One of our core values at Zingage is velocity. Startups are a dogfight and to win you need speed. But you also need direction.
We chose velocity because velocity is a vector. It is not just a measure of speed but also direction. Going fast only matters when you are going the right way. What most people miss is that velocity looks different for different people.
Building high velocity teams means understanding the role everyone plays in the collective velocity of the company. I have always understood this through the lens of rowing and how we built a crew. For those familiar, Crew is the ultra WASP sport of northeast prep schools. It was one of my biggest motivators to attend Exeter. Coming from New York, the closest I had been to a boat was the Staten Island Ferry.
After my first year on the crew team I was invited to the varsity pre-season in March. We broke the ice with our oars in skintight spandex before spending hours on the Charles River. This was where I first saw how coaches selected the composition of boats, known as “crews.” Each crew had eight rowers and one coxswain. The big guys who looked like the Winklevoss twins sat in the middle. The lanky guys who looked like cyclists or cross country runners either sat in the stroke and two seat, setting rhythm for the rest of us, or they served as the bow pair, feeling every wobble of the shell and adjusting before anyone else noticed.
It is not easy to see why small changes in that composition can alter the boat’s velocity. The clearest way you learn this is when random pairs are sent to row two-man sculls. Take two inexperienced rowers from seat three and stroke, and the boat spins in circles. Scale that to eight rowers and even a slight misplacement can ruin your crew’s chances of reaching Henley.
When I think about velocity at Zingage, it’s never about how fast one engineer ships a feature. It’s about how the whole boat moves.
There’s a lot of noise about 996. We only believe in it in two specific moments as a gear, not a lifestyle:
- The final sprint: the last 300 meters when the call comes and everyone empties the tank.
- Power sprinters: the engine seats that can throw down big watts on command during the body of the race.
Those two moments only work when each seat knows its job.
Your product and engineering leader is the coxswain. She sets direction. Her voice is the only one everyone hears, and when she calls for “ten hard” or “more from port,” you fucking pull because she’s the only person who can see the line we’re taking and what it will take to win.
Then there’s the stroke, usually the most senior engineer. The stroke sets rhythm and rate so the boat can sustain speed and still have a kick left. When the cox calls, the stroke lifts the cadence cleanly so everyone can follow without blowing up.
Next comes the Engine Room aka the power seats. This is where many new grads and junior devs start. Your job here is torque: clean, heavy pulls in rhythm, plus short, violent bursts when the boat needs it. That’s what I mean by power sprinters. You don’t pace the race. That’s the stroke’s job, but you decide it by delivering coordinated power without throwing the set. Done right, this is 996 in micro: intense, time‑boxed effort that serves the boat, not a performative grind.
Finally, there’s the bow pair, our stabilizers. They’re the technicians who keep the set, feel the crosswind first, and make the subtle corrections that keep the shell running straight. In a startup, these are the quiet pros who keep quality high, spot risk early, smooth releases, and protect customers when things rock.
Velocity is a vector. It belongs to the whole crew. Know your seat, pull in time, and make the boat fly.