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Crunchbase to get current and former founders/execs, last rounds etc. Company website for investor relations page if exists, SEC and regulatory filings to get f

Crunchbase to get current and former founders/execs, last rounds etc. Company website for investor relations page if exists, SEC and regulatory filings to get financials, technology roadmaps, prospectuses, etc. Then avoid pinging anyone on linkedin other than to find who the core informal network that runs the company is. Find out: 1. Revenue and runway before next funding round or profitability. This trumps all in product decisions. Long runway means they can invest in new platforms and techs with bet on huge growth. Short runway means getting prestige brands into the sales pipeline to woo next investment round, and leveraging technical debt to survive. Would argue tech debt burden can be estimated as a function of remaining runway. 2. Whether board members and executives still have skin in the game and holding their stock. If board is full of early shareholders who have already been made whole, chances are you aren't their next unicorn, there is no explosive growth, and they've checked out. Expect executive level bullshit politics related to their short term compensation milestones. 3. Informal network: Who went to school with/worked with whom, and whether this role will-be / needs-to-be in that fold, or out of it. If you are not in the fold, you are a dilution target, and someones tool for meeting executive compensation milestones before changing the world. Do the work and take the money, but keep your dreams in check. IMHO, these factors are what determine the company culture. If the company is private, check out the other companies in the lead VCs portfolio web pages and what kinds of cultures those companies have. People move between them and you can get a better data set for glassdoor searches. If the other companies suck, this one probably will too. What makes a company a great place to work is its real opportunity for growth because that means people are growing with it, and that brings them into work everyday. This creates a trajectory that defines its culture. Good luck.

theNJR 8y ago
Great advice here, thanks.
jotato 8y ago
>2. Whether board members and executives still have skin in the game and holding their stock. If board is full of early shareholders who have already been made whole, chances are you aren't their next unicorn, there is no explosive growth, and they've checked out. Expect executive level bullshit politics related to their short term compensation milestones. Can you elaborate on that?
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  ... especially how one might go about finding that information.
  - dalbasal 8y ago
    crunchbase, google/yahoo finance, annual reports if they have them, news search... If they're small and low key this may be hard to come by, but in most cases, who senior executives and board members are is public information.
- motohagiography 8y ago
  Scenario I refer to is a bit complex where board members from the first couple of rounds have majority votes about the company and can hire/fire the CEO and influence make up of the key executives. Later rounds at higher valuations let these members recoup most of the value of their investment, so their downside is now covered and they have all the votes. Nice spot to be in. To me, this board no longer represents the parties with the most to lose, and what was previously an investment partnership is now just a one-sided gamble. Where when it is founders making decisions, there is skin in the game. The effect I'm trying to articulate is the board not holding executives accountable for anything other than positioning the company for a sale, and that the incentives can be apparent from the board makeup. Conversely, if massive later stage investors were really interested in the long term prospects of the company, they'd have got board seats. Point being, as an employee, the day to day at a company that is being positioned to sell to a greater fool is very different from one positioning itself for explosive growth. The make up of the board, assuming it is fit for purpose, may be a tell for which strategy the company is pursuing, and hence, culture.
curiousfiddler 8y ago
Thanks, the points you make are very important. Specifically, on "... executive level bullshit politics related to their short term compensation milestones ...", I would like to add, this one is the hardest to figure out and has a significant impact on your growth not just within the company, but as a person in general. Any more suggestions, on good ways to find out if this is part of the company culture?
- motohagiography 8y ago
  Slightly uncomfortable responding to everything in the thread, however, inferring comp milestones is the hardest one. Public companies are easy because it's all public. Interesting documents are SEC 8-K's, which are unscheduled filings about material changes to the business. Ask yourself why a couple of times to get to the reasons behind it. Volatility means uncertainty, and uncertainty often implies a power struggle. Nowhere is perfect, but adjust your expectations about how much chill to expect. Read a lot of them to get a sense of what's normal. If the execs are stacking equity in a public company and only selling to pay taxes, that's a pretty good sign everyone is committed. It's also a sign that there isn't a lot of volatility, and with that stability, growth may be slow, so expect growth opportunities to be commensurate and feel out the trade off. Huge disclaimer that these are just tea leaves, but to reply to another comment here, you are investing 3-5+ years of your life and your reputation into a company, where a VC is just allocating maybe 1/30th of their fund. You have more to lose as an employee than that investor does. Just keep an eye for the longer term. Most of us are just happy to get a gig, work with cool people, get paid very well and dream about upside, but when you evaluate every 3-6 months working at a job as opportunity cost against validating an idea against possible market fit, you start looking hard at the trade offs. Based on crunchbase profiles, if a founder is present, but demoted or marginalized ("special projects"), find out if there is a technical lead who can't say yes, but who can say no to everything. Not a dealbreaker, but a culture variable. If the founders are out of the picture, ask about tech debt and whether company has enough new runway to stand up a new platform. If not, it means they're hoping to grow their way out, and ask if there's a roadmap for that play. If they don't have an answer, just expect competing priorities as it's going to be very sales driven, with customer/sales politics. If the CEO or other execs have been there for more than 3 years without profit or a new financing round, who is protecting them and why? (hint, board, running dumb money, possibly angling for sale, not explosive market dominance.) Window dressing to attract acquirer attention causes insanity on teams because managers have do things to appear positioned, and they are under pressure to "produce," metrics to keep the ball in the air. My experience was it causes rage quits and makes people enemies for life. The pattern of leadership angling for a sale, but must swear they are not makes everyone seem psychotic. I'm not an authority on this, I happen to write and this is what I've observed. People behind all this aren't evil, it's just some incentives can be used as tea leaves to get a sense of what questions to ask before you give up 6-10 six-month iterations and pivots on launching your own idea for some snacks and a foozball table. :)
kelvin0 8y ago
Is this advice for employees? Or VC's? I've NEVER had to do this for any of the jobs in my 20+ years as a software developer ... but there are some interesting points indeed.
- itake 8y ago
  What is the difference? Employees invest their time and careers into a company. For career growth, it is much better if your company is also growing. Grow or Die.
  - jamaicahest 8y ago
    The difference is that for a lot of people, a job is just a way to pay the bills and for them, it matters very little what a potential employer's future plans are, beyond knowing that they will still have a job in a year.
- spacehome 8y ago
  If you are accepting stock options for part of your compensation (and you actually care about what the value of those might be), it's important. Otherwise, no.
craz8 8y ago
I just looked at the Crunchbase entry for my current company It’s terrible Actually, it’s worse than terrible The revenue is several years old, the technology is wrong, the employees listed is laughable (except the founders) From the info I do know, I wouldn’t trust the info I don’t know on that site Since their data is so bad, I’m going to throw out some bad info too: if a company has less that 5,000 people, don’t look at Crunchbase
- qualsiasi 8y ago
  My company is listed twice (!)
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
All this due diligence for a job? Not sure it's the right approach. I would look for other signals, and in general for a good contract and comp package, among other things. What you are proposing is beyond the scope of a normal employee in most cases.

theNJR 8y ago

Great advice here, thanks.

jotato 8y ago

>2. Whether board members and executives still have skin in the game and holding their stock. If board is full of early shareholders who have already been made whole, chances are you aren't their next unicorn, there is no explosive growth, and they've checked out. Expect executive level bullshit politics related to their short term compensation milestones. Can you elaborate on that?

jjoonathan 8y ago
... especially how one might go about finding that information.
- dalbasal 8y ago
  crunchbase, google/yahoo finance, annual reports if they have them, news search... If they're small and low key this may be hard to come by, but in most cases, who senior executives and board members are is public information.
motohagiography 8y ago
Scenario I refer to is a bit complex where board members from the first couple of rounds have majority votes about the company and can hire/fire the CEO and influence make up of the key executives. Later rounds at higher valuations let these members recoup most of the value of their investment, so their downside is now covered and they have all the votes. Nice spot to be in. To me, this board no longer represents the parties with the most to lose, and what was previously an investment partnership is now just a one-sided gamble. Where when it is founders making decisions, there is skin in the game. The effect I'm trying to articulate is the board not holding executives accountable for anything other than positioning the company for a sale, and that the incentives can be apparent from the board makeup. Conversely, if massive later stage investors were really interested in the long term prospects of the company, they'd have got board seats. Point being, as an employee, the day to day at a company that is being positioned to sell to a greater fool is very different from one positioning itself for explosive growth. The make up of the board, assuming it is fit for purpose, may be a tell for which strategy the company is pursuing, and hence, culture.

curiousfiddler 8y ago

Thanks, the points you make are very important. Specifically, on "... executive level bullshit politics related to their short term compensation milestones ...", I would like to add, this one is the hardest to figure out and has a significant impact on your growth not just within the company, but as a person in general. Any more suggestions, on good ways to find out if this is part of the company culture?

motohagiography 8y ago
Slightly uncomfortable responding to everything in the thread, however, inferring comp milestones is the hardest one. Public companies are easy because it's all public. Interesting documents are SEC 8-K's, which are unscheduled filings about material changes to the business. Ask yourself why a couple of times to get to the reasons behind it. Volatility means uncertainty, and uncertainty often implies a power struggle. Nowhere is perfect, but adjust your expectations about how much chill to expect. Read a lot of them to get a sense of what's normal. If the execs are stacking equity in a public company and only selling to pay taxes, that's a pretty good sign everyone is committed. It's also a sign that there isn't a lot of volatility, and with that stability, growth may be slow, so expect growth opportunities to be commensurate and feel out the trade off. Huge disclaimer that these are just tea leaves, but to reply to another comment here, you are investing 3-5+ years of your life and your reputation into a company, where a VC is just allocating maybe 1/30th of their fund. You have more to lose as an employee than that investor does. Just keep an eye for the longer term. Most of us are just happy to get a gig, work with cool people, get paid very well and dream about upside, but when you evaluate every 3-6 months working at a job as opportunity cost against validating an idea against possible market fit, you start looking hard at the trade offs. Based on crunchbase profiles, if a founder is present, but demoted or marginalized ("special projects"), find out if there is a technical lead who can't say yes, but who can say no to everything. Not a dealbreaker, but a culture variable. If the founders are out of the picture, ask about tech debt and whether company has enough new runway to stand up a new platform. If not, it means they're hoping to grow their way out, and ask if there's a roadmap for that play. If they don't have an answer, just expect competing priorities as it's going to be very sales driven, with customer/sales politics. If the CEO or other execs have been there for more than 3 years without profit or a new financing round, who is protecting them and why? (hint, board, running dumb money, possibly angling for sale, not explosive market dominance.) Window dressing to attract acquirer attention causes insanity on teams because managers have do things to appear positioned, and they are under pressure to "produce," metrics to keep the ball in the air. My experience was it causes rage quits and makes people enemies for life. The pattern of leadership angling for a sale, but must swear they are not makes everyone seem psychotic. I'm not an authority on this, I happen to write and this is what I've observed. People behind all this aren't evil, it's just some incentives can be used as tea leaves to get a sense of what questions to ask before you give up 6-10 six-month iterations and pivots on launching your own idea for some snacks and a foozball table. :)

kelvin0 8y ago

Is this advice for employees? Or VC's? I've NEVER had to do this for any of the jobs in my 20+ years as a software developer ... but there are some interesting points indeed.

itake 8y ago
What is the difference? Employees invest their time and careers into a company. For career growth, it is much better if your company is also growing. Grow or Die.
- jamaicahest 8y ago
  The difference is that for a lot of people, a job is just a way to pay the bills and for them, it matters very little what a potential employer's future plans are, beyond knowing that they will still have a job in a year.
spacehome 8y ago
If you are accepting stock options for part of your compensation (and you actually care about what the value of those might be), it's important. Otherwise, no.

craz8 8y ago

I just looked at the Crunchbase entry for my current company It’s terrible Actually, it’s worse than terrible The revenue is several years old, the technology is wrong, the employees listed is laughable (except the founders) From the info I do know, I wouldn’t trust the info I don’t know on that site Since their data is so bad, I’m going to throw out some bad info too: if a company has less that 5,000 people, don’t look at Crunchbase

qualsiasi 8y ago
My company is listed twice (!)

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

All this due diligence for a job? Not sure it's the right approach. I would look for other signals, and in general for a good contract and comp package, among other things. What you are proposing is beyond the scope of a normal employee in most cases.