"The constant pitching, the t-shirt wardrobe peppered with company logos and talking about the business at every holiday, lunch with friends or phone call with Mom really adds up. It’s what you live and breathe as a startup founder and I wouldn’t have had it any other way."
These should be huge red flags. The author describes thinking about nothing but work for three years, then reproaches himself for... not having spent more time thinking about work.
Do not be this guy, you will burn out and you will destroy relationships on the way down that you cannot repair.
"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast... Remember what a startup is, economically: a way of saying, I want to work faster. Instead of accumulating money slowly by being paid a regular wage for fifty years, I want to get it over with as soon as possible. So governments that forbid you to accumulate wealth are in effect decreeing that you work slowly. They're willing to let you earn $3 million over fifty years, but they're not willing to let you work so hard that you can do it in two. They are like the corporate boss that you can't go to and say, I want to work ten times as hard, so please pay me ten times a much. Except this is not a boss you can escape by starting your own company."
Elsewhere, he wrote that while he was working on Viaweb he had no time for romance.
This is a strange thing to say:
"You will burn out and you will destroy relationships on the way down that you cannot repair."
The opposite is more true: you will make amazing relationships and build a great network. I had my own startup from 2002 to 2008, and it was a good experience for me, even though the company eventually failed. But I met many amazing people who I am still friends with, and the bulk of my business connections come from that era.
Paul Graham's essays contain much wisdom and truth, but even Homer nods, and let's be honest, the paragraph you quoted is bullshit.
Even if you care about nothing whatsoever except your job (which probably isn't - and certainly shouldn't be - the case) there is an optimal level of effort that delivers peak sustainable output, and for tasks with a significant intellectual component, the available data says that optimal level is about thirty or forty hours a week. Beyond that, sure, you'll get more done in the first week, but chronic fatigue will quickly build up, reducing your effectiveness to the point where you're actually getting less done than you would have in a thirty-hour week.
Worse, chronic fatigue is like being drunk: it impairs your judgment to the point where you can't tell how impaired your judgment is. You feel like a hero, when your actual performance is more akin to someone coming in to work drunk every day.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't do a startup, if that's what you think is your best option. It does mean if you're going to, you should do it in the understanding that it is not actually a get-rich-quick scheme, and it doesn't suspend the normal laws of human biology and psychology.
Even if you care about nothing whatsoever except your job (which probably isn't - and certainly shouldn't be - the case) there is an optimal level of effort that delivers peak sustainable output, and for tasks with a significant intellectual component, the available data says that optimal level is about thirty or forty hours a week. Beyond that, sure, you'll get more done in the first week, but chronic fatigue will quickly build up, reducing your effectiveness to the point where you're actually getting less done than you would have in a thirty-hour week.
Let's see some of that research. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter" Goldin, NBER working paper suggests that there are superlinear returns to hours worked for differentiated labour. Where workers are basically substitutable pay has an almos 1:1 relationship with hours worked. Where people can have unique knowledge and relationships and combinations of same working more hours makes your total output greater and makes you less substitutable, which makes your bargaining position better, if you're an employee.
Exactly. The cited essay is advice from a casino operator to spend all your time playing the slots, so you can cash out and enjoy your life on easy street. It's great advice if you can follow it.
Quite. NEVER take career advice from a VC, he will gladly sacrifice your health, relationships, long term career prospects and anything else he can get his hands on, for his own interests. Which sounds harsh but it is how it is.
Hi. Can someone with downvoting privileges apply the appropriate moderation to the above comment? "This" is the best example of a useless comment, and is nothing more than another version of "AOL!" From the jargon file [1]
And then downvote this reply as well? I got karma to burn. Thanks in advance.
Well maybe all those other suckers are playing the slots just with their dumb luck, but the operator has a totally infallible system that got him where he is - and you too can use the system to make it to the top!
Paul Graham is a very smart dude, and I love his essays a lot, but the way you talk about him "Recall what Paul Graham wrote:" sounds like you are quoting the bible. Believe it our not, Paul Graham is not always right, and it is entirely possible to be too intense.
Man, I just read that entire essay, and it is terrible. I actually love Paul Graham a little less after reading it. It is as though he had literally never heard of the concept of scarcity and simply thought all wealth was just a form of converted effort. A child's understanding of economy.
I don't understand this blog post at all. It seems to only show the very tip of the situation because, based on the text alone, the story/situation doesn't add up. Especially the part where he says he was doing everything perfectly for the week, yet everyone still wanted him gone. It seems like there was a much deeper personality conflict or something we aren't seeing. Maybe this is my fault, but unfortunately, it also makes the lesson/point a lot weaker and more muddy.
Seriously one of the more confusing blog posts I've ever read.
It's extremely difficult to re-gain respect once it's lost. That's just how people are. We form an opinion on somebody, and then look for reasons to justify that opinion, not challenge that opinion.
Also, group/team dynamics are usually influenced by the most vocal. If there was a previous serious conflict with 1 or 2 team members, it's possible they continued to poison the discourse, even when the management quality improved for that week.
I never understand the value of these defensive posts. It may be cathartic, but you're far better off just silently moving on rather than making a big stink out of such a transition.
> Letting my week fill up with sales, finance, pr and exec team meetings and not leaving myself enough time for deep product focus.
i would posit that no single person in a company with more than one person should be working on all these things in a primary capacity. they're all over the spectrum in terms of complementary skills. even in a two-person team, you need to split those roles up so that one person "owns" each of those things. there are exceptions to this rule but you don't see it often.
moving further down the timeline, one of the things i learned quickly as a founder is that if you hire someone to do a job, you have to let them do it. you can't do it for them, and you sure as hell can't micromanage them. mistakes will be made, there will be misunderstandings, but that's just part of working on a team. you just have to accept it.
if you are operating with a decent staff (~10+ people), and are a co-founder and find yourself doing all these tasks, the problem is you.
it sounds like this guy just would insist on working on other peoples' workloads, while skipping out on a lot of company meetings, and they eventually started resenting him for it. you can't wipe that away in a week.
Interesting read and seemingly a very professional response to what must be a heart-wrenching situation on a personal level, but I don't really understand the rationale behind "giving it a week".
If your team has lost confidence to the point where it "doesn't really know what you do anymore" this will not change in a week, no matter how well things go that week.
I think that this post, with it's main point "No one really knows what you do anymore" completely removes value from previous post "3 Tips Product Managers Can Use To Do Great Work", and others too. Quite funny to see so much posts about productivity in that blog, while knowing final.
Without having the PivotDesk side of the story, I can't help but feel that there's a second, undocumented failure here: the lack of a strong feedback culture.
Did the cofounder really not receive any performance feedback until "It might be time for you to go"? Did his team members not feel comfortable talking to him about it, or perhaps even the other cofounders, until the situation reached a boiling point? Did other team members know they had an open communication channel to provide feedback about a cofounder?
Unless the issues he describes are intrinsic personality quirks -- in which case he probably needs to understand his tendencies and find an environment where he can thrive -- this whole situation seems avoidable. All employees, but especially managers, should create time and space to have candid, mostly unstructured one-on-one conversations with a handful of direct reports / superiors / peers. Leaders should invite criticism from the very beginning and make sure everyone knows it's safe to challenge ideas and decisions. And ideally, this starts during the hiring process. Let potential employees know that you value productive dissent and do your best to evaluate them on that axis.
If you don't have people within the company that can effectively evaluate you, find someone outside of the company that can provide advice. This seems more common at the (co)founder level, although could apply e.g. to a technical person at a highly non-technical company as well.
EDIT: As a cofounder, he had the power to engineer some of these support structures himself. This isn't "mean company ruins struggling cofounder," but rather a reminder to spend time on soft skills and the human element of running a business.
I'll give some insight from the PivotDesk side - I've been working there for over 2 years. We actually have a great feedback culture - he even mentions several times in the post how there was an extended period of time where this was a known issue that was being worked on.
"Over the past six months I gradually lost the confidence of my teammates."
There were actually several different 'experiments' in different tools, methodologies, and feedback loops that happened over the course of those 6 months to try to help create the right team dynamics again. David (the CEO) is always very honest with employees if there are issues, and every attempt to resolve them is made before anyone leaves the team.
Appreciate the response and love to hear that you guys tried to make it work. I originally read the quote you pulled as rationalization / post-hoc justification, but I can see how maybe he just didn't elaborate on that bit. (I was also merely trying to balance a lot of the negative commentary with a more productive approach to these sorts of problems in the future.)
I'm guessing this was a trying time for all of you. Wish you all the best moving forward!
That is completely incorrect. David (the CEO) was one of the original cofounders from the spring of 2012, before they got into TechStars. He came up with the idea from seeing all of the companies in TechStars go through the same challenges and decided to do something about it. Kelly joined him before TechStars started. Don't spread misinformation.
I've been at the company since Fall of 2012. David was a techstars mentor since the first techstars class in 2007, but after seeing every startup waste time and resources with office space he wanted to create a better solution. In the spring of 2012 he started PivotDesk, and was accepted into the summer 2012 program along with Kelly and one other co-founder.
He continues to mentor for techstars while also being the CEO of PivotDesk
why do you say this? nothing in his post implies that this was what happened. in fact, he says that he joined as vp, which i read that he wasn't the original founder.
This captures the fact that what is inside your head is not always in everyone else's head. I struggle with this, when things seem "obvious" to me but are completely missed by others. Sometimes checking in and asking how folks see things is a good way to figure out what the team is seeing versus what you are seeing.
The "No one really knows what you do anymore" is a murmur that follows senior leadership role all the time. And while it CAN mean that you're not doing anything, in this situation I think it was a case of some people struggling to assess the value of all the activities you do through their own lens. More likely than not, you were making valuable contributions to the company; much more so than your employees realized.
So when they weighed their perception of your contribution against their negative feelings towards you, the fulcrum was positioned against your favor.
Departure like this can be a turning point for the company for worse, especially at a small company like this. I hope this isn't the case.
You're probably feeling terrible right now. And that sucks. But remember, shit happens. And while ultimately you are responsible for your own success, it's your CEO's job to build the organization and make sure that people––including you––are setup to succeed. And my guess is that the organization itself is losing a lot by losing you. Bummer.
But as you will quickly discover, the past is the past in startup world and the only thing that matters now is what you're doing next. Enjoy the endless possibilities that are future. Be proud of what you've built. And be proud of yourself.
I have no insight on this situation in particular but Kelly has always been kind and helpful to me in my experience. He's a sharp dude and I wish him the best with whatever comes next.
Seems like some post-facto rationalization. What exactly is the lesson here? Don't be a jerk to your teammates and make sure they know what you're doing? Why not just say that instead of publicly apologizing like this?
Context helps ground the lessons in reality. People would be less likely to take "don't be a jerk to your teammates" to heart if that's all the post was saying.
These should be huge red flags. The author describes thinking about nothing but work for three years, then reproaches himself for... not having spent more time thinking about work.
Do not be this guy, you will burn out and you will destroy relationships on the way down that you cannot repair.