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Ask HN: Sales guy cofounder is tanking the company
Hi folks, posting from a throw-away account.
I'm PM and operations at an agency. Other partners include sales guy (majority owner), designer, devops/architect, and front end dev.
The production team is excellent at processing work. Our operations are really slick and I have been working with our devops guy for years across different companies and we work really well together. Rest of team is newer but we have fully gelled over the last 6 months and have a strong culture.
We are insolvent. We are all owed significant backpay from what is a way-below-market wage to begin with (which we all agreed to originally during initial bootstrapping mode).
We have brought in a "Chief Restructuring Officer" who is a major badass who has done turnarounds for some huge companies in the last 30 years.
Reason for running out of cash is sales dude has deal fever. At least that's what our CRO calls it. The behaviour is turning every potential opportunity into an equal/competing priority and making everything into a JV or crazy science project (minus actual science).
No budget qualification up front, just showing off blue-sky buzzword improv abilities. Going after paltry licensing deals on the side and such. Not focusing on our core capacities at all.
I have developed estimate templates for each of our offerings that clients have actually paid us money for in the past (with a sustainable margin). I've designed lead gen criteria for each offering to give sales a clear and prioritized list of potential deals.
Despite intervention, sales guy seems incapable of reform or following a plan. The reality distortion field is too strong with this one and it's literally killing the company.
Naturally I turn to the HN community for opinions.
How do you turn a charismatic but unfocused person into someone who can do the One-Thing-That-Matters right now?
What to look for in a sales person for a typical Rails shop anyway? Where to look?
- hobs 13y agoHow do you turn a charismatic but unfocused person into someone who can do the One-Thing-That-Matters right now? If you haven't been able to do it yet, then you probably cant. Your entire post is asking for people to tell you: fire that person.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Your entire post is asking for people to tell you: fire that person. Well, the post says the sales guy is the problem, and that the sales guy is the majority owner, so he's probably not fireable, per se.
- thrwawyplz 13y agoThis actually IS an option since the CRO is the acting CEO and can pull it off with my help. It might result in one cranky shareholder with no actual job, but it could still work. Key would be finding a replacement sales guy to take the crappy base salary that would be freed up. We can afford really good commissions though.
- 001sky 13y agowho hired the "cro"? presumably you know this.
- thrwawyplz 13y agoSales guy CEO did.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> How do you turn a charismatic but unfocused person into someone who can do the One-Thing-That-Matters right now? Mostly, you don't. Changing people is hard. An ultimatum might work -- you aren't getting paid, if things don't change whatever equity you have is worthless, so if you and other principals similarly situated can sit him down and let him know that you are willing to work with him on a concrete plan to focus on turn things around, but if he doesn't exhibit discipline now you are all ready to walk away and accept that the venture has failed utterly, that might be enough to break the reality distortion field. And, if not, well, it really does sound like its time to stop sinking your time and energy into a black hole from which nothing valuable can escape.
- thrwawyplz 13y agoThanks for the thoughtful reply. Ultimatum is the next step as the death clock says 30 days and the target to make it to May is absurdly low as far as targets go.
- Mz 13y agoOther partners include sales guy (majority owner) Is this the same guy as Mr. Reality Distortion Field? If it is, it looks pretty dead to me.
- thrwawyplz 13y agoYes, same guy.
- jesusmichael 13y agoWhy are you telling HN this and not handling it yourself? I love to hear about how the Ops and Eng guys can run the company better but can't seem to find a date. A good sales guy is worth 100 ops/eng. I'm not even a sales guy... My advice: grow an pair. You're either in or you're out. If you're in, be in. Support your guy and knock out the work your team needs. If you're out, have a heart to heart talk with the CEO and walk. Sitting on the fence only makes your ass bleed...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]