7 ms·

Job Titles That Can Sink Your Startup

166 points by amirmc 16y ago

JabavuAdams 16y ago
Interesting points, but it reads like a parable, rather than something that actually happened. This is something that irritates me about business writing. Parable != evidence, since I construct a parable after the fact, to make a specific point. Also, like witty aphorisms, it's just as easy to support either side of an argument. E.g. "the early bird gets the worm" v.s "the second mouse gets the cheese".
- arethuza 16y ago
  I've been in that exact position - we kept hiring high powered sales guys and expected them to sell a product that was close, but not close enough, to what customers actually wanted. It's the classic mistake of confusing sales (selling an existing product) and marketing (finding out what people really want).
  - krschultz 16y ago
    That's a great point. There is a third branch in the trifecta, which is advertising/PR to tell people about what you have. Be wary of someone great at advertising/PR but not at market fit. Those are two distinct questions. Often the founder needs to "own" market fit, probably with the help of others, and advertising/PR can be somewhat delegated. However since market fit drives every decision, it can be hard for that person to be anyone else but the founder.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Sales without a feedback loop in it to your devs/marketing people is wasting a very large amount of effort.
- phr 16y ago
  Absolutely: the plural of anecdote is not data. But Steve is not marshaling evidence for a proposition here, he's teaching a concept by telling a story to bring the concept alive. That's quite a different thing, and exactly what parables are for.
  - JabavuAdams 16y ago
    I don't dispute your overall argument, but: the plural of anecdote is not data The problem is that a parable isn't even an anecdote. One of the other posters on here, saying "this happened to me" is an anecdote, and I found that useful. parable <- propaganda anecdote <- something that happened, but generalize at your own risk. data <- often useful, but subject to horrible flaws in interpretation
    - phr 16y ago
      Oh, you're right. I was thinking a parable didn't necessarily have to be fictional. So I looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable "The word "parable" comes from the Greek "παραβολή" (parabolē), the name given by Greek rhetoricians to any fictive illustration in the form of a brief narrative. Later it came to mean a fictitious narrative, generally referring to something that might naturally occur, by which spiritual and moral matters might be conveyed.[3]" On the other hand, while the story sounds like a parable, I didn't notice anything in the text that actually implies that it is fictional. In any case, it was highly effective for Steve to get his point across to me. Whether the point is true is another question which I can't answer from experience.
    - skmurphy 16y ago
      This is a true story. It has been anonymized to protect the identity of the person Steve was advising.
    - pajarito 16y ago
      Is the overall argument about is you shot with your blind eyes and miss the target, then you move the target and say you hit it, so you are a great master and never miss a shot.
- pajarito 16y ago
  "the early bird gets the worm" v.s "the second mouse gets the cheese". But I think that for the second to be true there must be some trap for the mouse. If you foresee the traps of the future then you can take the cheese.
- blrgeek 16y ago
  We've been in the exact same position too! Now we're at a stage where we do have a repeatable (hopefully highly scalable) sales model, with a seasoned sales guy making sales happen. But some folks in the company are still on the "customer validation/development" mode :) So not out of the woods yet!
rhooper 16y ago
I think it's less "job titles that", and more "job titles can". The hiring model for employees in the tech industry has shifted from "I'm hiring a (insert position here)" to "I'm hiring someone who can (skills x, y, and z)". Old industry HR practice is to look for a title, but new industry needs to focus on skillsets. Especially in the fluid world of startups, flexibility is core.
- some1else 16y ago
  I think you're correct. In this case though, the VP said he could, but proved he couldn't.
  - Goladus 16y ago
    Actually he says that the specific conditions did not come up in the interview. They used the terms customer validation and pivot, but did not specifically say "we don't have a well-understood group of customers" or "we don't have a scalable and repeatable business model."
batasrki 16y ago
I might be coming off as naive here, but the minute I saw this: "searching for a business model", I got my skepticism on. Why is this startup searching for a business model? Shouldn't you start with that and build your company around it? Again, apologies if this is a naive POV.
- some1else 16y ago
  The idea is, that it's highly unlikely your initial business model will be successful and generate big revenue. Instead, you iterate and analyze customers/market in order to pivot and refine your business model until it's optimal. Sometimes that can mean a radical change, sometimes just a realignment.
- Sukotto 16y ago
  Steve Blanks' "Building A Business Model" is the idea that you iteratively develop your startup based on what you discover about your customer's needs. Ie. your first attempt at a project is almost never what your potential customers will actually end up paying for. He espouses that you should build a minimal product based on your idea. Then iterate over the following points seeking traction and revenue 1) "Get out of the building" and go talk to a lot of your potential customers 2) Based on what you learn from those people: Reevaluate your idea and decide if you should iterate more, or start a new direction 3) Develop #2 4) goto #1 Think of it as the scientific hypothesis/experiment cycle for startups [edited to add the below] As usual, Steve says it more succinctly and powerfully than I. I guess that's one reason why he gets to teach at Stanford :) Here's how he puts it [1] Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel. How do we price and position the product? How do we create end user demand? Who are our partners? Where/how do we build the product? How do we finance the company, etc. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. ... How do you know your business model is the right one? When revenue, users, traffic, etc., start increasing in a repeatable way [1] http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/ http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-princ...
fnazeeri 16y ago
A great addition to this post is the "Sales Learning Curve" paper written by Mark Leslie. What's great about the SLC is Mark gives some actual data and a framework for how to think about who/when to hire sales people. http://altgate.com/blog/2007/07/sales-learning-curve.html http://altgate.com/blog/2007/07/sales-learning-curve.html I recommend it to every entrepreneur.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
melissamiranda 16y ago
Steve Blank is a writer and knows that wrapping his point in a story makes it more enticing to read. And I agree that this post has less to do with job titles, than hiring people who have the right kind of experience. Having worked in big companies, (Gap, Wells Fargo, Guess) I know that they all have their time tested processes and you walk in and there are step by step instructions on how to do your job (any job, all the way up). Even at IDEO there's a tried and true methodology, design thinking. You dont know what you will come up with, but you know each step to take. Startups change day to day, which makes them exciting. But hiring a seasoned big company employee is suicidal if they come in trying to execute a time tested routine. It's not about titles per se, but about hiring someone with the right mentality.
maukdaddy 16y ago
I know Steve is a respected VC, but 4 mentions of "pivot" in a single entry? Come on!
mcyger 16y ago
I'll give anyone working with me any title they want, including CEO, just as long as they do everything within their power -- and stretch out of their zone -- to accomplish work and move the company forward.
danielnicollet 16y ago
Good post thanks. Besides optimists and pragmatists, boards also need skeptics to remind everyone of where the company really is before it gets ahead of itself. The main underlying cause of the problem here is always (in my opinion) the fact that boards and founders tend to build companies only by looking forward at what they hope the company will be in X quarters. In this example: I suspect they are really excited at having the big shot VP of Sales because usually, where there is one, there is revenue. But they don't seem to face the truth of where they really are at this stage: a company still struggling to find its model.
nlavezzo 16y ago
Excellent article. This was something we learned at our last company, especially early on. Sales people that had previously excelled at large tech companies with a full suite of presentation, training, marketing, and support materials, with a mature and relatively stable product, did not do well in a fast moving environment that required more thought and digging into detail. In the end, our consulting organization (which was much more familiar with our product and customer requirements) ended up being our best pool of sales talent. I'd suggest considering technical consulting types who are working on actual implementations for sales roles.
ojbyrne 16y ago
The thing about titles, is that sometimes even though they don't reflect what you really do on a day to day basis, they do help with career management - i.e. finding the next job if the current one goes bust. So sometimes its ok to give someone a high-falutin' title as long as they understand up front that they have to earn it.
- gaius 16y ago
  And the thing about salesmen is that in the interview they're selling themselves. Of course he said what Rajiv wanted to hear! That's what he does for a living!
  - forensic 16y ago
    This is why you can't tell an interviewee what you want in an employee. You need to hold your cards close to your chest and get THEM to tell you what they deliver. If it doesn't fit then you need to consider finding someone else. The worst thing you can do is bring in someone for an interview, tell them what you want to hear, and then allow them to echo back to you what you want to hear. Which is what most humans will do.
    - amirmc 16y ago
      > "This is why you can't tell an interviewee what you want in an employee" I disagree. If a company cannot clearly state what is expected of an employee then how can it expect to attract/retain great people? The interviewee should also be assessing their potential employer so being reluctant to share relevant information probably wouldn't come across well (at least not to me). Interviewing is a skill and a good interviewer needs to be able to inform applicants about the job requirements while also probing to ensure that the candidate actually does possess the necessary skills. It is not easy. Aside: There's an Ask HN thread on job descriptions which you might find interesting. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1685258 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1685258
      - gaius 16y ago
T_S_ 16y ago
All the great salespeople I have known were nervous control freaks hiding inside a breezy exterior. The great ones are like painters who would never let you touch their canvas. Of course they will freak if you keep changing the product. Stability is a primal urge (for customers, not HN readers) and sales people know that. The solution: Hire crappy salesmen who will call anyone you want? Not exactly. Find the smartest customers you can and practically pay them to work with you. After all in the scenario outlined, you don't even have a product they want. The salesperson needs to "get" that they are selling the team not the product.
whalesalad 16y ago
I think any titles period will hurt your startup. Who has the biggest dick? Who fucking cares? I can't stand titles... whoop-dee-doo you're an art director.

166 points by amirmc 16y ago

Interesting points, but it reads like a parable, rather than something that actually happened. This is something that irritates me about business writing. Parable != evidence, since I construct a parable after the fact, to make a specific point. Also, like witty aphorisms, it's just as easy to support either side of an argument. E.g. "the early bird gets the worm" v.s "the second mouse gets the cheese".

arethuza 16y ago
I've been in that exact position - we kept hiring high powered sales guys and expected them to sell a product that was close, but not close enough, to what customers actually wanted. It's the classic mistake of confusing sales (selling an existing product) and marketing (finding out what people really want).
- krschultz 16y ago
  That's a great point. There is a third branch in the trifecta, which is advertising/PR to tell people about what you have. Be wary of someone great at advertising/PR but not at market fit. Those are two distinct questions. Often the founder needs to "own" market fit, probably with the help of others, and advertising/PR can be somewhat delegated. However since market fit drives every decision, it can be hard for that person to be anyone else but the founder.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Sales without a feedback loop in it to your devs/marketing people is wasting a very large amount of effort.
phr 16y ago
Absolutely: the plural of anecdote is not data. But Steve is not marshaling evidence for a proposition here, he's teaching a concept by telling a story to bring the concept alive. That's quite a different thing, and exactly what parables are for.
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  I don't dispute your overall argument, but: the plural of anecdote is not data The problem is that a parable isn't even an anecdote. One of the other posters on here, saying "this happened to me" is an anecdote, and I found that useful. parable <- propaganda anecdote <- something that happened, but generalize at your own risk. data <- often useful, but subject to horrible flaws in interpretation
  - phr 16y ago
    Oh, you're right. I was thinking a parable didn't necessarily have to be fictional. So I looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable "The word "parable" comes from the Greek "παραβολή" (parabolē), the name given by Greek rhetoricians to any fictive illustration in the form of a brief narrative. Later it came to mean a fictitious narrative, generally referring to something that might naturally occur, by which spiritual and moral matters might be conveyed.[3]" On the other hand, while the story sounds like a parable, I didn't notice anything in the text that actually implies that it is fictional. In any case, it was highly effective for Steve to get his point across to me. Whether the point is true is another question which I can't answer from experience.
  - skmurphy 16y ago
    This is a true story. It has been anonymized to protect the identity of the person Steve was advising.
  - pajarito 16y ago
    Is the overall argument about is you shot with your blind eyes and miss the target, then you move the target and say you hit it, so you are a great master and never miss a shot.
pajarito 16y ago
"the early bird gets the worm" v.s "the second mouse gets the cheese". But I think that for the second to be true there must be some trap for the mouse. If you foresee the traps of the future then you can take the cheese.
blrgeek 16y ago
We've been in the exact same position too! Now we're at a stage where we do have a repeatable (hopefully highly scalable) sales model, with a seasoned sales guy making sales happen. But some folks in the company are still on the "customer validation/development" mode :) So not out of the woods yet!

rhooper 16y ago

I think it's less "job titles that", and more "job titles can". The hiring model for employees in the tech industry has shifted from "I'm hiring a (insert position here)" to "I'm hiring someone who can (skills x, y, and z)". Old industry HR practice is to look for a title, but new industry needs to focus on skillsets. Especially in the fluid world of startups, flexibility is core.

some1else 16y ago
I think you're correct. In this case though, the VP said he could, but proved he couldn't.
- Goladus 16y ago
  Actually he says that the specific conditions did not come up in the interview. They used the terms customer validation and pivot, but did not specifically say "we don't have a well-understood group of customers" or "we don't have a scalable and repeatable business model."

batasrki 16y ago

I might be coming off as naive here, but the minute I saw this: "searching for a business model", I got my skepticism on. Why is this startup searching for a business model? Shouldn't you start with that and build your company around it? Again, apologies if this is a naive POV.

some1else 16y ago
The idea is, that it's highly unlikely your initial business model will be successful and generate big revenue. Instead, you iterate and analyze customers/market in order to pivot and refine your business model until it's optimal. Sometimes that can mean a radical change, sometimes just a realignment.
Sukotto 16y ago
Steve Blanks' "Building A Business Model" is the idea that you iteratively develop your startup based on what you discover about your customer's needs. Ie. your first attempt at a project is almost never what your potential customers will actually end up paying for. He espouses that you should build a minimal product based on your idea. Then iterate over the following points seeking traction and revenue 1) "Get out of the building" and go talk to a lot of your potential customers 2) Based on what you learn from those people: Reevaluate your idea and decide if you should iterate more, or start a new direction 3) Develop #2 4) goto #1 Think of it as the scientific hypothesis/experiment cycle for startups [edited to add the below] As usual, Steve says it more succinctly and powerfully than I. I guess that's one reason why he gets to teach at Stanford :) Here's how he puts it [1] Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel. How do we price and position the product? How do we create end user demand? Who are our partners? Where/how do we build the product? How do we finance the company, etc. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. ... How do you know your business model is the right one? When revenue, users, traffic, etc., start increasing in a repeatable way [1] http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/ http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-princ...

fnazeeri 16y ago

A great addition to this post is the "Sales Learning Curve" paper written by Mark Leslie. What's great about the SLC is Mark gives some actual data and a framework for how to think about who/when to hire sales people. http://altgate.com/blog/2007/07/sales-learning-curve.html http://altgate.com/blog/2007/07/sales-learning-curve.html I recommend it to every entrepreneur.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

melissamiranda 16y ago

Steve Blank is a writer and knows that wrapping his point in a story makes it more enticing to read. And I agree that this post has less to do with job titles, than hiring people who have the right kind of experience. Having worked in big companies, (Gap, Wells Fargo, Guess) I know that they all have their time tested processes and you walk in and there are step by step instructions on how to do your job (any job, all the way up). Even at IDEO there's a tried and true methodology, design thinking. You dont know what you will come up with, but you know each step to take. Startups change day to day, which makes them exciting. But hiring a seasoned big company employee is suicidal if they come in trying to execute a time tested routine. It's not about titles per se, but about hiring someone with the right mentality.

maukdaddy 16y ago

I know Steve is a respected VC, but 4 mentions of "pivot" in a single entry? Come on!

mcyger 16y ago

I'll give anyone working with me any title they want, including CEO, just as long as they do everything within their power -- and stretch out of their zone -- to accomplish work and move the company forward.

danielnicollet 16y ago

Good post thanks. Besides optimists and pragmatists, boards also need skeptics to remind everyone of where the company really is before it gets ahead of itself. The main underlying cause of the problem here is always (in my opinion) the fact that boards and founders tend to build companies only by looking forward at what they hope the company will be in X quarters. In this example: I suspect they are really excited at having the big shot VP of Sales because usually, where there is one, there is revenue. But they don't seem to face the truth of where they really are at this stage: a company still struggling to find its model.

nlavezzo 16y ago

Excellent article. This was something we learned at our last company, especially early on. Sales people that had previously excelled at large tech companies with a full suite of presentation, training, marketing, and support materials, with a mature and relatively stable product, did not do well in a fast moving environment that required more thought and digging into detail. In the end, our consulting organization (which was much more familiar with our product and customer requirements) ended up being our best pool of sales talent. I'd suggest considering technical consulting types who are working on actual implementations for sales roles.

ojbyrne 16y ago

The thing about titles, is that sometimes even though they don't reflect what you really do on a day to day basis, they do help with career management - i.e. finding the next job if the current one goes bust. So sometimes its ok to give someone a high-falutin' title as long as they understand up front that they have to earn it.

gaius 16y ago
And the thing about salesmen is that in the interview they're selling themselves. Of course he said what Rajiv wanted to hear! That's what he does for a living!
- forensic 16y ago
  This is why you can't tell an interviewee what you want in an employee. You need to hold your cards close to your chest and get THEM to tell you what they deliver. If it doesn't fit then you need to consider finding someone else. The worst thing you can do is bring in someone for an interview, tell them what you want to hear, and then allow them to echo back to you what you want to hear. Which is what most humans will do.
  - amirmc 16y ago
    > "This is why you can't tell an interviewee what you want in an employee" I disagree. If a company cannot clearly state what is expected of an employee then how can it expect to attract/retain great people? The interviewee should also be assessing their potential employer so being reluctant to share relevant information probably wouldn't come across well (at least not to me). Interviewing is a skill and a good interviewer needs to be able to inform applicants about the job requirements while also probing to ensure that the candidate actually does possess the necessary skills. It is not easy. Aside: There's an Ask HN thread on job descriptions which you might find interesting. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1685258 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1685258
    - gaius 16y ago

T_S_ 16y ago

All the great salespeople I have known were nervous control freaks hiding inside a breezy exterior. The great ones are like painters who would never let you touch their canvas. Of course they will freak if you keep changing the product. Stability is a primal urge (for customers, not HN readers) and sales people know that. The solution: Hire crappy salesmen who will call anyone you want? Not exactly. Find the smartest customers you can and practically pay them to work with you. After all in the scenario outlined, you don't even have a product they want. The salesperson needs to "get" that they are selling the team not the product.

whalesalad 16y ago

I think any titles period will hurt your startup. Who has the biggest dick? Who fucking cares? I can't stand titles... whoop-dee-doo you're an art director.