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Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

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Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#131

Post by icedchai »

cncrnd wrote: post #83
skrebbel wrote: post #47

I read the comments before clicking the link, and found myself agreeing with commenters who complained about this line: > In addition, if people are working less than 8-10 productive hours per day, then they are clearly not being as productive as they could be. I almost dismissed the book as a "yet another VC-driven, work-your-people-to-burnout story" but really, there's more to that. I've found it an excellent read…

Why is everyone disliking this statement about 8-10 hours a day? Excluding weekends, this is 40-50 hours a week, nothing outrageous. You're not that special folks, you have to work to get paid like everyone else.

The truth is almost nobody even works 8 hour days.

More than half the time is spent BSing, coffee breaks, lunch, browsing the internet.

Our culture equates presence with productivity.

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#132

Post by slap_shot »

Dowwie wrote: post #128

Who is the author, Matt Mochary? Why should I care what he thinks?

...this is literally the first topic covered....

> Who am I? Why am I writing this book?

I coach tech startup CEOs (and tech investors) in Silicon Valley, most of whom are young technical founders. They include the CEOs of Coinbase, AngelList, CoinList, TrustToken, Bolt, Shogun, Speechify, etc.

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#133

Post by jcbrand »

> Agenda > > Spouse > > Connect- listen to each other’s day for 5 minutes each

I had to laugh at this. Setting aside only 5-10 minutes a day for your closest confidant and life-partner? Good luck with that marriage.

One of the ironies for me of people who slave away with the hope of scoring the jackpot, is that they often justify it by telling themselves and others what they'll do once they're financially independent, when in reality you can probably do most of those things now already.

Want to travel the world? You can travel worldwide for a year for about $10k to $20k.

If you have a wife and family, they're alive now. There's no guarantee they'll be alive even tomorrow, or that you'll be.

Delayed gratification and sacrificing some of the present for the future are both definitely good and necessary, but should be done within due measure.

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#135

Post by vinceguidry »

kareemm wrote: post #122
rimliu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again this reminds me how Basecamp was build in 10 hours a week . https://twitter.com/dhh/status/870596974428508160

Basecamp was built 14 years ago. There was less competition and 37S a massive marketing channel. No disrespect to them but it was a different world.

He didn't just build Basecamp in those days. He also built Rails.

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#136

Post by vinceguidry »

grosjona wrote: post #44
xstartup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Can anyone explain to me where does this obsession with VC funding and huge growth come from? I feel like if you grow your company by more then 50% YOY you will end up with a totally different company culture, and you might end up hating your own company. Startups need an exit strategy. Employees want to work 5-10 years max and end up with millions to retire peacefully while working in an intense environment which…

>> Employees want to work 5-10 years max and end up with millions to retire peacefully while working in an intense environment This sounds like either it is an extremely unrealistic expectation or it's extremely unfair. I know lots of smart people who worked for at least 10 years in very intense startup environments and got essentially nothing out of it. Often, they have to fallback on a life of contract work for hug…

It's the ideal the whole industry segment is founded on. Just like every other ideal, it's attainable only by the extremely lucky. Everybody else has to deal with the externalities.

Strip the ideal away and people will leave in droves. Without a differentiator, startups are just like everything else.

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#137

Post by kirubakaran »

throwawayqdhd wrote: post #54
skrebbel wrote: post #47

I read the comments before clicking the link, and found myself agreeing with commenters who complained about this line: > In addition, if people are working less than 8-10 productive hours per day, then they are clearly not being as productive as they could be. I almost dismissed the book as a "yet another VC-driven, work-your-people-to-burnout story" but really, there's more to that. I've found it an excellent read…

I track my productivity very assiduously. For some tasks, such as writing, it is next to impossible to be productive for more than 5-6 hours/day. Your brain gives up after a while.

How do you track it?

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#139

Post by fsloth »

jcbrand wrote: post #133

> Agenda > > Spouse > > Connect- listen to each other’s day for 5 minutes each I had to laugh at this. Setting aside only 5-10 minutes a day for your closest confidant and life-partner? Good luck with that marriage. One of the ironies for me of people who slave away with the hope of scoring the jackpot, is that they often justify it by telling themselves and others what they'll do once they're financially independent…

"One of the ironies for me of people who slave away with the hope of scoring the jackpot,"

There are other reasons as well to work hard. Some people enjoy the prospect of potentially denting the universe a bit. But yes, if financial gratification and financial gratification alone is the goal it's a tad silly.

Re: Founder to CEO: How to build a great company from the ground up

#140

Post by firemelt »

ArtWomb wrote: post #120

Author namechecks Thirteen Days , the harrowing account of the Cuban Missile Crisis and a world on the brink of annihilation. There is also a terrific movie adaptation. In it, Secdef McNamara talks about how the positioning of submarines and aircraft carriers about the open seas is actually a coded language. And by making moves and counter-moves, what the US and USSR are actually doing is communicating intent. Anothe…

Sir did u have tldr for this?
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