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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?

#191

Post by carbonrider »

While transparency is no doubt a good thing, you may have to consider following points

- The overall structure of your team and who will benefit from which information. - Should you share everything at one go or defer the announcement (Important so that target audience is not overwhelmed but should be able to grasp what you are sharing) - Create a bi-weekly or monthly update program and then identify what and how much should be shared - Majority of the people are interested in how the information will benefit them (most of the time whats the direct impact on the money they will get), so don't be disappointed in case you share a good SI partnership news and no one is excited. - Staggered approach is always better. It indicates that company is on growth path. - Be sure to check legal clauses before you disclose something well before it materializes. - In addition to above points, there are also situations wherein deals/partnerships have been revoked after everything was signed, disclosing such announcement too early also creates bad impact when things don't work out.

There is no silver rule about what you should do, but don't spill everything as most of it will be either ignored or people will still find ways to criticize. There are very few who will be excited about the future of a company than their personal gains.

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

#192

Post by BilalBudhani »

A small SaaS company I worked for in my early career used to have business notifications plugged in to our chat app (flowchat) and even provided read-only access their Stripe account so we could see how much impact we are creating on the business. I appreciated that kind of trust very much and always felt included in the company's vision.

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

#193

Post by skrebbel »

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #174
Ken_At_EM wrote: post #25

Share it all. Complete transparency. Show them the cash flow. At your small size you will benefit from the additional trust and alignment this will bring. You may find yourself delighted in finding that many of your team can see and solve problems that you may have missed. You can be super secretive to combat the BigCo mentality like Apple when you have the first class problem of being a BigCo.

Slight caveat to "complete" transparency: https://youtu.be/-5SWvaKGULo?t=249

Any tl;dw to that 43 minute video?

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

#194

Post by 314 »

skrebbel wrote: post #193
throwaway_4ever wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight caveat to "complete" transparency: https://youtu.be/-5SWvaKGULo?t=249

Any tl;dw to that 43 minute video?

The relevant part was at the timecode the OP linked to: authenticity is overrated, to succeed as an entrepreneur you need to be able to put a positive face on events.

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

#195

Post by taylorhou »

At 200+ full time, I found being 100% transparent extremely difficult when lacking context (especially around cash in bank) because some took it as company was in bad shape, start looking for another job.

However due to the recent downturn, I found being transparent about the company's cash position, why/how we were making cuts, and my (founder) decision to take on debt instead of attempt to fundraise (equity) in this environment a rallying force because most of my staff have significant stock options and being effectively bootstrapped while surviving (almost thriving) right now is really exciting.

It also tamped down the seemingly endless requests for comp increases from earlier in the year as everyone shifted their priority to job preservation while realizing they have solid wfh careers.

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

#196

Post by webmobdev »

palata wrote: post #50
webmobdev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advise - if everyone could be a businessman, all of us would be and nobody would be an employee. Employees only care about their salary / stock options and professional growth and fulfilment. If an employee isn't confident in your ability to manage the business, they will jump ship (which is their right to do so, just as it is yours to fire them when the business falters). And so it is best to keep them…

I disagree. Startup employees care about making a good product, too. That's the rule when you join a startup: you won't have the highest salary, and maybe your startup bankrupts in 6 months, but you get to have more impact. If you don't want the risk and don't want to care, go in an established company. But that all means that you should be transparent with startup employees, because many decisions depend on that at…

Sure, employees should care about making a good product, and should be provided all relevant info they need for that. They however do not need to know everything about how the business is run. Their focus should be on making the product.

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

#197

Post by webmobdev »

etothepii wrote: post #97
webmobdev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advise - if everyone could be a businessman, all of us would be and nobody would be an employee. Employees only care about their salary / stock options and professional growth and fulfilment. If an employee isn't confident in your ability to manage the business, they will jump ship (which is their right to do so, just as it is yours to fire them when the business falters). And so it is best to keep them…

Have you run a startup? Are you a senior dev? Have you managed a team? I'm not asking to be rude, but if you are 45 having run a couple of startups (even if they both failed) I'd be really interested in this opinion and what experiences got you to it. If, however, you're still at college and this is "pure philosophy" it's of much less interest.

Yes. Two. One I quit (no technical challenges, and partners were happy with business as it was), and the other I was edged out of by the partners as we didn't share the same values and vision. The only caveat is they are in India which has a very risk-averse work culture.

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

#198

Post by skrebbel »

314 wrote: post #194
skrebbel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tl;dw to that 43 minute video?

The relevant part was at the timecode the OP linked to: authenticity is overrated, to succeed as an entrepreneur you need to be able to put a positive face on events.

Ah, it just started at the beginning on my phone, somehow. Thanks for that!

Also somehow it’s not even close to 43 minutes, not sure where I got that from! Sorry to the poster :-)

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

#199

Post by ramtatatam »

When I was joining my current team, founder shared with me what is their runaway and then added some details to back this up - how much money did they have in their bank account at the time, how much money do they burn each month, how much money do they earn each month. This was not the first startup I was working with so from business perspective I was not that much interested with other info he provided (like, that they have deep relationship with AWS, which they indeed have and it indeed helps a lot, not only from cloud services perspective but also from marketplace perspective).

I'd say it's good to keep balance, show people what risk are they taking by joining you and share whatever information you have to back this up.

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

#200

Post by neon_electro »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #121

I've been in both camp, founder and employee in a startup. From my experience, sharing is mostly bad. Very often, you'll be tempted to share good news too early, and very often it won't materialize (startup life is a roller coaster) This alone will erode the morale of your team. But there is an other factor, many humans, when presented with data and problems, tend to at least think about solutions, and they dislike b…

You didn’t finish your post - if information is power, how much should be shared?
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