Probably more accurately titled "Bay Area Tech is a Small World After All"
TLDR: Chekr Director of Solutions, formerly Director of Strategic Sales (and first business hire), starts client on-boarding company (nice idea, streamline a lot to minimize hand-holding).
I find that the mechanisms that make the tech world small are interesting in themselves. Graphs are made small (in the graph-theory sense of the shortest distance between typical nodes) by adding connections.
This anecdote about how some particular connections were formed and later led to real opportunities seems like a good example of how things often happen in the Bay Area tech world.
Perhaps someday there’ll be a general theory of how opportunities are created, but in the meantime if you want to learn how things happen, there are only anecdotes to learn from.
> Hiring people that have a track record of taking projects from inception to delivery and who actively seek out projects to own is critical
Doesn't that regard the first few early hires (who'd take some form of senior/management positions later on)? For me a person who delivers projects means somebody who's very involved in the process; somebody that calls significant decisions about the product.
Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're assigned enough?
> Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're assigned enough?
If you manage to build an org where everyone is a self-starter who takes on projects from ideation to delivery repeatedly you work in a crazy awesome env. There are some people that are really good at getting work done, but if you don't give them a clearly defined task, they will flounder.
When you are in startup land, most of what you are doing is undefined. You need someone who is really good at saying "is this working? Should I keep doing this? How do we do this better?" Over and over and over again until you find product market fit and aren't burning through cash.
If you are running an enterprise mature SaaS product a lot of those variables are solved (but possibly could be optimized). The majority of people don't need to be solving for profitability. In startupland of 10 employees or less, almost everyone should.
It's the same logic that a "startup founder" may not make the best "enterprise CEO". An "early hire" may not make the best "gear in a 300 person machine".
I have been burnt by this attitude as an employee many times. What people usually mean when they say "I want to hire someone responsible to own the project" is "I want to hire someone who will pick up my vision of what needs to be done, will make it happen, taking the blame in potential conflicts along the way and will then let me get the credit for it".
I ended up starting my own business and I think that's the only realistic scenario for someone who likes "taking projects from inception to delivery and who actively seek out projects to own".
I would go one step further and say if you have full of go getters, some might get bored when the inevitable “just execute the assigned tasks” work comes up. This is what I hear happening at Google a lot: they only hire A players, but many get bored (and eventually leave) when they are assigned B or C-level work that needs to get done.
What exactly is meant by "commits" that you talk about in 1:1 and meetings? Is that more like "commitments" or "git commits". The former I agree, the latter I think is in many cases a terrible measure of productivity, because it discourages activities that don't directly lead to code, such as pairing with your junior, or helping a customer, or providing mentorship for others, etc. Remember you'll get what you measure.
"Commitments", not "git commits". For revenue teams, this could be signing a contract, scheduling a certain number of meetings, drafting a blog post, etc. Similar parallels for any team within a company. The key is being able to break larger projects into manageable weekly commitments that are specific and measurable.
I thought that since this author's startup is sorta a 'reddit for politics', I'll plug my own startup (currently self-funded) which is a 'chatroulette/duolingo for politics': https://dinnertable.chat/
Putting a log in requirement to even see what your app does may provide a filter on usage that you don't want.
While there may be advantages, I think you'd be hard pressed to overcome the drop off from potential users who will bounce.
Furthermore, you're not delivering a clear value proposition "JOIN THE CONVERSATION
you're invited to our dinner party beta". And then you have an ambiguous call to action "start login".
At no point are you giving the potential user a reason to even want to login. And then you're asking the user to overcome an email signup and confirmation flow before they even get to see what your product does. Consider the case where the product isn't what the potential user thought it was, now you've wasted their time, what good is their email signup?
Why not go for a progressive engagement flow? You can still require accounts, signup and login for continual use. However you could engage the user first, then make your email signup ask. Wouldn't that be more advantageous?
Cool, seems like it'd attract exactly the people who don't need it though. ;- )
I'll sign up I think!
Edit: While I was signing up, I tried copying the verification code from the email, and it copied with the period from the email, so when I pasted it into the site it didn't work. Maybe put a zero-width space in there (U+200B) or ditch the period altogether. ;- )
Edit 2: The "start login" page didn't work the first time around. In the console I saw a 404 status on something. When I refreshed, it redirected me to the right page though.
Give that signup and sign in flow a good test, I was almost ready to call it quits after trying a couple times!
Edit 3: The countdown clock is jumping around a bit. Turns out the font for the numbers (Montserrat) is proportional, and does not support OpenType tabular number variants (in CSS you select these with: { font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums; }), so the countdown clock tends to jump each time a second passes and it is updated. Maybe nitpicky but it bothers me.
[+] [-] ryanmercer|7 years ago|reply
TLDR: Chekr Director of Solutions, formerly Director of Strategic Sales (and first business hire), starts client on-boarding company (nice idea, streamline a lot to minimize hand-holding).
[+] [-] tlb|7 years ago|reply
This anecdote about how some particular connections were formed and later led to real opportunities seems like a good example of how things often happen in the Bay Area tech world.
Perhaps someday there’ll be a general theory of how opportunities are created, but in the meantime if you want to learn how things happen, there are only anecdotes to learn from.
[+] [-] kamac|7 years ago|reply
Doesn't that regard the first few early hires (who'd take some form of senior/management positions later on)? For me a person who delivers projects means somebody who's very involved in the process; somebody that calls significant decisions about the product.
Should all hires be like that? Isn't being able to execute the tasks you're assigned enough?
[+] [-] lbotos|7 years ago|reply
If you manage to build an org where everyone is a self-starter who takes on projects from ideation to delivery repeatedly you work in a crazy awesome env. There are some people that are really good at getting work done, but if you don't give them a clearly defined task, they will flounder.
When you are in startup land, most of what you are doing is undefined. You need someone who is really good at saying "is this working? Should I keep doing this? How do we do this better?" Over and over and over again until you find product market fit and aren't burning through cash.
If you are running an enterprise mature SaaS product a lot of those variables are solved (but possibly could be optimized). The majority of people don't need to be solving for profitability. In startupland of 10 employees or less, almost everyone should.
It's the same logic that a "startup founder" may not make the best "enterprise CEO". An "early hire" may not make the best "gear in a 300 person machine".
[+] [-] john_moscow|7 years ago|reply
I ended up starting my own business and I think that's the only realistic scenario for someone who likes "taking projects from inception to delivery and who actively seek out projects to own".
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freedomben|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmack|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btrautsc|7 years ago|reply
congrats and good luck!
[+] [-] jadbox|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlow|7 years ago|reply
While there may be advantages, I think you'd be hard pressed to overcome the drop off from potential users who will bounce.
Furthermore, you're not delivering a clear value proposition "JOIN THE CONVERSATION you're invited to our dinner party beta". And then you have an ambiguous call to action "start login". At no point are you giving the potential user a reason to even want to login. And then you're asking the user to overcome an email signup and confirmation flow before they even get to see what your product does. Consider the case where the product isn't what the potential user thought it was, now you've wasted their time, what good is their email signup?
Why not go for a progressive engagement flow? You can still require accounts, signup and login for continual use. However you could engage the user first, then make your email signup ask. Wouldn't that be more advantageous?
[+] [-] ladon86|7 years ago|reply
Your implementation looks nice! The idea of yet _more_ people to discuss politics with however... is not for me.
[+] [-] microcolonel|7 years ago|reply
I'll sign up I think!
Edit: While I was signing up, I tried copying the verification code from the email, and it copied with the period from the email, so when I pasted it into the site it didn't work. Maybe put a zero-width space in there (U+200B) or ditch the period altogether. ;- )
Edit 2: The "start login" page didn't work the first time around. In the console I saw a 404 status on something. When I refreshed, it redirected me to the right page though.
Give that signup and sign in flow a good test, I was almost ready to call it quits after trying a couple times!
Edit 3: The countdown clock is jumping around a bit. Turns out the font for the numbers (Montserrat) is proportional, and does not support OpenType tabular number variants (in CSS you select these with: { font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums; }), so the countdown clock tends to jump each time a second passes and it is updated. Maybe nitpicky but it bothers me.