21–30 of 278 posts
That was a fun read. On a side note, here, in NY, running any kind of "carting" business requires dealing with ... interesting ... people. Trying to open an independent refuse business can be ... bad ... for your health.
There are lots of these half-arsed tiny tech companies in the UK (I've worked for a few). I wonder whether this is true all over the world, or is a peculiarity of the UK? It could be that we don't have a culture of VCs who would fund a company to the required scale and provide adult supervision. I remember when I ran a company, raising money or even getting a bank loan was impossible. (We just ran it on a shoestring…
Id love someone from outside of the UK to comment on this
There are lots of these half-arsed tiny tech companies in the UK (I've worked for a few). I wonder whether this is true all over the world, or is a peculiarity of the UK? It could be that we don't have a culture of VCs who would fund a company to the required scale and provide adult supervision. I remember when I ran a company, raising money or even getting a bank loan was impossible. (We just ran it on a shoestring…
This is eerily similar to a job I had. I also worked for a young asshole CEO called Andrew, with multiple rubbish businesses, pretending to have more money than he had, having no idea what he was doing, and faced jail time a few years after I left. If you replace "property market" with "education sector" and "UK" with "Australia" we could have almost written the exact same article. I wonder how many of these companie…
Avoid startups where the CEO does / has done nothing but sales. Avoid them like the absolute plague that they are. If you are in such a place already, and you think things will get better, then I have a bridge to sell you. It is vanishingly likely that they won't, if only for the simple fact that the CEO has found a formula which works, and has no motivation to change it, and your best bet is to leave ASAP for the wider world which has infinitely more opportunity. (BTW, you won't succeed in changing such a "culture" for the better, so don't even think about it. I know you have.)
I could ramble on for several paragraphs, but BigJono has summed it up pretty concisely so I will proffer just this advice when sizing up CEOs and opportunities:
Remember, if there is any doubt, then there is no doubt.
ah, yes. The joys of working for small businesses. I worked for someone who moved from reselling operating systems to selling childrens toys. I worked for someone who built an on-premise competitor to google analytics and despite having many big customers never made a single dime. I worked for someome who build a crappy web app and sold liceses for >20k a month to twenty clients and made a good living.
There are lots of these half-arsed tiny tech companies in the UK (I've worked for a few). I wonder whether this is true all over the world, or is a peculiarity of the UK? It could be that we don't have a culture of VCs who would fund a company to the required scale and provide adult supervision. I remember when I ran a company, raising money or even getting a bank loan was impossible. (We just ran it on a shoestring…
This is eerily similar to a job I had. I also worked for a young asshole CEO called Andrew, with multiple rubbish businesses, pretending to have more money than he had, having no idea what he was doing, and faced jail time a few years after I left. If you replace "property market" with "education sector" and "UK" with "Australia" we could have almost written the exact same article. I wonder how many of these companie…
I wish I had read this several years ago. This is the kind of thing which everyone instinctively knows but somehow forgets with age, or ignores due to circumstances (like needing a job having just been made redundant). I swear that CEOs like the one mentioned here specifically prefer hiring those who are in need like this, with the predictable awful behaviours. Some people will get lucky, but I expect that they are t…
There are the stupid ones of course that don't get far, but the smart ones are the ones who really shine, I have a acquaintance who owns a unicorn and he is exactly like that. I'd never work for him.
I think it must pretty similar to the corporate psychopath profile who many times gets into the CEO position in big companies.
This is eerily similar to a job I had. I also worked for a young asshole CEO called Andrew, with multiple rubbish businesses, pretending to have more money than he had, having no idea what he was doing, and faced jail time a few years after I left. If you replace "property market" with "education sector" and "UK" with "Australia" we could have almost written the exact same article. I wonder how many of these companie…
I wish I had read this several years ago. This is the kind of thing which everyone instinctively knows but somehow forgets with age, or ignores due to circumstances (like needing a job having just been made redundant). I swear that CEOs like the one mentioned here specifically prefer hiring those who are in need like this, with the predictable awful behaviours. Some people will get lucky, but I expect that they are t…
It depends on what the startup is working on. If it's trying to sell into the enterprise I'd be a lot more confident in its future if the CEO is heavily sales-focused provided there's also a technical co-founder keeping things sane on the tech side.