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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

#81

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

TwelveNights wrote: post #25
typeliftr wrote: post #24

I feel like there’s an ‘all or nothing’ attitude recently around starting a business which doesn’t make sense to me. Either you’re making millions and have 100 employees or nothing. I work in a company that has 5-10 employees, nobody is working their ass off and there’s steady income and gradual growth. Our CEO is not a millionaire, but he enjoys his work and the company he works for. There is no plans for fast growt…

To me it just feels as though the "get rich or die trying" mentality is something more alluring to people, whereas success stories from slow, steady growth makes more sense but is less hyped.

It's partly about the drama.

Long hours, millions or billions in cash, high risk, high reward - it's so much more exciting than building a steady business that pays its way and keeps some number of people gainfully employed while providing a genuinely useful product/service.

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

#82

Post by codingdave »

If you study coaching, or organizational development techniques, you'll find that most practices are consultative -- defining goals, as well as how the coach/consultant will work with an individual or organization. You then evaluate where the person/org is at, where they want to go, and develop various plans and interventions to get there.

I point this out because this document skips all that. It says so in the first page - this is written by someone who targets young founders in SV. Quite a narrow niche. This document is one specific playbook, for that specific niche.

Sure, young founders in SV may want this. And if you do, too, the info is good for you. But there is more than one way to run a company, more than one desired outcome, and more than one set of answers in what you should be doing.

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

#83

Post by cncrnd »

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.

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

#84

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

paraschopra wrote: post #60
typeliftr wrote: post #24

I feel like there’s an ‘all or nothing’ attitude recently around starting a business which doesn’t make sense to me. Either you’re making millions and have 100 employees or nothing. I work in a company that has 5-10 employees, nobody is working their ass off and there’s steady income and gradual growth. Our CEO is not a millionaire, but he enjoys his work and the company he works for. There is no plans for fast growt…

>I work in a company that has 5-10 employees, nobody is working their ass off and there’s steady income and gradual growth. Our CEO is not a millionaire, but he enjoys his work and the company he works for. There is no plans for fast growth or VC funding. Contrary to many responses, the drive for growth is a consequence of human psychology and hence how things evolve in business. Humans are fundamentally dissatisfied…

Not really. It's 100% untrue that everyone in business is like this.

It's true that a certain kind of business culture encourages this thinking and disparages slow growth or - worse - static but healthy profits.

But that's propaganda, not reality, and the economy is the worse for it. Steady businesses contribute far more in jobs, personal freedom, and social opportunity than unicorns do.

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

#85

Post by cncrnd »

john_moscow wrote: post #35
typeliftr wrote: post #24

I feel like there’s an ‘all or nothing’ attitude recently around starting a business which doesn’t make sense to me. Either you’re making millions and have 100 employees or nothing. I work in a company that has 5-10 employees, nobody is working their ass off and there’s steady income and gradual growth. Our CEO is not a millionaire, but he enjoys his work and the company he works for. There is no plans for fast growt…

Because in the current market you can get yourself a better lifestyle burning through VC cash than by trying to get that cash from the paying customers.

I thought the expectation was for VC funded CEOs to take low salaries. How often do they sell equity in fundraising rounds and/or take decent salaries (500k+)?

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

#87

Post by arsenico »

rcfox wrote: post #33

> 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. So, are people expected to be in the office for 12+ hours a day? Nobody is 100% productive from the moment they step in the door, every day. The fact that the author even wrote the number 10 here makes me a bit angry. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, does he have a sectio…

You definitely should read the whole thing with more attention to this aspect - getting productive hours out of employees is an extremely difficult task, but it does pay off big time. This can be achieved with the "fun" environment at work, with meals at the office, with very clear goals and alignment on those goals, with a bigger ambition in mind, with creative compensation schemes, flexible hours, remote work schemes, and with a lot of other things. That's why there are "managers" (not necessarily) CEOs who can get this productivity out of people, and those who cannot.

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

#88

Post by Hanswurst133742 »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #20
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday Internet Explorer is today's Chrome. I moved to firefox few months ago and never looked back at Chrome.

Amen. I’ve been converting folks back to Firefox and helping them setup containers for Facebook and LinkedIn. I hope Firefox integrates social media containers in by default in future releases.

Any good tutorials on that "setup containers for Facebook and LinkedIn." part you can recommend? Am a Firefox User myself and very interested in getting this to work.

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

#89

Post by icebraining »

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.

It's almost impossible to be productive 100% of the time. Even with just 2h for lunch and all other crap, to get 9h of productive time you're taking about entering at 9AM and leaving at 8PM. No, thanks.

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

#90

Post by austenallred »

icebraining wrote: post #89
cncrnd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's almost impossible to be productive 100% of the time. Even with just 2h for lunch and all other crap, to get 9h of productive time you're taking about entering at 9AM and leaving at 8PM. No, thanks.

Being a founder isn’t about writing code all day - you don’t have to be operating at full mental capacity to be getting stuff done. You spend a ton of time talking to people, recruiting, writing emails, etc. IMO the notion that you can be more effective as a founder in I’m sure there are diminishing returns at some point, but I don’t think it’s before 8 hrs/day.
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