Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Some Startups Win

steveblank.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–17 of 17 posts

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#11

Post by kristianc »

kristianc wrote: post #4

> It wasn’t that I had somehow inherited dumb employees. What I was hearing was a failure of management. Uh, if you've inherited employees that think their job as marketers is to pump out Press Releases, you certainly haven't inherited good ones. Most people in marketing do not behave like this, any more than developers see their job as 'write lots of lines of code'. Too many management articles (and Blank is often g…

Also worth bearing in mind given the number of Blank's stories that start with 'I was once a VP of Marketing....'

Steve Blank was last a VP of Marketing in 1992. This should give anyone pause to think if the advice is relevant, if the story ever happened, or if Blank has another agenda in telling them.

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#12

Post by amelius »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #5

This is for some of the people like me to let you know you're not alone... I too am at a startup where everyone wheres many hats. I would love to be CTO and not have to take my turn emptying the dish washer or taking out the trash but we are small so everyone has to do their part. Our marketing team does SEO, usability testing, graphic design, copywriting... and that's just one person. I would love to have a dedicate…

Being part of a small startup is a bit like camping: there's a lot of small stuff you need to do, there's a lot of cooperation required, the price of failing is low, there are not many luxuries, but it sure feels like an adventure.

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#13

Post by apinstein »

kristianc wrote: post #4

> It wasn’t that I had somehow inherited dumb employees. What I was hearing was a failure of management. Uh, if you've inherited employees that think their job as marketers is to pump out Press Releases, you certainly haven't inherited good ones. Most people in marketing do not behave like this, any more than developers see their job as 'write lots of lines of code'. Too many management articles (and Blank is often g…

Think about the jobs you've quit because the culture / environment made it impossible for you to get the right things done.

Even really good employees need an aligned sense of mission.

Of all the other early CEO's I've talked to (and it's a lot), none of them have ever told me "I just hire awesome people and never talk to them about what we're trying to do but it works out great because they are awesome people." Nor has anyone ever conveyed that these types of communication exercises are micromanagy. Aligning mission and understanding how your outputs are other people's inputs seems to me to be the exact opposite of micromanagement.

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#14

Post by tarr11 »

I know Steve Blank is a well respected person in this space, but the lack of real, verifiable details make this kind of case study lose credibility.

It reads almost like a business fairy tale.

I always wonder, when I read stuff like this, if the people in the story would characterize things the same way.

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#15

Post by kristianc »

apinstein wrote: post #13
kristianc wrote: post #4

> It wasn’t that I had somehow inherited dumb employees. What I was hearing was a failure of management. Uh, if you've inherited employees that think their job as marketers is to pump out Press Releases, you certainly haven't inherited good ones. Most people in marketing do not behave like this, any more than developers see their job as 'write lots of lines of code'. Too many management articles (and Blank is often g…

Think about the jobs you've quit because the culture / environment made it impossible for you to get the right things done. Even really good employees need an aligned sense of mission. Of all the other early CEO's I've talked to (and it's a lot), none of them have ever told me "I just hire awesome people and never talk to them about what we're trying to do but it works out great because they are awesome people." Nor…

All of the things he suggests are incredibly obvious though.

Most marketing people I know (and I know a lot) would consider the idea that their job was to 'set up trade booths' or 'send out a Press Release and wait for things to happen' as a thinly veiled insult. Of course the purpose of trade shows is to gather and qualify leads- otherwise you're simply spraying money up the wall.

Likewise, if a marketing organization doesn't have basic targets or marketing/sales alignment in place, then it's not because of the lack of management, it's because the marketing/sales people are incompetent.

And if I think of the negative cultures I've worked in - the one thing they have in common is a 'leader figure' at the top who spends his time abasing the team and generally getting in the way of things that, left alone, the team would organize to do anyway. The job of a leader is to hire good people and get out of their way.

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#16

Post by Nomentatus »

I've just finished reading (finally) Ben Horowitz's Hard Thing About Hard Things. He too spends a lot of ink saying that onboarding is extremely important, and a prime management task not to be lightly passed off to subordinates. Falling into routines and losing sight of results is all too easy, even if you know it's too easy, of course.

Re: Why Some Startups Win

#17

Post by Nomentatus »

Nomentatus wrote: post #16

I've just finished reading (finally) Ben Horowitz's Hard Thing About Hard Things. He too spends a lot of ink saying that onboarding is extremely important, and a prime management task not to be lightly passed off to subordinates. Falling into routines and losing sight of results is all too easy, even if you know it's too easy, of course.

Actually, now that I'm on to Andy Grove's book, it's there too - training is not only a management task, the only other task according to Grove is motivation.
Post reply on HN