As a startup, speed is your advantage. But if you don't ruthlessly prioritize, you'll end up spinning your wheels and burning through your cash.

In over 12 years of building products, I've learned one simple formula for moving rapidly:

The things that you decide to build and the order you build them in determines how fast you move on the opportunity. The combination of focus and sequence is how you focus on building products without losing sight of the bigger picture. If you don't focus, you don't build something good. If you don't obsessively think about sequence, you risk building the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Things change, quickly. The assumptions you make when you decide to build in-app messaging into your product might be nuked three months later when the competition gives that feature away for free. Every feature, bug fix, and improvement to product is a drain on money and time.

If you can focus on building product and sequence according to your larger product vision, you're able to move more quickly, try more things, and minimize the risk of getting derailed from your larger goals.

Freebie: You can take your pick from Basecamp, Trello, or any number of product management tools-my favorite option is still this Google Sheet. The most important thing to do with this kind of tool is to make one person (typically the product manager) the only person with edit access.

If the CEO wants to get Person A to shift from creating a logo to UI, she has to consult with the product manager first. It's a way to establish a system of checks and balances to maintain focus and proper sequence.