1) How can you be in an "executive job at a FAANG" and not know this is how the VC model works? 2) > I hope this part is clear because it’s the crux of the misalignment between founders and VCs. This is the crux of the misalignment between small business owners and VCs. The large majority of the startup founders I've met all have dreams of building a rocket ship, not of building a happy small business. If you're in t…
> 1) How can you be in an "executive job at a FAANG" and not know this is how the VC model works?
Lessons learned from that post: (1) "I was told to hire a lot of people. Put fuel on the fire they said. Bring industry experts who can move the needle. All this BS you hear all day. All failed. I hired VPs and bloated my payroll. Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” Imagine you hire someone to scale an area and their solu…
You are supposed to do all that with other people's money, dummy.
1) How can you be in an "executive job at a FAANG" and not know this is how the VC model works? 2) > I hope this part is clear because it’s the crux of the misalignment between founders and VCs. This is the crux of the misalignment between small business owners and VCs. The large majority of the startup founders I've met all have dreams of building a rocket ship, not of building a happy small business. If you're in t…
Why would someone doing executive work at a massive and well-established corporation be expected to know how VC works?
That seems obvious? At least in the tech industry, I'd expect someone in an executive role to have some understanding of VC given how it influences so much that happens in the space. If you hired someone from a traditional manufacturing company, maybe not.
Lessons learned from that post: (1) "I was told to hire a lot of people. Put fuel on the fire they said. Bring industry experts who can move the needle. All this BS you hear all day. All failed. I hired VPs and bloated my payroll. Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” Imagine you hire someone to scale an area and their solu…
You are supposed to do all that with other people's money, dummy.
He took VC funding so he did it perfectly right (well, depending on how much his previous job made).
> Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” I've worked at a lot of startups. The worst of them were led by people who list things like "organization design" and "build and lead amazing teams" on their LinkedIn. At the most dysfunctional company, the ex-FAANG CTO would take key job descriptions and add the requirement that they…
I interviewed a guy the other day. CS degree. "I have a proven track record of building and leading amazing engineering teams." "Okay. What's the difference between a character and a string?" *crickets* We all have our specialities, but jesus ¢@&#ing christ: if you're interviewing for an engineering role, of any sort, you should be able to answer basic questions.
> Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” I've worked at a lot of startups. The worst of them were led by people who list things like "organization design" and "build and lead amazing teams" on their LinkedIn. At the most dysfunctional company, the ex-FAANG CTO would take key job descriptions and add the requirement that they…
I interviewed a guy the other day. CS degree. "I have a proven track record of building and leading amazing engineering teams." "Okay. What's the difference between a character and a string?" *crickets* We all have our specialities, but jesus ¢@&#ing christ: if you're interviewing for an engineering role, of any sort, you should be able to answer basic questions.
What role were you interviewing for? Sure anyone with a serious CS degree at some point knew the difference between a char and a string. But if you're hiring a VP or product in a larger org, it doesn't matter whether they remember because the people they'd be managing wouldn't even need to know.
It must be valuation (if there's a SaaS company that's ever gone from $0 -> $100MM ARR -> $0 within five years I would be very surprised). But that makes this whole thing pretty circular—they only would have $100MM valuation because they sold a story of growth to investors. Assuming that the round at $100M valuation was during the boom times of 2019-2021, that could have been with as little as $3-5M annual revenue (2…
In that reddit post, he says "I had over $10m in the bank for a startup of 5 people making low 7 figures from well established and extremely happy customers."
You are right: low 7 figures = $3-$5M annual revenue
I can condense this to 'I thought CEO was a nice title but I failed at taking it seriously and allowed others to lead my company whilst I held the title'. The results are predictable. Note how there is no acceptance of personal responsibility. I also note that there isn't a shred of evidence for this whole story, and $100M to $0 does not seem like a believable trajectory (nor does $0 to $100M, but the other is much l…
$100M to 0 sounds plausible for a founder with common stock in a VC led company with little success. You can raise a lot of money without much revenue or track record, but it will come with all kinds of liquidation preferences leaving common stock at 0 if things don't go like a rocket ship.
> Ultimately I ended up with a bunch of highly paid employees who don’t know how to do anything but to “build and lead amazing teams.” I've worked at a lot of startups. The worst of them were led by people who list things like "organization design" and "build and lead amazing teams" on their LinkedIn. At the most dysfunctional company, the ex-FAANG CTO would take key job descriptions and add the requirement that they…
I interviewed a guy the other day. CS degree. "I have a proven track record of building and leading amazing engineering teams." "Okay. What's the difference between a character and a string?" *crickets* We all have our specialities, but jesus ¢@&#ing christ: if you're interviewing for an engineering role, of any sort, you should be able to answer basic questions.
In their defence, many companies advertise various "leadership positions", but once you get to an interview stage, you see they are looking for another JavaScript monkey in the team, and the whole leadership thing is a pie in the sky in lieu of a competitive salary.