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Tech debt metaphor maximalism: "I really like the "tech debt" metaphor. A lot of people don't, but I think that's because they either don't extend the metaphor far enough, or because they don't properly understand financial debt." Really good read on how to think about tech debt as a direct extension of financial debt.

12 Ways to Show Your Value:

Pour salt on the wound: No pain, no sale. People will only value your solution if they value their problem. If they don’t think their problem is that bad, they won’t pay you to solve it. When in doubt, emphasize the pain. Painkillers sell better than vitamins.
Use before-and-after: An effective before-and-after skips all the boring parts. It’s like a jump cut in a movie. It emphasizes contrast. This heightens drama and interest. The best before-and-afters make you say wow.
Don’t jump right to the solution: Instead, explain how much $ the problem costs and how it’s making your customer’s life hard. Then talk about your product & how you’ll make their problem go away.
Show, don’t tell: I came across AI-driven software that reduces background noise on Zoom calls. Their website has a toggle on/off button where you can hear a sound sample without vs with their tool. That demo was worth 10,000 words.
Increase desire, don’t just decrease friction: People jump through hoops for things they want. Did you pick your spouse because they were the most convenient option? Of course not. You picked them despite obstacles.
Explain "why now?": Most folks AGREE that your product is great--but they still don’t buy. What they’re really thinking: “Do I need this enough to pay $ right now? Or can I do this later?" Later often means never.
Be/Do/Have: This is a classic framework in leadership coaching but applies to marketing. What does your product let your customer be that they weren’t before? What can they do now that they couldn’t do before? What do they have now that they didn’t have before?
Aim for “no-brainer status": You need to aim for an instant yes. Not a yes after 100+ touchpoints of nurturing. Think about what would get that reaction. You likely won’t get an instant yes. But if you aim for it, it’ll speed up getting there.
Do what makes their eyes light up (ELU): You can tell when people listen to be polite. But there are moments when aliveness flashes in their eyes--you just said something they care about. Watch for ELU. It's data on what to do more of.
Avoid backstory scope creep: It's easy to get carried away sharing background info. Remove 90% of it. You need less backstory than you think.
Focus on what your customer wants to hear, not what you want to talk about: This is an easy way to trim from your pitch.
Consider overhauling: If you’re struggling to describe your product’s value, figure out if the problem is (A) the marketing or (B) the offer itself. If your underlying offer isn’t good, no amount of improving the marketing will help.

"The Scoop: Inside Fast's Rapid Collapse":

a well-funded scaleup could be closer to bankruptcy than it seems
- How was Fast able to hire hundreds of people of this caliber? Money, storytelling, and equity:
  - Fast paid very strong base salaries, told a great story, and offered lavish equity. Most engineers joining didn't know much about why the one-click checkout industry has the potential of billions. What they did know is Fast offered at or above base salaries of Big Tech, directors shared an enthusiastic story of the company being a rocketship, and they were granted equity which seemed like a golden ticket to retirement.
  - Fast base salaries were top of the market. For senior software engineers, Fast offered $200-240K/year in base salaries with full remote work. They offered this range not just in the US, but outside it, when hiring in Europe, converting the base salary to Euros (€180-€220K/year).
  - Large sign-on bonuses were common for engineers. Those who asked for it all received sign-on bonuses of $20-50K as a one-off payment. These types of sign-on bonuses are not uncommon at Big Tech but are much more rare at startups that are unprofitable. These large sign-on bonuses added to the feeling that Fast is doing well financially. Sign-on bonuses are typically repayable when the employee quits the company within 12 months. In some ways, the sign-on bonuses made the layoffs more bearable for those who joined recently, as they can keep the full amount.
  - Equity issued was lavish and presented as potentially life-changing. Senior software engineers received anywhere from 15,000 to 80,000 stock options, vesting over 4 years, with a 1-year cliff.
- Visualizing the potential stock upside was a major reason many candidates chose Fast over Big Tech offers where the stock was liquid.
- Exploding offers because of “the inevitability of the Series C closing” was used as a tactic to close candidates at the end of 2021.
- Warning signs within the company:
  - A hockey stick of growth presented across the company - but with the Y-axis being employees.
  - Tiny daily sales numbers that leadership and senior employees received
  - Fast did less than $300K worth of sales and below $6K in revenue on most days
  - Not having large clients on their platform
  - Sales vs engineering and sales winning. I have reports of engineering directly raising concerns to the CEO, and suggesting to focus on larger customers, fewer customizations, and bring in more revenue. Sales, however, wanted the opposite: close many deals and hit their targets of signups. In the end, sales got their way, and the strategy of many small merchants stayed in place.
  - The new CFO instituting an immediate hiring freeze
  - A warning sign could have been the annual burn rate just for engineering - for anyone who would have done the math. Most software engineers at Fast were at the senior or above level, making $200K/year or more. Fast had about 150 engineers by early 2022. The burn rate of just the base salaries for engineers would have been around $30M/year (150 x $200,000), not counting sign-on bonuses. Engineering was a third of the company’s headcount, though likely a more expensive third. With this math, it’s not hard to understand how Fast burned through its $100M investment in just over a year.
  - A cofounder going radio silent starting in March was another warning sign.
- Advice when joining startups
  - Do your research on the company and founders. Do your homework on the history of the company, and past red flags. I did this when I got a reachout to potentially interview for Fast in the second half of 2020. I found some unsettling information about the founder of Fast, Dominic Holland. From his previous startup going bust, him firing staff over a text and threatening to sell sensitive personal records. In the early days of Fast, he terminated contract software engineers in Africa with no justification after the raised funding off the prototype they built, never acknowledging their work.
  - Ask for numbers. How much runway does the company have left? What is the burn per month? What is the revenue of the company, and what is the spending? Especially when joining at senior levels - Staff engineer or above, Director or above - it should be a red flag if people don’t share these numbers with you, at least verbally. If you get pushback, you can always use the Fast story as reasoning on why you want to know these numbers.
  - Ask if there is a clear set of key business metrics are and if engineers have access to these close to real-time. Is it the number of users? Revenue? Signups? Percentage of returning daily users? If the answer is “no” to either of the questions, treat it as a red flag. In the case of Fast, these metrics were likely not defined, and the data was not shared with all engineers.
  - Reverse interview your future manager and a founder. Once you have an offer, ask to talk with your future manager and a founder. Collect all your doubts and questions, and ask them on the spot.
  - Ask to talk with lead investors. Investors are almost always happy to jump on a call to talk with potential candidates. Expect that this will mostly be a sell call, where the investors share why they invested in the company. Still, you might find out information.
  - Talk with people who left. Try to find people who left the startup, and who were in a similar position to what you are applying for. Message them on LinkedIn, and ask if they can share why they left. A surprisingly large number of them tend to reply.
  - For executive positions: reach out to VCs. If you are joining as a Director or above, do backchannel checks through the VC network. If you already have VC connections, ask if they can get you information on the startup. If you don’t yet have VC connections, try reaching out to VCs on Twitter or LinkedIn who work at some of the well-known funds I list in the article Finding the next company to work at.
  - Make a plan if the stock grant is worthless.
  - Know that risk and reward are often connected.
  - Not every startup operates like Fast, but many startups face the same types of problems that Fast had.

Detail Pages:

"Auctions and bidding: A guide for computer scientists" A paper/slides/video on the different kinds of auctions.
Art of the Start Startup bible for many folks.
Business metrics Some concepts/ideas/links around metrics for businesses.
Competing on Analytics TBD
Death by Meeting Running effective meetings.
Good Strategy Bad Strategy A book on how to differentiate good strategy from bad strategy.
HBR's 10 Must Reads on Entrepreneurship Notes from the book.
Job search links and articles A collection of links and articles about the candidate side of the recruiting process.
Marketing Myopia The reason growth is threatened, slowed, stopped is not because the market is saturated; it is because there has been a failure of management.
Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change Innovation and disruption.
Negotiation reading Collections of articles and links on negotiation.
Rework DHH's book on business (and, to a much lesser degree, management).
Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars How to eliminate silos in organizations.
Steve Yegge Rants Some links/excerpts from Yegge's various rants.
Switch How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Tempo "timing, tactics and strategy in narrative-driven decision-making." Tempo is a modern treatment of decision-making that weaves together concepts and principles from the mathematical decision sciences, cognitive psychology, philosophy and theories of narrative and metaphor.
The Advantage (Placeholder)
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Understanding teamwork and overcoming the common dysfunctions of a team.
The Five Temptations of a CEO Five ways CEOs go wrong and how to avoid them.
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (Placeholder)
The Ideal Team Player What makes for the ideal hire on your team?
The Motive (Placeholder)
Thinking Fast and Slow System 1 and System 2 types of thinking and how to move from one to another.
To Sell Is Human The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
What Is Strategy? A summary of strategy

Last modified 02 October 2024