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Two remarks: * This feels way too hierarchical for the size -- there's significant distance from many employees and the CEO even at small sizes. * Could not d
by jxf 5y ago
Two remarks:
* This feels way too hierarchical for the size -- there's significant distance from many employees and the CEO even at small sizes.
* Could not disagree more with putting HR and Ops under the CFO (even in a 50-person company). That's a surefire way to have a neglected HR/people function.
- burlesona 5y agoAt 50 people everyone is still within 1 skip-level of the CEO. That doesn’t seem overly hierarchical to me. What does seem a little surprising is how many “chiefs” the CEO has reporting to them. In my experience with companies around 50 people, things actually tend to not be sliced into so many pieces, but rather there are a few larger slices that are functionally heterogeneous.
- ryanSrich 5y agoI think the three machines approach works best for companies 0-100 people (depending on the company, for SaaS it makes sense). Basically have someone own: 1. The product - CTO 2. The customer - (Could be a director or VP of marketing/sales/rev) 3. The company - CEO Anything beyond those three execs at or around an A round is nuts to me. I think a lot of people underestimate just how much you can outsource at that size. There almost no reason to have a COO when you’re less than 100 people. Same with a CFO. Either of those hires don’t become strategic until you’re doing $10+m in rev. Until then, use other SaaS services for payroll, book keeping, tax savings (MainStreet), etc. These take little effort use and can be setup by one of the founders in less than a day.
- paulddraper 5y agoYou're proposing a 100 person SaaS company without any sales or marketing exec? This is HN I suppose, so not entirely surprising.
- ryanSrich 5y agoIt’s literally the second bullet point in my comment. Did you miss it?
- paulddraper 5y agoOh I misread that as Customer Success, but you meant Sales and Marketing. I still think you're going to be light with 100 people and no dedicated VP of Product or VP of Customer Success. But not absurdly so
- ryanSrich 5y agoAh, yeah when I say someone should own the customer, I mean you should have an exec dedicated to finding, closing, and keeping customers. One slight contention here is who owns the keeping part. I’ve seen that under both sales and product, and don’t have strong convictions either way. I think it mostly depends on the type of product you’re selling.
- mberning 5y agoAbsolutely agree. It feels like the have a C level just to have it. Not only is that not going to be cost effective (C level titles expect C level comp) but it is setting you up for a lot of left hand/right hand issues even at a small size where that definitely should not be happening. Having worked in large orgs with 10+ levels it is a nightmare in the making.
- Dwolb 5y agoKeep in mind there’s a CRO in the Series C plan and that person is effectively a COO less back office. There’s two issues then - where do you put HR/People Ops and then effectively CFO needs direct communication with HR to properly resource the org.
- jxf 5y agoI mean, _every_ C-level leader needs direct communication with HR to properly staff their organization. That's why it's a top-level function, not a subcategory of something else.