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The golden era of being an open startup is gone

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Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#91

Post by no_butterscotch »

cj wrote: post #71

In general, it doesn’t matter whether you’re open to the public or not. What matters much more is that you’re open with your own employees. The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy, and one very easy way to do that is to show that you appreciate and respect them by sharing your compan…

> The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation.

Similarly to me is the "democratizing X" startup. Those were never not about the same thing as every other startup: VC money and getting a return. But it was trendy to was "we're democratizing ".

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#92

Post by throw123123123 »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #91
cj wrote: post #71

In general, it doesn’t matter whether you’re open to the public or not. What matters much more is that you’re open with your own employees. The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy, and one very easy way to do that is to show that you appreciate and respect them by sharing your compan…

> The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Similarly to me is the "democratizing X" startup. Those were never not about the same thing as every other startup: VC money and getting a return. But it was trendy to was "we're democratizing ".

Few phrases are as popular and as cringey as "democratizing X". Is it going to have voting? Political power? How did we get to the point that we use democratizing as a way to say popularizing.

And Robinhood still keeps saying this as a tagline!

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#93

Post by dehrmann »

fsckboy wrote: post #86
cj wrote: post #71

In general, it doesn’t matter whether you’re open to the public or not. What matters much more is that you’re open with your own employees. The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy, and one very easy way to do that is to show that you appreciate and respect them by sharing your compan…

> Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy customers

You have three pillars: customers, employees, and shareholders. Neglect any and bad things happen.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#94

Post by havkom »

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #87
fsckboy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy customers

Both

Yep. Employees and customers. Neglect any of them bad things happen.

Depending on your business you may have stable customers who just keep going. You can’t neglect these forever, but compared to employees it may be of lesser priority short-term.

If you neglect employees on the other hand, even short-term, bad things will happen short-term or long term. Employees remember when they were neglected and loyalties are hard to build.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#95

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

mbesto wrote: post #79
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reason to keep doing it is to maintain the value of openness within the internal culture through praxis. If it was only being done for marketing purposes, then it wasn't ever a value, but a strategy.

Value are marketing.

Values are marketable. Culture exists and values are a defining aspect of it. Now, if people are masking and performing the cultural values instead of authentically embodying, then there's a separation between stated values and operational values

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#96

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

clintonb wrote: post #68
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reason to keep doing it is to maintain the value of openness within the internal culture through praxis. If it was only being done for marketing purposes, then it wasn't ever a value, but a strategy.

You maintain the value of openness within internal culture by being open with internal employees. Making the information public is a bonus for the public.

"We share openly in the family, but keep everything in the family" is a recipe for disaster, whether it be in a household or office. It's incongruent and breaks equanimity. It pedestals the employees over others.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#97

Post by emodendroket »

whatshisface wrote: post #89
diob wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I agree. Of the two places I've worked, the one who was hiding the metrics ended up having great financials and selling. The other said they had to do layoffs but would be fine until X years later. A few months later they laid off another round of employees.

It's better to say nothing than it is to mislead or say something wrong, but best of all would be if they had been honest. I don't think that sounds like a disagreement.

Well, perhaps the issue is, how do I know whether I should trust what I am being told? So it puts you back in the same position anyway.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#98

Post by chii »

cj wrote: post #71

In general, it doesn’t matter whether you’re open to the public or not. What matters much more is that you’re open with your own employees. The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy, and one very easy way to do that is to show that you appreciate and respect them by sharing your compan…

> you appreciate and respect them by sharing your company’s key metrics with them.

So if those metrics arent painting a great picture, does the company assume that such trust and respect turn into loyalty?

In other words, the ultimate goal is to buy loyalty?

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#99

Post by ehnto »

safety1st wrote: post #22
reidjs wrote: post #2

I don't really agree or maybe I have misunderstood the author's thesis here. Is he saying it's harder to grow a business by building in the open nowadays because so many people have already done it, so now consumers are weary of it? Or is he upset that many of these companies that were once open have stopped being open once they found success? Just because many established companies have stopped doing it, doesn't mea…

This Damon Chen guy seems like a nice guy but like an independent journalist or something. He seems like he could be a great evangelist. He started some websites, wrote about Open Startups, and in this article he mentions he had his own 'revenue bar' on Twitter which went from $0 to $1 but he took it down because the age of Open Startups is over. I look at all this and wonder where the actual dudes going to work at j…

Reading between the lines I think you are an entrepreneur, rather than a startup founder? The key difference I imagine is you need to be a business at all times and so focus on operations, and a startup doesn't have to be a business yet, but does have to focus on self-image and projecting that image to investors to keep the gravy train flowing in.

My key takeaway from startups vs entrepreneurship is they are very different games, and I wouldn't want to conflate the two even in this discussion about transparency. Many businesses stand to gain nothing, and lose a lot, by exposing their business particulars. Startups on the otherhand can gain a lot from the self-promotion.

Re: The golden era of being an open startup is gone

#100

Post by ragnarsson »

no_butterscotch wrote: post #91
cj wrote: post #71

In general, it doesn’t matter whether you’re open to the public or not. What matters much more is that you’re open with your own employees. The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy, and one very easy way to do that is to show that you appreciate and respect them by sharing your compan…

> The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation. Similarly to me is the "democratizing X" startup. Those were never not about the same thing as every other startup: VC money and getting a return. But it was trendy to was "we're democratizing ".

For me democratizing can mean "We have done something hard and we are going to share the benefits of it for minimal gain". The business is not lucrative for others to copy because margins are low.

OpenAI is a capped profit company. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/. If they become as big as everyone today thinks they will become, they can be democratizing AI.

Also note that, lot of progress in AI has happened because big companies are willing to share their research publicly, which helps them in attracting talent.

The hard thing about Indie businesses is proving product-market fit. Rest of what they do can easily be copied even if they don't share info. Not sharing revenue numbers will just help them with others not going for similar ideas.

But sharing info leads to social media following, which is key to marketing for many of these companies.

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