5 ms·

<If you're thinking about joining a startup, how do you tell if the founders are like Larry and Sergey or if they're an Elizabeth Holmes? Right, that's the wors

by GCA10 8y ago

<If you're thinking about joining a startup, how do you tell if the founders are like Larry and Sergey or if they're an Elizabeth Holmes? Right, that's the worst combination: smart and full of st. I think you have to interview them a little bit. Ask hard questions and see if they give direct, insightful answers, or if they're evasive and dismissive.> Actually, letting charismatic founders deliver a triple-scoop of their enchanting story isn't the technique I'd recommend. Both the good ones and the bad ones got this far by being very persuasive. Do reference checks instead. Find people who worked with them for a while, and have moved on. When you're doing this with great founders, you'll hear a mix of pride and fatigue. (There's a steady refrain among folks who worked for Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. "Best years of my career, but totally wore me out.") For the charlatans, you'll hear: "It all sounded wonderful at first, but the longer I stayed, the clearer it became that the employees, investors and customers were all being played."

Balgair 8y ago
Great advice to do reference checks yourself. But HOW? Like, what are the brass tacks steps that you'd follow to do that, given the time and resource limits most new-ish people have?
jiveturkey 8y ago
i agree with you, interviewing the founders is not a proper way to go about it. paul is full of it. there is no way past 50 or maybe 100 employees that you are going to have or be able to request an interview with the founders. and if you did pull it off, your time allotment to ask questions of them would be 10 minutes. but, how would you do a reference check on larry, sergey, or holmes? none of whom held a job before they founded their respective companies. as will be the case with most startup founders. are you going to stalk their college friends?
- GCA10 8y ago
  So in the land of journalists, this is what we do every week. Something like this can be an effective strategy. Find a couple current employees or associates who come across as stable and thoughtful. Invite them out for coffee, dinner, a long walk, etc. You want to talk alone, outside the office. Spend a little time on social rapport, including taking an interest in them as fully-rounded people. Candor needs a foundation of trust and mutual respect. Then ask open-ended questions that make it easy for people be helpful without feeling that they are on the spot. Some examples are: - What attracted you to the company? - What's the work tempo like? - What's some advice for the best way of getting along with the founder/CEO? (This is a safe way for flaws to surface) - We all make mistakes occasionally. What mistakes are forgivable at this company? What's unforgivable? (Think how the Theranos answers would have differed from Google answers.) - What's surprised you since joining? - What delights the boss? What gets the boss angry? (Plenty of chances for signaling here, too.) - What kind of people stay here and thrive? What kind of people quit? - What would I need to do to be successful here? -
nostrademons 8y ago
He isn't suggesting letting them deliver a triple-scoop of their enchanting story, he's suggesting that you filter it through your own logic & experience and try to poke holes in it. Elon Musk was once asked in an interview "How do you judge whether a highly-technical expert really knows what they're talking about?" His reply was along the lines of "You ask them questions of progressively increasing levels of detail. Someone who's actually an expert will understand a subject on many levels; they'll be able to give you the ELI5 version, but then will have good answers every time you probe a level deeper." Larry & Sergey's elevator pitch was "We built the best search engine in the world", but if you asked them "What's it running on? How many machines? How many pages does it index? How do you handle duplicates? How many queries/day do you get? What are people looking for? How do you rank pages?" etc. you'd get good answers for all of them. Elizabeth Holmes's elevator pitch was "We're going to revolutionize blood testing with finger-stick tests", but then if you asked "Which tests do you run? How many molecules of __ are in a drop of blood? How much variance is there between people?" you would very quickly run into either evasions or outright lies. Once you start asking questions on top of a lie their story usually falls apart pretty quickly, because few people can remember everything they just made up 5 minutes ago and still make up some logically coherent detail on top of it. (This, BTW, is why improv theater is so hard, and why most improv shows are comedy, where it's just funny if you end up with a non-sequitor.) The same technique works well for reference checks, but you can't blindly trust whatever the reference tells you. Most people cherry-pick their references; it's easy for a charismatic charlatan to find some people who are still super-enchanted by them. Many people are also pretty unwilling to talk (particularly about litigation-happy scam artists like Holmes), for fear of defamation lawsuits.

by GCA10 8y ago

Balgair 8y ago

Great advice to do reference checks yourself. But HOW? Like, what are the brass tacks steps that you'd follow to do that, given the time and resource limits most new-ish people have?

jiveturkey 8y ago

i agree with you, interviewing the founders is not a proper way to go about it. paul is full of it. there is no way past 50 or maybe 100 employees that you are going to have or be able to request an interview with the founders. and if you did pull it off, your time allotment to ask questions of them would be 10 minutes. but, how would you do a reference check on larry, sergey, or holmes? none of whom held a job before they founded their respective companies. as will be the case with most startup founders. are you going to stalk their college friends?

GCA10 8y ago
So in the land of journalists, this is what we do every week. Something like this can be an effective strategy. Find a couple current employees or associates who come across as stable and thoughtful. Invite them out for coffee, dinner, a long walk, etc. You want to talk alone, outside the office. Spend a little time on social rapport, including taking an interest in them as fully-rounded people. Candor needs a foundation of trust and mutual respect. Then ask open-ended questions that make it easy for people be helpful without feeling that they are on the spot. Some examples are: - What attracted you to the company? - What's the work tempo like? - What's some advice for the best way of getting along with the founder/CEO? (This is a safe way for flaws to surface) - We all make mistakes occasionally. What mistakes are forgivable at this company? What's unforgivable? (Think how the Theranos answers would have differed from Google answers.) - What's surprised you since joining? - What delights the boss? What gets the boss angry? (Plenty of chances for signaling here, too.) - What kind of people stay here and thrive? What kind of people quit? - What would I need to do to be successful here? -

nostrademons 8y ago

He isn't suggesting letting them deliver a triple-scoop of their enchanting story, he's suggesting that you filter it through your own logic & experience and try to poke holes in it. Elon Musk was once asked in an interview "How do you judge whether a highly-technical expert really knows what they're talking about?" His reply was along the lines of "You ask them questions of progressively increasing levels of detail. Someone who's actually an expert will understand a subject on many levels; they'll be able to give you the ELI5 version, but then will have good answers every time you probe a level deeper." Larry & Sergey's elevator pitch was "We built the best search engine in the world", but if you asked them "What's it running on? How many machines? How many pages does it index? How do you handle duplicates? How many queries/day do you get? What are people looking for? How do you rank pages?" etc. you'd get good answers for all of them. Elizabeth Holmes's elevator pitch was "We're going to revolutionize blood testing with finger-stick tests", but then if you asked "Which tests do you run? How many molecules of __ are in a drop of blood? How much variance is there between people?" you would very quickly run into either evasions or outright lies. Once you start asking questions on top of a lie their story usually falls apart pretty quickly, because few people can remember everything they just made up 5 minutes ago and still make up some logically coherent detail on top of it. (This, BTW, is why improv theater is so hard, and why most improv shows are comedy, where it's just funny if you end up with a non-sequitor.) The same technique works well for reference checks, but you can't blindly trust whatever the reference tells you. Most people cherry-pick their references; it's easy for a charismatic charlatan to find some people who are still super-enchanted by them. Many people are also pretty unwilling to talk (particularly about litigation-happy scam artists like Holmes), for fear of defamation lawsuits.