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How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

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Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#21

Post by SJC_Hacker »

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meeting going over the deliverables along with the McKinsey partner on the project and in the meeting my wife said something to the effect that their work wasn’t up to McKinsey standards. The junior guy started crying in the meeting. Like just blubbering. My wife st…

I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business.

Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#22

Post by energy123 »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

Ethical issues of putting people out of a job? Please. This mindset has to be called out because it directly causes suffering via creating a societal permission structure for politicians to protect interest groups with protectionist trade policy and internal pork barreling policy.

Economic productivity putting people out of jobs is both good and necessary and it is unethical to work against it.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#23

Post by guywithahat »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

I don't see it as inherently a problem; AI can (theoretically) be a lot more fair in dealing with claims, and responds a lot sooner.

That said I suspect the founder is seriously overestimating the number of highly intelligent, competent people he can hire, and underestimating how much bureaucratic nonsense comes with insurance, but that's a problem he'll run into later down the road. Sometimes you have to hire three people with mediocre salaries because the sort of highly motivated competent person you want can't be found for the role.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#24

Post by throw10920 »

lostlogin wrote: post #18
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

I agree. And then I recall my last few interactions with insurance companies. Dealing with a machine is unlikely to be worse.

My last few interactions with an insurance company were moderately annoying but far from terrible - I would absolutely loathe having those replaced by a machine, given the terrible quality of every AI "assistant" I've ever used.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#25

Post by CGMthrowaway »

throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

> the only way to provide dispute resolution and customer service to 1B people is by depriving them of any chance to interact with a human, and forcing all interaction with the company to go through AI.

The Catholic church has 1B "customers" and seems to be doing ok with human-to-human interaction without the need (or desire) for AI. They do so via ~ 500K priests and another 4M lay ministers

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#26

Post by guywithahat »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #21
comrade1234 wrote: post #8

My wife made a McKinsey consultant cry… she hired McKinsey for some internal project. One person on the project was a recent Harvard grad. They were in a meeting going over the deliverables along with the McKinsey partner on the project and in the meeting my wife said something to the effect that their work wasn’t up to McKinsey standards. The junior guy started crying in the meeting. Like just blubbering. My wife st…

I don't care if you went to Ivy League and graduated at the top of your class, I really don't get WTF someone whose life experience has been almost exclusively in school really knows running about business. Get at least a few years work experience and call me. Or alternatively, start your own dang business if you are really that smart.

The whole business is nonsensical. The point of a consultant is they have a lot of experience in a specific domain, a recent Harvard grad is useless. From what I've heard, tons of their consultants are young people with minimal real industry experience

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#28

Post by QuercusMax »

guywithahat wrote: post #23
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

I don't see it as inherently a problem; AI can (theoretically) be a lot more fair in dealing with claims, and responds a lot sooner. That said I suspect the founder is seriously overestimating the number of highly intelligent, competent people he can hire, and underestimating how much bureaucratic nonsense comes with insurance, but that's a problem he'll run into later down the road. Sometimes you have to hire three…

You're incredibly naive if you think AI will be used to pay out claims more fairly instead of being used as a deny-bot.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#29

Post by SJC_Hacker »

MPSFounder wrote: post #7
throwanem wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As an engineer," you've probably yet to realize "technical cofounder" is p97 a polite way to say "second-class citizen." You get more equity than a "founding engineer," I hope. So there's that.

Here's a tip to every reader. If your founders or co-founders are not technical (and never have been) and are pitching stacks using buzzwords, run. Equity is worthless if the startup goes under

Non-technical folks (business/marketing/artistic/bullshit types) can be founders of tech companies, but there needs to be significant tech prescence at the top. I think as a general rule, at least a third of the equity needs to be devoted to technical folks if the company wants to succeed.

Ideally you get someone whose good at both, or at least competent at one and really good in the other, such as Jobs or Gates.

Re: How three years at McKinsey shaped my second startup

#30

Post by nawgz »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #25
throw10920 wrote: post #6

Article is interesting on the whole (I have no experience with "professional" work, and would love for suggestions as to how to be more familiar), but I latched onto this nugget: > Our vision at Meanwhile is to build the world's largest life insurer as measured by customer count, annual premiums sold, and total assets under management. We aim to serve a billion people, using digital money to reach policyholders and a…

> the only way to provide dispute resolution and customer service to 1B people is by depriving them of any chance to interact with a human, and forcing all interaction with the company to go through AI. The Catholic church has 1B "customers" and seems to be doing ok with human-to-human interaction without the need (or desire) for AI. They do so via ~ 500K priests and another 4M lay ministers

This comment is confusing. The Catholic church does not have 100 employees.
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