How is this different than Tesla? http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2014/02/28/tesla-from-the-brin... It was near death yet Musk is now a SV hero?
Near death and dead are very different.
Only in hindsight.
Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#12How is it acceptable under any circumstance to not let your employees know until the final hour when you need to shut the doors that the company is facing financial trouble? This isn't a simple 'shit I screwed up'. It shows a fundamental lack of respect and empathy for your employees who expected to show up to work Monday for _your_ company and get paid. Even a simple, 'we are running low on money and be here at your risk' a month out would have been sufficient.
I do wonder if VCs need to require first-time founders go through a crash course in Business, Finance, and Ethics 101.
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#13"Oops, burn!" is not an excuse. Keeping silent without telling your employees is not an excuse, either. There's a reason so many investors and employees try to promote a culture of transparency at a company... Because to do anything less is a sign of (a) gross incompetence, and (b) greed. It is often extremely uncomfortable to stand in front of your employees and say "Hey, we've got 3 months left unless we hit this m…
This is an easy thing to say, but I can understand why a leader would choose to do otherwise. The risk that employees will give up and bolt thus turning failure from a likelyhood to a certainty are very real. You can't just ignore that.
Do you warn employees and possibly risk losing those with a low risk tolerance? Or do you hide this from them and lay them off with the legally minimum notice and possibly no safety net?
I prefer to be a leader that promotes respect and care for employees, and assume the former choice is thus a better one.
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an easy thing to say, but I can understand why a leader would choose to do otherwise. The risk that employees will give up and bolt thus turning failure from a likelyhood to a certainty are very real. You can't just ignore that.
Do you warn employees and possibly risk losing those with a low risk tolerance? Or do you hide this from them and lay them off with the legally minimum notice and possibly no safety net? I prefer to be a leader that promotes respect and care for employees, and assume the former choice is thus a better one.
While I totally agree with you, I want to bring up that many successful leaders have no respect for their employees. (Jobs with the collusion, Armstrong with public and humiliating firings, etc.)
Of course, that is not to absolve these startup founders for all their wrongs, I just think we really should hold the big folks like Jobs et al. accountable for the shit they do before we start piling up on these young and inexperienced founders.
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an easy thing to say, but I can understand why a leader would choose to do otherwise. The risk that employees will give up and bolt thus turning failure from a likelyhood to a certainty are very real. You can't just ignore that.
Do you warn employees and possibly risk losing those with a low risk tolerance? Or do you hide this from them and lay them off with the legally minimum notice and possibly no safety net? I prefer to be a leader that promotes respect and care for employees, and assume the former choice is thus a better one.
Have you every actually been a leader in this situation? I dunno, maybe you have and you followed through. If that's the case, then all the high fives to you.
But I sure haven't. And I look at it and I see a 10 out of 10 management challenge. You've got the weight of the world on your shoulders as a leader here. The lives of your employees, the faith of your investors, the very life of a company you've put your all into for years. And in this case the CEO was a first time founder with (rumor has it at least) not a lot of support from her board.
Maybe she did the wrong thing. Maybe she didn't. But this shit ain't easy, and I'm not one to judge too harshly.
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#16How is this different than Tesla? http://blog.sfgate.com/energy/2014/02/28/tesla-from-the-brin... It was near death yet Musk is now a SV hero?
Tesla was never a few days from having to lay off the entire staff.
Even a few weeks out from bankruptcy, they had $9 million in the bank and payroll has seniority.
Personally, there's a huge difference between waking up and finding out my job was lost overnight and getting a week or two notice.
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#17"Oops, burn!" is not an excuse. Keeping silent without telling your employees is not an excuse, either. There's a reason so many investors and employees try to promote a culture of transparency at a company... Because to do anything less is a sign of (a) gross incompetence, and (b) greed. It is often extremely uncomfortable to stand in front of your employees and say "Hey, we've got 3 months left unless we hit this m…
This is an easy thing to say, but I can understand why a leader would choose to do otherwise. The risk that employees will give up and bolt thus turning failure from a likelyhood to a certainty are very real. You can't just ignore that.
You see:
1. I am not gonna be transparent because hey, emloyees can bolt.
2. Oh, I effed up.. let's fire them all in cute little email w/o notice.
Yeah, that's great!
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#18> Burn is that tricky thing that isn’t discussed much in the Silicon Valley community because access to capital, in good times, seems so easy. Huh? http://www.wsj.com/articles/venture-capitalist-sounds-alarm-... http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/09/28/what-is-the-ri... http://avc.com/2014/09/burn-baby-burn/ http://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-email-startup-burn... > And at the end of the day… “burn” is wh…
yeah, that 'isnt talked about' line caught me as well. plus mention of the 'Horrible CFO firm' sounds like an excuse. I think id have taken the 'lessons learned' approach.
In the TWIST podcast she mentions her assistant has an MBA. So thats at least one person in the org with at least 1 semester in accounting. So you should be able to create a statement of cash flows and at least a pro forma budget.
Maybe investors would be wise requiring access to baremetrics dashboards or something similar.
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#19"the loss of your first startup will always live with you..." why is this the culture now? that failing is okay and fucking over employees and customers is fine cause "lol startups"?
Re: Zirtual: What Happened and What’s Next
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you warn employees and possibly risk losing those with a low risk tolerance? Or do you hide this from them and lay them off with the legally minimum notice and possibly no safety net? I prefer to be a leader that promotes respect and care for employees, and assume the former choice is thus a better one.
Have you every actually been a leader in this situation? I dunno, maybe you have and you followed through. If that's the case, then all the high fives to you. But I sure haven't. And I look at it and I see a 10 out of 10 management challenge. You've got the weight of the world on your shoulders as a leader here. The lives of your employees, the faith of your investors, the very life of a company you've put your all i…
I will say that I have actually been in this situation and have chosen to be transparent with our employees. It was really, really hard but it was also the right thing to do, in my mind.
Thanks for the comment about board support, harryh. There is another angle to this, which is that the investors / board should also be there to provide support / help as necessary. If they didn't do so, that is also very unfortunate.