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> Surely many others were brilliant contributors to Stripe's becoming a $95B unicorn, and staying one, beyond just the Collison Brothers. From my experience wo

by polote 4y ago

> Surely many others were brilliant contributors to Stripe's becoming a $95B unicorn, and staying one, beyond just the Collison Brothers. From my experience working at several saas unicorns, in each companies there was 2-3 max people who where responsible for the success of the company. It is not that all others were useless but they all could have been replaced easily without having any impact in the success of the company. I know this is difficult to hear as an employee but this is the truth. 99% of us are replaceable. In my opinion and experience, working with skilled and nice people VS working with stupid and coward people for example has only an impact on the happiness of the employees but has no link with company performance. (company culture has no impact on company performance)

kareemsabri 4y ago
It's not difficult to hear, it's just not true. I don't know what sort of companies you've worked at where employees are completely fungible, but I've had the opposite experience, working with many talented and hard working people who make major contributions that help deliver hundreds of millions in revenue. Perhaps you joined them when they were already unicorns and the playbook / moat was already developed, but at startups there's nothing BUT the people. You think the Collisons are writing all the code and conceptualizing all the new products and figuring out how to take them to market, or creating and maintaining a high performing engineering culture, or [50,000 other things that need to happen to reach $95B]? If that were true, it would be weird that companies work so hard to acquire, retain, and develop talent.
- polote 4y ago
  You can be very talented and do a ton of work without having a bigger business impact than another person doing 50% less than you. At the end whether you have a design system, if you have infinite scalability, if you use node or Ruby, having that feature or that other feature it doesn't matter. The only thing that matter is the revenue the company make. If what matters was the people then ngo would be unicorns
  - Cederfjard 4y ago
    Do those things have no impact on revenue (or costs)?
  - Sebguer 4y ago
    I'm curious where you've worked to be so confident in this opinion.
    - polote 4y ago
      At 4 saas b2b unicorns mostly between 5m and 50m arr. + interviews with people working in hr and culture at other ones. And to give you more concrete data, the significant employees where : 1. The ceo founder (work hard play hard culture) b2b enterprise martech 2. The ceo founder + cto founder (chill + excellence culture) b2b enterprise productivity software 3. The ceo founder + vp of sales (micro management culture) b2b enterprise martech 4. The ceo founder ( chill + low expectation culture) b2b smb martech
      - texasbigdata 4y ago
        200x ARR? Not taking away from your examples but those are 2020 valuation unicorns.
- pbreit 4y ago
  I think polote is mostly right. "You think the Collisons are... creating and maintaining a high performing engineering culture" Yes.
- MathCodeLove 4y ago
  Delivering major value !== Irreplaceable
  - kareemsabri 4y ago
    The OP claimed only 2-3 people in each company are "responsible" for the success of said company. You do not need to be the only person in the world who can do a job to have some, or even major, responsibility for the success of an organization.
    - MathCodeLove 4y ago
      I think you may be misinterpreting what OP meant (or perhaps I am, that's a real possibility). I read that as "There are only 2-3 specific people whose skills and contributions were so essential to the orgs success that the org would have failed without them specifically." Where you might have a front end developer who is technically "responsible" for facilitating millions of online transaction, there are likely thousands of other devs who could have done the same work. Among the 2-3 OP was referencing, there are very few who could have done what they did.
      - kareemsabri 4y ago
        The case I was making is, it takes many people to turn a startup into a unicorn, and many of them are integral and make massively important contributions that, without them, would not have occurred. The degree to which those people are replaceable is difficult to say precisely, as it varies per person and per company, but I don't think being irreplaceable is the bar for being considered responsible. If a fireman pulls a kid out of a burning building, we don't care that many other fireman could have also done the same thing. The individual who did the critical work is responsible. I have been at unicorn companies with C-suite executives that are clearly useless, or worse, net detractors playing political games that the people under them have to work around to get shit done. I have been at companies where one engineer is single-handedly keeping parts of the lights on, or conceptualizing and architecting critical systems, having an outsized impact well beyond their title and compensation. There seems to be a false idea here that the way companies run is "top down" - ie. the Collison brothers set out all the goals and strategies and products, and then the employees just execute their vision like pawns. Maybe there are companies like that, but I've never seen one, particularly a fast growing one. I guess I just disagree that the number of people who would be deemed "responsible" for Stripe's success is 2-3. That seems, frankly, unbelievable to me having worked in companies with hundreds or thousands of employees and seeing how many different people it takes to build something massive, innovative, with multiple product or business lines. Not just taking marching orders but exercising their creativity, judgement, expertise, leadership skills etc.

by polote 4y ago

kareemsabri 4y ago

It's not difficult to hear, it's just not true. I don't know what sort of companies you've worked at where employees are completely fungible, but I've had the opposite experience, working with many talented and hard working people who make major contributions that help deliver hundreds of millions in revenue. Perhaps you joined them when they were already unicorns and the playbook / moat was already developed, but at startups there's nothing BUT the people. You think the Collisons are writing all the code and conceptualizing all the new products and figuring out how to take them to market, or creating and maintaining a high performing engineering culture, or [50,000 other things that need to happen to reach $95B]? If that were true, it would be weird that companies work so hard to acquire, retain, and develop talent.

polote 4y ago
You can be very talented and do a ton of work without having a bigger business impact than another person doing 50% less than you. At the end whether you have a design system, if you have infinite scalability, if you use node or Ruby, having that feature or that other feature it doesn't matter. The only thing that matter is the revenue the company make. If what matters was the people then ngo would be unicorns
- Cederfjard 4y ago
  Do those things have no impact on revenue (or costs)?
- Sebguer 4y ago
  I'm curious where you've worked to be so confident in this opinion.
  - polote 4y ago
    At 4 saas b2b unicorns mostly between 5m and 50m arr. + interviews with people working in hr and culture at other ones. And to give you more concrete data, the significant employees where : 1. The ceo founder (work hard play hard culture) b2b enterprise martech 2. The ceo founder + cto founder (chill + excellence culture) b2b enterprise productivity software 3. The ceo founder + vp of sales (micro management culture) b2b enterprise martech 4. The ceo founder ( chill + low expectation culture) b2b smb martech
    - texasbigdata 4y ago
      200x ARR? Not taking away from your examples but those are 2020 valuation unicorns.
pbreit 4y ago
I think polote is mostly right. "You think the Collisons are... creating and maintaining a high performing engineering culture" Yes.
MathCodeLove 4y ago
Delivering major value !== Irreplaceable
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  The OP claimed only 2-3 people in each company are "responsible" for the success of said company. You do not need to be the only person in the world who can do a job to have some, or even major, responsibility for the success of an organization.
  - MathCodeLove 4y ago
    I think you may be misinterpreting what OP meant (or perhaps I am, that's a real possibility). I read that as "There are only 2-3 specific people whose skills and contributions were so essential to the orgs success that the org would have failed without them specifically." Where you might have a front end developer who is technically "responsible" for facilitating millions of online transaction, there are likely thousands of other devs who could have done the same work. Among the 2-3 OP was referencing, there are very few who could have done what they did.
    - kareemsabri 4y ago
      The case I was making is, it takes many people to turn a startup into a unicorn, and many of them are integral and make massively important contributions that, without them, would not have occurred. The degree to which those people are replaceable is difficult to say precisely, as it varies per person and per company, but I don't think being irreplaceable is the bar for being considered responsible. If a fireman pulls a kid out of a burning building, we don't care that many other fireman could have also done the same thing. The individual who did the critical work is responsible. I have been at unicorn companies with C-suite executives that are clearly useless, or worse, net detractors playing political games that the people under them have to work around to get shit done. I have been at companies where one engineer is single-handedly keeping parts of the lights on, or conceptualizing and architecting critical systems, having an outsized impact well beyond their title and compensation. There seems to be a false idea here that the way companies run is "top down" - ie. the Collison brothers set out all the goals and strategies and products, and then the employees just execute their vision like pawns. Maybe there are companies like that, but I've never seen one, particularly a fast growing one. I guess I just disagree that the number of people who would be deemed "responsible" for Stripe's success is 2-3. That seems, frankly, unbelievable to me having worked in companies with hundreds or thousands of employees and seeing how many different people it takes to build something massive, innovative, with multiple product or business lines. Not just taking marching orders but exercising their creativity, judgement, expertise, leadership skills etc.