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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

#91

Post by austenallred »

oldandlesswise wrote: post #49

An interesting article; i was reading the replies to this. So here is my take. A UK 40++ entrepreneur. I have been there and done that - made good £££ from the first boom in 2000. Since then tried a couple of startups all of which failed, for one reason or another. Sadly we did burn through quite a lot of investor £££ in the process and gained no personal value other than experience. What I think I have learned is th…

> What I think I have learned is that building a small business with around 5-10 people and making a regular salary of £200k a year is a much more enjoyable existence than trying for the millions and never quite getting there.

But what if you get there?

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

#92

Post by grvdrm »

cwingrav wrote: post #74
throwawayqdhd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken to waking up at 6 to get a couple of hours of solid "brain work" before I start the day

I think this is an important comment. I used to be a late night worker but family and other commitments has made that impossible. I wake at 5AM to get a few solid hours of brain work in before the family stirs. This has been the best approach to retaining the 'late night work hours' and balancing family.

Second this. Morning is the best for clear thinking. Late night work is less productive.

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

#93

Post by Nokinside »

Requiring proposals and updates written down is a good idea. If you allow people to bring up an issue or proposal that they have not already written up in the meeting, someone always comes up with idea on the spot, and tries argue it as something well thought. If they are clever people they can throw the whole meeting off.

For the loudest voice in the room problem, speaking order that starts from the most junior and ends with the most senior member is the best (I think it's sometimes used in military). When junior members speak first it's easier for them when the boss has not given his opinion.

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

#94

Post by mooreds »

austenallred wrote: post #91
oldandlesswise wrote: post #49

An interesting article; i was reading the replies to this. So here is my take. A UK 40++ entrepreneur. I have been there and done that - made good £££ from the first boom in 2000. Since then tried a couple of startups all of which failed, for one reason or another. Sadly we did burn through quite a lot of investor £££ in the process and gained no personal value other than experience. What I think I have learned is th…

> What I think I have learned is that building a small business with around 5-10 people and making a regular salary of £200k a year is a much more enjoyable existence than trying for the millions and never quite getting there. But what if you get there?

Would you rather have a 1% chance of $100M/year or a 99% chance of $200k/year?

If all one thinks about is the math, they'd take the chance at 100M, because it is a higher number when multipled by the probability. But you can't pay a mortgage with a probability, and some folks want a mortgage (or other lifestyle features).

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

#95

Post by icebraining »

austenallred wrote: post #90
icebraining wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being a founder is irrelevant, he's talking about pushing his workers to work those hours, not about his personal schedule.

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

#96

Post by atupis »

onion2k wrote: post #57
askafriend wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re on a website which is run by an arm of a prominent venture capital firm. What did you expect? Us all talking about the successful McDonald’s franchisee in Wichita, Kansas? You’re consuming news from a portion of the overall economy where there are high stakes, big bets and a lot of money involved. Outsized, massive multi-billion dollar outcomes are the name of the entire game. That’s why you get that feeling.

I think you're wrong. There's lots of people here who want to build massive businesses at scale and believe VC is the right way to go, but that doesn't mean people can't also see the benefits of going more slowly. If you read HN a lot you start to see people here have huge amounts of respect for people who bootstrap their businesses. Comments from the likes of candyjapan, idlewords, and patio11 about their journeys p…

Things are chancing and people have not noticed it yet. Nowadays it's much easier build fast growing company without outside capital and additional workforce than let's say 15 years ago.

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

#97

Post by Nokinside »

lordnacho wrote: post #42
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…

On this site, "startup" is short for "high-growth startup". Of course you can open a neighbourhood restaurant and it will be a startup, just not the kind people like to talk about here. On HN "startup" means the kind of business whose ambition is to be a household name, used by millions of people if it's in the consumer space, or all the major customers if it's in B2B. That kind of thing tends to require a business t…

That's what startup originally means. The term is watered down, but startup = growth and big failure rate.

Startup is not same as new company or new tech company.

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

> A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

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

#98

Post by deepGem »

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…

I think we have to stop looking at productivity as a universal metric. Each person defines his own way of being productive. Some people subscribing to deep work only consider deep work as productive work. If I can just write code in my comfort zone for 2 hours should I consider that productivity ? I'm not sure.

From my experience, a lot of a founder's time is spent in non deep work. Taking calls, traveling, talking to users, understanding user feedback, writing product features and coding up some or most of the features. So the actual deep work is perhaps very limited - in desiging features and coding them up. How do you measure founder producivity when the tasks are so varied. IMHO such a measurement exercise is futile.

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

#99

Post by austenallred »

mooreds wrote: post #94
austenallred wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I think I have learned is that building a small business with around 5-10 people and making a regular salary of £200k a year is a much more enjoyable existence than trying for the millions and never quite getting there. But what if you get there?

Would you rather have a 1% chance of $100M/year or a 99% chance of $200k/year? If all one thinks about is the math, they'd take the chance at 100M, because it is a higher number when multipled by the probability. But you can't pay a mortgage with a probability, and some folks want a mortgage (or other lifestyle features).

But are you sure your math is right? How do you know those are the percentages?

Me personally, I know I’ll be able to pay a mortgage one way or another, so I’d prefer to shoot for high impact.

When you’re running the hopefully-$100m-company you can still pay yourself a six figure salary. It’s not all binary.

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

#100

Post by koonsolo »

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…

Steve Blank has an awesome anecdote on this: https://steveblank.com/2016/09/07/working-hard-is-not-the-sa...

"Our team knows this isn’t a 9-5 company. We stay as long as it takes to get the job done."

“Let’s just wait across the street from your company’s parking lot and watch the front door."

"a first trickle of employees left. I asked, “Are these your VPs and senior managers?” He nodded looking surprised and kept watching. Then after another 10-minute pause, a stream of employees poured out of the building like ants emptying the nest. Rahul’s jaw dropped and then tightened. Within a half-hour the parking lot was empty."

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