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Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

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Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#151

Post by sanderjd »

sasquatch69 wrote: post #143
sanderjd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't relate to this. It seems like there may be a lack of understanding of or alignment on the long term path if this is a problem. I'm at a very transparent fairly early stage company right now and when I see how much money we have in the bank, I think "that's great news for our roadmap and long term path to profitability or further investment", not "how can I get me more of that sweet cash".

My company would widely be considered as stable, I'm personally 100% long term on our company. So it's past the "great news for our roadmap and long term path to profitability or further investment" phase. Although we're not massive either (few mil, rapid growth). Also bootstrapped from $300, so I could see it being different for venture funded situations. Different companies/team compositions might have different be…

Yeah this makes sense. I still think it might make more sense to be transparent, and also capable of having those conversations with the team about why people are being hired instead of bonuses being juiced. Maybe you're right that it would be bad for morale, but I feel like owners / executives should be able to tell that story compellingly.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#152

Post by contingencies »

There's no correct answer. I have tried both strategies. When push comes to shove employees and founders are not co-aligned. You can treat people really well and they will leave. You can treat people badly and they will stay. You can explain things until the cows come home but employees are not founders, they can't always be expected to see things in the same light, timeframes, or think at multiple levels of the business simultaneously. High-touch management doesn't scale. Eventually you will part ways. Protect the business, be transparent enough to engender trust, admit your mistakes, and always be fair to others.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#153

Post by dopeboy »

I'm the CEO of an early stage startup, about ~10 in size. I share everything.

Cash in bank, runway, burn. How our products are doing. What's coming next.

Maybe things change as you grow, I'm not sure. But for now, my teammates are early believers in what we're trying to do and the least I can owe them for taking that risk is transparency.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#154

Post by rmk »

borski wrote: post #149
rmk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not beneficial to have every single person at the company thinking about the business as a whole. Now more than ever, we live in an age of specialization and it's counterproductive for all the people at the company to be thinking about the business as a whole. That is why there are departments, teams, and other groupings with discrete responsibilities: the separation of responsibilities and focus on small, manag…

I would argue that the specialization you’re referring to is what causes very many early stage startups to fail. Before you’ve found product market fit, you need everyone to be thinking about the whole product, even if they’re not working on the whole product. Also, give “Range” a read. It’s a fantastic book and may help change your mind.

Thank you for the book recommendation.

Many early-stage startups fail because they fail to find a good product-market fit, or because they fail in marketing and sales, which are much harder to get right. I very much doubt that poor information sharing by the founders about the state of the business with rank and file (which is what is implied in the question here) causes disasters.

Later-stage startups often fail because managing growth is a supremely difficult skill, and if everyone is not rowing in the same direction or if there are strategic missteps, the growth engine sputters. Absence of growth is death in our industry. Sharing too much information at this stage may be counterproductive if the company is still trying to make unit economics work, improving sales efficiency, or burning cash to fight an external competitor while scrambling to secure more. Many of these will just drive away many employees, who show up for the paychecks.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#155

Post by denkmoon »

I was the first hire at a company that grew to 5 people in total. I got told pretttty much everything, though usually after the fact. Business decisions I was sometimes asked for my input but with the knowledge that I was just providing my opinion rather than it being "a vote".

There are no secrets in a small company.

When we went under, I wondered how it was that we had run out of money. The boss was always transparent about cash - I was always able to look at the books, and I was aware things were getting grimmer by the week. In the last week or so he took me through everything. Lawyers are expensive :(

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#156

Post by jacquesm »

We did this for years at TMC and to good effect, the format was a monthly newsletter sent to all hands with sections for each part of the company (sales pipeline, past jobs, future jobs, lessons learned, finances). It was the glue that held us together across many years.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#157

Post by threeseed »

Strom wrote: post #140
malikNF wrote: post #116

Most up-voted comments seem to be of the opinion that companies should be fully open with their employees. Most companies I have seen do the opposite, they control information to a need to know basis. May be it's a result of where I am coming from. Would be really grateful if anyone would share a list of companies that are fully open with their employees?

I don't know about fully open , but I think Buffer is an example of a company that shares unusually much. https://buffer.com/resources/revenue-dashboard/ There's some sort of list at https://openstartup.tm/ but I think a lot of companies listed there are open with only select pieces of info. Both of these are about public sharing though. Employee sharing is trickier to know from the outside. Perhaps Valve Software be…

Here is a link to the actual dashboard:

https://buffer.com/transparent-metrics

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#158

Post by eek2121 »

I don't work for an early-stage startup, however, the company I work for is early mid stage. They share everything except (annoyingly enough) individual employee compensation. They also share risks/opportunities in a very transparent way. Note that they share most of the data with the general public as well, which is quite unique for a company of any size, and likely the big reason we basically own our niche.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#159

Post by borski »

rmk wrote: post #154
borski wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the specialization you’re referring to is what causes very many early stage startups to fail. Before you’ve found product market fit, you need everyone to be thinking about the whole product, even if they’re not working on the whole product. Also, give “Range” a read. It’s a fantastic book and may help change your mind.

Thank you for the book recommendation. Many early-stage startups fail because they fail to find a good product-market fit, or because they fail in marketing and sales, which are much harder to get right. I very much doubt that poor information sharing by the founders about the state of the business with rank and file (which is what is implied in the question here) causes disasters. Later-stage startups often fail bec…

I agree on the latter point. The advice of be transparent applies much more to earlier stage companies.

Often, engineers and other employees have great ideas that lead to a development that changes your product or your market and helps you find fit. That can only happen if they both: a) have the info, and, b) care enough about the mission / company to think about it. That varied set of experiences gives you (the founder) a greater surface area to draw from when coming up with solutions.

Re: Ask HN: How much info should founders share with early stage employees?

#160

Post by creakingstairs »

gpm wrote: post #80
morelisp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also used to think this way, until I tried being fully transparent with my team. There really are people whose mindset is 100% "what should I do?" and never "what are we doing?" I think the mistake is assuming it correlates with seniority or skill or something; it seems to be independent of both. On the other hand, I'd never want a "what should I do?" person as an early startup hire.

I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make between "what should I do" and "what are we doing". Are you talking about people making decisions that prioritize themselves over the company? People not being willing to go along with existing decisions? Big picture vs small picture? Something else?

Sounds like people who passively waits for orders before doing anything ("what should I do?") instead of actively seeking out and doing things that aligns with the team's current goal ("what are we doing [now]?").
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