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Mistakes You Should Never Make

sethbannon.com

41–50 of 348 posts

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#41
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

From the first paragraph of the post: On the way, my co-founder and our CTO stopped me and said “I’m resigning. And I’m going to tell the team why.” He then told me that he had lost trust in me as a CEO and as a person.

[deleted]

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#42
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incredibly common behaviour amongst sales people. Or what is also common is 'oh, funny you should mention that, we have a team working on that feature as we speak'. 90% of the time it is fine, contracts tend to be organised for several months in advance, long enough for you to get a feature in place.

As a developer, I've been on the receiving end of "we promised the client we could do this, and they've already paid us, so get to it" more times than I can count... it's my least favorite salesman trait, by far.

And the salesman gets a nice commision from the sale while the developer gets to work an extra 20 hours that week at no extra pay.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#43
post #29
post #19

Amazing article. As advertised, it's not a self-aggrandizing "mistakes" post that points you at the end to the author's next venture. It's full of the kinds of things that keep me up at night. It reminds me of something similar that happened to me: I was running Adwords for the first time. The dashboard wasn't showing that any of my ads had run, and it kept telling me to up my bid amount. I kept upping it and upping…

[deleted]

You appear to have a personal stake in this story. Rather than sling mud from behind the wall of a 6 minute-old throwaway, why not address your issues in the open? Better yet, why not address them with the author?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#44
Although a valuable cautionary tale, is it really wise to make a post like this, associated to the company name, for the whole world to see?

As a post-mortem, I would understand, but surely not a good idea when your company is still trading.

Existing/prospective customers are going to read this, and it's not going to fill them with confidence.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#45

Mistake 1: Taxes This thing about not noticing that you weren't paying payroll taxes wasn't a "mistake." It was pure head-in-assery. How can you "miss" the fact that you weren't being subtracted for payroll taxes? One quarterly / annual review after another, for 3 years? It's like running a personal budget, and "missing" the fact that you aren't paying rent.

It boils down to not having a handle on the general ledger, which if not suicide is at least reckless self-endangerment. But I think it is plausible for someone who is administrativaphobic. But there is a reason this is mistake #1.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#46
post #29
post #19

Amazing article. As advertised, it's not a self-aggrandizing "mistakes" post that points you at the end to the author's next venture. It's full of the kinds of things that keep me up at night. It reminds me of something similar that happened to me: I was running Adwords for the first time. The dashboard wasn't showing that any of my ads had run, and it kept telling me to up my bid amount. I kept upping it and upping…

[deleted]

Trust, and the reasons behind it, are subjective. If you have different perspectives or additional facts, perhaps it would be more constructive to just state them rather than posting vague hints.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#47
post #24

Mistake 1: Taxes This thing about not noticing that you weren't paying payroll taxes wasn't a "mistake." It was pure head-in-assery. How can you "miss" the fact that you weren't being subtracted for payroll taxes? One quarterly / annual review after another, for 3 years? It's like running a personal budget, and "missing" the fact that you aren't paying rent.

Except that if you miss paying rent, they let you know, and quickly.

Except that if you do your books, you'll say "I should have $X in the bank" and then you look at your account and you have 1.5$X so you know something's wrong.

At least, you should.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#48

Mistake 1: Taxes This thing about not noticing that you weren't paying payroll taxes wasn't a "mistake." It was pure head-in-assery. How can you "miss" the fact that you weren't being subtracted for payroll taxes? One quarterly / annual review after another, for 3 years? It's like running a personal budget, and "missing" the fact that you aren't paying rent.

I've done it when I incorporated my consulting business. I didn't know how to do my own payroll. Hey, it happens, oh ye wise and holy one!

Screwing up your personal taxes in a consulting business is a debacle but also a rite of passage for consultants. It happens to everyone.

Screwing up payroll tax withholding for employees is financial catastrophe. You've taken money from your employees on behalf of the government, but then kept it. Your liability in that case can be criminal, maybe even if you didn't deliberately defraud the government.

So, those two cases are not comparable.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#49
Really uninformative headline. Hmm, what would be better? Maybe "Management Mistakes Founders should never make" (not all of use are reading this for the startup stuff, believe it or not)

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#50
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the first paragraph of the post: On the way, my co-founder and our CTO stopped me and said “I’m resigning. And I’m going to tell the team why.” He then told me that he had lost trust in me as a CEO and as a person.

[deleted]

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