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Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
91–100 of 127 posts
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#92On the whole, this is a fairly good write-up but this is just not right: > Being at a startup is hard in a way that is almost indescribable to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Being at a startup as an employee isn't necessarily hard. You hear this type of "startup is so hard" because running companies well is hard and successful startups will often grow faster than their founders are able to grow their own ability t…
She clearly means from an executive point of view given the context. And having been an executive at two start-ups and one middle-sized company, I agree with her 100%.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#93On the whole, this is a fairly good write-up but this is just not right: > Being at a startup is hard in a way that is almost indescribable to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Being at a startup as an employee isn't necessarily hard. You hear this type of "startup is so hard" because running companies well is hard and successful startups will often grow faster than their founders are able to grow their own ability t…
Startup work is much more chaotic than established companies. It is much closer to my creative experiences of directing a feature film and being in a touring band than it is to my time at big software companies. Instead of having clearly set requirements, you have to figure out the requirements as you go, and it's different and unique challenges every day.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#94A lot of the enterprise requirements he talked about add no actual value to the product; they're just checkboxes on an RFP that are required. Theoretically applying all of those requirements to your product might make your product more secure, scalable, or reliable. It'll also make your product harder to maintain, harder to test, and harder to improve. Many of those requirements are there because vendors put them the…
Interesting you assumed the female CEO writing this was male.
Yes, I'm from the "he by default" generation.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#95On the whole, this is a fairly good write-up but this is just not right: > Being at a startup is hard in a way that is almost indescribable to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Being at a startup as an employee isn't necessarily hard. You hear this type of "startup is so hard" because running companies well is hard and successful startups will often grow faster than their founders are able to grow their own ability t…
Startup work is much more chaotic than established companies. It is much closer to my creative experiences of directing a feature film and being in a touring band than it is to my time at big software companies. Instead of having clearly set requirements, you have to figure out the requirements as you go, and it's different and unique challenges every day.
Startup work isn't necessarily more chaotic than established companies. Assuming we're talking about tech companies, working at a big company doesn't mean you have "clearly set requirements" and working at a startup doesn't mean you don't have "clearly set requirements." You can have a well-defined role at a startup or a fluid role at a big company.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#96As employee #36 I lived through some of these things first hand and definitely agree with them (I think we were over 200 people when I left). It was painful going through the enterprise focus transition along with a nonsensical reorg imposed by the aforementioned Big Tech VP. One day we had focused platform-specific teams working on satisfying customers, the next we were moved to cross-functional feature teams and fo…
As an outsider to the tech industry, it seems to me that the Product Manager/Product Owner role seems to be not only the most BS role, but also the most damaging role? Considering that I saw a post a few weeks back, I saw a similar post (I think on HN itself) where PMs were being fired en masse, I wonder if there is any real utility with the product team, or if it's just a holdover from Google doing its thing back in…
The PM role gets described as the "CEO of " which I think translates to people thinking the role is ultra high status.
The best PMs I know operate like CEOs in the sense that it's someone's job to scrub the toilets, and until you figure out how to afford/hire someone to do that for you ... you're scrubbing the toilets yourself. Someone has too!
The 0% interest free capital environment distorted the PM role though, especially in land grab cultures. Imagine having enough budget to hire a 4-6 person squad of toilet scrubbers (and golden toilet) so why ever clean it yourself?
So sorry for the crappy metaphor, but that's why I believe PMs are on the chopping block right now. Not because there's something intrinsically not-valuable about the role. From the perspective of Tech Lead / Staff Eng in a Big Tech Co, good PMs created clarity and helped my team(s) execute. The worst PMs created ambiguity, and the worst of the worst pushed ambiguity+responsibility down as far as they could.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#97On the whole, this is a fairly good write-up but this is just not right: > Being at a startup is hard in a way that is almost indescribable to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Being at a startup as an employee isn't necessarily hard. You hear this type of "startup is so hard" because running companies well is hard and successful startups will often grow faster than their founders are able to grow their own ability t…
She clearly means from an executive point of view given the context. And having been an executive at two start-ups and one middle-sized company, I agree with her 100%.
Given the lack of details, my guess is that your role at those startups is wildly different from your role at the middle-sized company and also that these aren't necessarily comparable companies outside of size and age. 3 is also a stupidly small sample size for what it's worth.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
She clearly means from an executive point of view given the context. And having been an executive at two start-ups and one middle-sized company, I agree with her 100%.
Given the lack of details, my guess is that your role at those startups is wildly different from your role at the middle-sized company and also that these aren't necessarily comparable companies outside of size and age. 3 is also a stupidly small sample size for what it's worth.
You're moving the goalposts, but keep on digging I guess. I suppose your anecdotal and theoretical stories trump Tracy's lived ones and mine as well. No reason to continue this discussion.
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#99Love this article. Thank you for sharing. Read it and felt seen and less isolated as I reflect on some of my own similar mistakes. My colleagues loved it too!
Re: Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
She clearly means from an executive point of view given the context. And having been an executive at two start-ups and one middle-sized company, I agree with her 100%.
Given the lack of details, my guess is that your role at those startups is wildly different from your role at the middle-sized company and also that these aren't necessarily comparable companies outside of size and age. 3 is also a stupidly small sample size for what it's worth.
3 is greater than 0.