61–70 of 89 posts
I know you guys can do it. I've seen what you do and I'm impressed. Keep truckin'!
Be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You're probably doing a better job than you realize. Try working with an executive coach - I work with Bryan Franklin. It's easier for you to develop leadership and management skills than it is for an outsider to really grok your business and share your vision. Regarding the marketing role, be sure to get the right kind of marketer: https://medium.com/on-startu…
In fact, if you're going to bring anyone in, bring in someone who tells you he needs time to get to know your business and work with you closely before he tries to start making any big changes. The guy who wants to jump into action on Day 1 is often someone who's going to have you quit dancing with the date who brought you to the dance to start chasing after bright shiny objects - many of which end up only being fool's gold - instead.
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Just finishing up Stranger in a strange land and I'm so surprised to see 'grok' on this context. I don't think I've ever seen the word before in my life. Pretty awesome.
I'm surprised, it comes up frequently among programmers, and I know not all of them could have read that wonderful book.
Hey Ben, I'm going to write you a longer email tonight. My wife and I run Cheergram ( http://cheergram.com ) and we've always admired what you've done at SPS. We had pretty good success with Instagram cards last holiday season and now we're looking into other kinds of cards, invitations, artwork and prints. We're also doing some wedding-focused stuff (think hashtag + prints/books). Maybe there's a way we can share id…
PS: I went to http://cheergram.com/ can I saw the footer twice ("Copyright 2013...")
Beware of the sharks, a call out like this will bring them on like blood in the water. Best of luck, the golden rule for me has always been that anybody that approaches you is not to be trusted by default.
Beware of the sharks, a call out like this will bring them on like blood in the water. Best of luck, the golden rule for me has always been that anybody that approaches you is not to be trusted by default.
So does that mean that when you approach somebody you have something shady in mind? Or are you just above the standard you set for others?
If you make a public announcement that you have vast amounts of money or cashflow and that you are looking for help because you are out of your depth then you will find that this will attract besides a few possibly capable people a (probably larger) number of people that will just focus on relieving you of your cash, your company or both.
Personally I would never approach someone making such a call for help for any kind of compensation at all because I (1) don't want to be associated with the sharks (think of it as an easy way to differentiate) and (2) feel that they are better off to go out and do the approaching themselves.
Given that I have in the past approached people in situations like this, and have helped them out as much as possible without compensation (and in some cases spending some of my own money) should hopefully be enough to convince you that there are indeed standards here and that I try to hold others to the same standard as I hold myself to.
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An empty seat is better than the wrong person. This. So very, very much this. A bad hire at the executive level won't merely slow you down. You might lose ground, or possibly even crash and burn. I've seen it happen, and I'm sure I'm not the only person here who can say that.
"An empty seat is better than the wrong person." Perhaps at the executive level, but I'm not sure I agree with this as a general hiring strategy. This mentality might go pretty far to explain why there are so many companies that claim they can't seem to find enough talent, while un(der)employment is still high. Companies interview and interview, but are petrified of hiring "the wrong person" so they just keep on inte…
For instance, hiring a bad dev can be very costly. There is all of the time/work required to find, onboard and provide knowledge transfer, the real expense associated with the employee (i.e. compensation), and the fact that it generally takes time to determine it's not working. In that time the product hasn't moved forward as it could have and the company is out of a lot of time and money. And, frequently, it is the principals who are taking time away from building and running the company in order to try to hire/train. So, it's an even bigger disruption to the company.
For, say, a bootstraped company that has a small dev team (or the founders are the only dev) and not a LOT of money, this can be really painful or game ending. There is a real choice to be made between rolling the dice that you'll find good talent, or pushing forward at a slower pace, but without the disruption of hiring/training and without the additional expense.