Any articles about the failure points from $0 to $5M ARR?
[deleted]
Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
21–30 of 127 posts
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#22So 3/4 of the main points here are in regards to hiring the right people...
Almost makes me wonder if hr teams/operations shouldn't be measured on just headcount but rather getting the right people in
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#23I got the impression that the 2022 late stage funding implosion was also the death of ARR as a be-all growth metric. It got Goodhart's Law'd to death after all the companies that went public at huge valuations based on ARR turned out to not be as "recurring" as investors would have liked.
I wonder if you have more context or numbers. What companies are you thinking of. I remember companies like WeWork and Coinbase dropping in valuation but what more traditional Saas companies have run into this sort of hurdle?
I'd argue that ARR is still a good measure just not the growth at all costs, w/e it takes to get toe 100M ARR/Unicorn status anymore. After all, sales is sales and if you don't have repeatable sales you probably don't have much of anything.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#24I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…
An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail.
Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#25I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…
An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail. Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.
This is an underappreciated truth.
The corollary is: find out where you thrive and go there.
Don't beat yourself up if you get spun out of a FAANG, or a startup or a smallco or a bootstrap or a founding role or a mid-tier enterprise. Don't contort to a role or company that isn't a fit.
If you have solid skills, you can find a place.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#26So 3/4 of the main points here are in regards to hiring the right people... Almost makes me wonder if hr teams/operations shouldn't be measured on just headcount but rather getting the right people in
Hiring speed, hire quality, compensation (including things like work/life balance, healthcare, flexibility). I think you can try for two.
Once you get large enough your ability to really selectively recruit gets a lot harder when natural attrition means you need to replace X amount of people just to continue operating as before.
Of course earlier on, the fewer the people the larger the impact each one will have so just like the article says about transitioning to enterprise, the focus and requirements of the HR team change as well.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#27I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…
An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail. Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.
You obviously haven’t seen eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#28I hate this BS about A managers hire A people, B people hire C etc. This is total MBA thinking (I think it comes form GE, or at least they espoused it) on a forum where people routinely mock MBAs. I have been lucky to work in a field where teams frequently work in parallel and success or failure is pretty clear cut. And teams are often stratified based on the priority of project. Many times-- not always -- the "B" te…
An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail. Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.
Jim Carey as the protagonist of titanic does sound like a great movie. I’m sure he would have found space on that piece of wood and survived.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail. Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.
You obviously haven’t seen eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
I have. Pretty sure I've seen every movie he was in, huge fan.
He's a great actor, but he hasn't shown the range that other A-listers have. Whether that's because of skill, interest, or typecasting, I couldn't say.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
An A player from Google will fail at a 10 person startup. An A player from a 10 person startup will choke on FAANG bureaucracy and fail. Fit matters. You wouldn't hire Jim Carey for a DiCaprio role.
You obviously haven’t seen eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Bestest movie together with Lost in Translation