71–80 of 400 posts
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Something I've seen countless times is the initial employees complaining that the company "is not what it used to be" when it grows to a certain level and, in my experience, they refuse to adapt and leave or are fired.
Was the company/leadership simultaneously talking about how it intended to grow but retain its 'culture' or whatever though?
I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…
I’m an execution through and through guy, but I learned early on that my co-founder’s ideal traits are the opposite of mine, and that’s what you’re seeing here.
What’s being described is a classic Visionary - spontaneous, jumps around and can be distracting, yes - but crucially, is also an amazing innovator and motivator of people.
In a successful startup, you need both Visionaries and Execution people.
I recommend Rocket Fuel - https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Fuel-Essential-Combination-Bus...
I'm a CTO of a venture-backed startup. My observations: - Most people in high positions are smart. I put cunning in the same category :) But there are many equally smart people who are not in high positions, because.. - They don't have the chance (either by design or by choice). - You can have a better chance by starting your own business. Nobody starts a business with the intention of getting a VP job in another com…
> - They don't have the chance (either by design or by choice).
This is an important insight.
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I've been mostly in startups for the last 10+ years. Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money. That is correlated to certain measures of success but having a ton of free money means you can patch a lot of failures over that would bankrupt most companies. Then either sell or IPO before the house of cards came down. It's been interesting watching over the last year as that strateg…
> Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money It's always better to be getting money by selling to customers. It's amazing how well that works and how much less capital you need to grow.
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Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.
I've been mostly in startups for the last 10+ years. Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money. That is correlated to certain measures of success but having a ton of free money means you can patch a lot of failures over that would bankrupt most companies. Then either sell or IPO before the house of cards came down. It's been interesting watching over the last year as that strateg…
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Was the company/leadership simultaneously talking about how it intended to grow but retain its 'culture' or whatever though?
Why you ask? I'm not saying the employees were wrong to think/do whatever they thought/did.
(Personally I think I'd rather companies uncultured/not talking about it, but if they do it should make sense and be consistent with actions.)
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Leadership matters, Apples history is a prime example of this as shown by first faltering without Steve Jobs and then becoming the most profitable company after he rejoined. Nonetheless, you're still attributing way too much to the ability of the leadership. After all, that story is so remarkable precisely because it's pretty much the only well known example of this.
Even Steve failed with Next, and had to sell it to Apple.
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> In knowledge industries managers aren’t leaders, they are support staff. The best software managers and executives know this and do everything in their power to make it easy for the actual leaders and experts, the IC doing the work (yes including that intern you just hired) to get on with it That’s just lip service. Who goes to the annual offsite, the quarterly planning, manages or sets the budget, decides on initi…
Completely agree and in my specific company they have this concept of "Highest Performers" who get to go to an annual offsite/party for a week. Guess who only gets picked? Directors and VPs. It's almost satirical how unaware leadership is or the optics they emit.
I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…
You’re forgetting that companies need both Visionary AND Execution focused leaders at the very top. I’m an execution through and through guy, but I learned early on that my co-founder’s ideal traits are the opposite of mine, and that’s what you’re seeing here. What’s being described is a classic Visionary - spontaneous, jumps around and can be distracting, yes - but crucially, is also an amazing innovator and motivat…
This lack of execution expertise doomed us; we really needed a strong operations role. We made good progress on the product itself, but hit a wall when it came time to ask for money from investors.