effective and sustainable vehicle for strategic success. The critical issues, as with any organizational IT effort, are not purely technical. They involve learning how to design systems more effectively, engage individuals, and help facilitate constructive change throughout the enterprise. Taken together, these 10 principles can guide your way.