Startup Mantra: Hire Fast, Fire Fast | Both Sides of the Table

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This post originally appeared on TechCrunch.  I have often said that what separates real entrepreneurs from pundits and bystanders is a bias towards getting things done versus over analyzing things. My credo has always been JFDI.

It’s the hardest thing to teach people who come out of big companies, out of conservative jobs. At the big consulting firms, investment banks and established large technology companies we’re taught to produce long reports, make sure that every document is perfect quality and that every possible bit of diligence has been done. Good enough isn’t.

And so things operate on a CYA basis.

That doesn’t work in a startup.

There’s a certain cadence that you can feel when you spend time hanging any well-run startup company. The management team has to have a bias toward making decisions. They know that a 70% accurate decision made quickly and based on sound principles is better than a 90% decision made after careful consideration.

The startup entrepreneur knows that they’re going to be wrong often. They’re flexible and willing to admit when they’re wrong. They don’t create a culture of punishment for mistakes. They live be the credo that if you’re never making mistakes you’re not trying hard enough.

In my mind the sign of a great entrepreneur is the one that spots the 30% scenario quickly and adjusts but doesn’t get gun shy about rapid decision-making in the future.

In fact, analysis paralysis drives me fucking bonkers. It is not uncommon in a meeting for me to say, “There are three choices: A, B, C. My gut tells me that we ought to do B. But let’s decide as a group. I don’t care if my view isn’t selected. Let’s make a decision and move on.”

Many people find this uncomfortable. The world is filled with people who don’t like having to put their neck on the line and say what they think. I don’t really care if I’m wrong as long as I’m not dogmatic if evidence later shows we need to change course.

So that was a long walk into the topic of recruiting. But given that I believe the success of startups is almost entirely correlated with having extra-ordinary talent, the ability to source, select and inspire new staff to join is one of the greatest early tests of entrepreneurs.

There is an old management adage that says, “Hire slowly, fire fast.” The idea has become conventional wisdom. It says that you need to take due care in selecting team members. It also says that you need to act quickly when your instinct says somebody isn’t working out.

Only half of this adage is accurate for startups.

Hire Slowly?
This is the bit I have a problem with. I don’t think that recruiting is any different than any other decision process in a company. You’re never really going to know how somebody is going to perform in the role, how good of a cultural fit he or she is going to be and how motivated they’re going to become until they’re on the inside.

I’m not arguing that no screening is required. There are obvious questions you have give staff to get a gut feel on cultural fit, intelligence, aptitude and the like.

But here’s the thing. I see many teams that feel the need to interview another 3 candidates just to be sure. They suffer the decision on the way in. They over think the decision framework.

I come from the “Blink” school of recruiting and decision-making. If you haven’t read it, you should. As humans most of us are inherently good at reading people and our innate instincts for “fit” are much better than our ability to analyze humans on a spreadsheet.

I also subscribe to the views that you should always be recruiting (ABR) and when great people pop up you hire them and then find a way to make the role fit. I’d much rather have the super bright, super ambitious, great cultural fit in my business now than look for the “perfect” person who’s done this job before and maybe find them in 3 months. 3 months is a lifetime in a startup.

If you haven’t read it I’ve written before on these topics:
1. Attitude over Aptitude
2. Only Hire A+ People
3. Hiring at a Startup

And just as my gut feel about the likely success of startups is often determined by looking at their velocity of product development and market progress of their product, so too is recruiting a factor in my assessment.

Great leaders and great teams have the ability to find potential staff, evaluate their fit, inspire them to join and onboard them. They have good recruiting velocity.

Any team that I work with that struggles to hire people quickly knows that I’m likely frustrated because I have many other companies that I work with that aren’t so slow.

And when we didn’t ship product on time, didn’t get the biz dev deals we wanted competed, didn’t get our market messages out and the founder says, “sorry, I had too many other priorities – like fund raising” they know it will fall on deaf ears with me. Time spent onboarding new talented team members always yields more productivity than doing everything yourself.

“But we don’t have budget!”

Great entrepreneurs find a way. Recruiting cadence matters.

Fire Fast?
I’ve written in the past about changing jobs too frequently and I received a lot of blow-back from technical people who said, “I had asshole CEOs. When we hit a bump in the road he was very quick to slash-and-burn.”

I was trying to argue that it’s OK to change jobs a few times when you’re young and that “things happen” but that if things happened 5-6 times there is probably a pattern that isn’t completely the fault of some asshole boss.

But people don’t like to hear about firing or job cuts, so I was flamed.

So I have been reluctant to weigh in again on the topic publicly. Brad Feld and I were discussing the topic at lunch at the most excellent Glue Conference this week in Boulder.

He encouraged me to write this post and after smoking me out on Twitter I had no choice. ;-) Outed.

So here goes.

I have never regretted firing anybody. Not once.

I have on many occasions regretted not firing somebody quickly enough.

I don’t take any pride in letting somebody go. I recognize that it affects somebody economically, can affect somebody’s personal life and is one big blow to the ego. But if you’re afraid of firing people you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. No startup company has any spare capacity for dead weight.

I’ve made every excuse to myself in the past, “I can’t fire him now, he owns the customer relationships and it’s a crucial point in our sales process.” Or, “I haven’t given him a long-enough chance to prove himself – let me see how he develops” or even, “it will have a big impact on morale because she is well liked. I can’t afford that right now.”

I’ve heard VCs use similar rationale, “We knew the CEO wasn’t working out but we couldn’t fire him because it would have made it too hard to get a fund raising round done” only to later regret not moving more quickly and reacting to the obvious discontent of the rest of the startup team.

I’ve lived through every excuse. And for every firing procrastination I’ve made, one month afterwards I’ve always felt the exact same way, “Why didn’t I do this three months early?”

Trust me: if you know, you know. If you know, do it now. Things don’t get better. Your “Blink” instincts are right. You won’t patch things up. Delaying the inevitable is not going to make things smoother with your investors, biz dev partners, customers or employees.

There is only one answer: fire fast.

Firing somebody is no different than the other 10,000 decisions you need to make in your company to survive. You free up much needed budget. You free up the org chart to bring in new blood. Almost universally your staff will come out of the wood-works and say, “thank you, he needed to go.”

When people aren’t pulling their weight other members who are know it. And they’re grateful to work in an organization where they’re valued and slackers aren’t.

When you have to fire somebody, don’t pussyfoot about. Don’t make up fake excuses about why they’re going or try to pretend it’s a redundancy or something. Tell them specifically what isn’t working. Don’t be mean for the sake of it. Give them suggestions of how they might think about the situation differently at the next company. Give them honest and constructive feedback.

If the sacking is legitimate, chances are they knew in their gut it wasn’t working and will appreciate the candor.

Obviously make sure that you’re following a legal process. In the US and UK if the termination comes reasonably quickly you’re almost always OK but please double-check with your legal advisors.

To be clear – I’m not advocating creating a slash-and-burn employee culture where there is a constant revolving door. I do believe that you set the tone in your company that you as a founder work your arse off and expect it of others. You make sure people know it’s a meritocracy and the best staff will rise to the top. Age and experience are irrelevant. Good people get ahead, bad people get asked to leave.

So there you have it. Most companies hire slowly and fire slowly – the exact opposite of best practice for startups.

Pick up your recruiting cadence. Take a risk on people who you think will be a good fit. Don’t look for perfect resumes. Take some chances. Trust your gut feel. And when you got it wrong you move on. You’ll recover.

Move fast. Don’t delay the inevitable. Check your legal framework. Get your papers in order. Treat people with respect and professionalism. Be open and productive. But honest with them about their shortcomings or why they aren’t working culturally. But fire them quickly.

Flame away.

Image courtesy of Joeff via Flickr.

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Symphony Advanced Media Launches With Accelerated Advertising Performance Measurement | Business Wire

April 11, 2011 06:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time 

Symphony Advanced Media Launches With Accelerated Advertising Performance Measurement

Company’s cross-media measurement solutions bridge gaps in traditional ad performance measurement to deliver faster, more accurate consumer insights

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Symphony Advanced Media, part of the Symphony Technology Group (STG), has announced their recent company launch. Symphony Advanced Media (SymphonyAM) provides cross-media advertising performance analytics and consumer insights to empower brand advertisers to make more efficient media allocation and segmentation decisions and track the performance of their live campaigns for a higher return on investment (ROI) on their media spend.

“SymphonyAM enables advertisers to get the full value out of their media investments with the right set of fast, actionable, granular insights.”

“As new media platforms emerge, brand leaders must navigate an increasingly complex array of options to engage and influence consumers. It’s more imperative than ever for marketers to fully understand how their media investments—strategically and down to the campaign level—are impacting their brand value and bottom line,” said SymphonyAM CEO Manish Bhatia. “SymphonyAM enables advertisers to get the full value out of their media investments with the right set of fast, actionable, granular insights.”

SymphonyAM recently expanded with the acquisition of San Francisco-based Factor Technology Group, a leading provider of advertising effectiveness measurement. Founded in 1999, FactorTG has executed more than 5,000,000 brand effectiveness surveys for global clients across the media, agency, automotive, CPG, financial services and pharmaceutical categories.

"Over the last two years, we have developed a great partnership with FactorTG to help our clients measure and optimize their advertising effectiveness,” noted Paul A. Pereira, vice president of analytics & search engine marketing at Hill Holiday. “We look forward to expanding this relationship and leveraging SymphonyAM’s access to even more consumer insights data."

“SymphonyAM provides us with critical insights to help us understand the delivery and accountability of our direct-to-consumer media mix,“ said Pamela Stewart, director of consumer market research at Shire Pharmaceuticals. “We are pleased that FactorTG is now part of the larger Symphony Advanced Media organization and we are looking forward to a strengthened partnership.”

SymphonyAM’s advertising effectiveness measurement solutions utilize a unique methodological approach to combine qualitative consumer data with robust quantitative data. The result provides relevant and comprehensive insights about cross-media campaign performance—even on very short, live campaigns. This methodology enables SymphonyAM to address key shortcomings commonly found in traditional advertising measurement approaches, such as slow reporting and the inability to measure low-weight media.

SymphonyAM’s leadership team is comprised of seasoned executives from television, Internet, mobile, social media and consumer research organizations. SymphonyAM is headquartered in Palo Alto and San Francisco, CA, with offices in Princeton, New Jersey and New York City.

About Symphony Advanced Media

Symphony Advanced Media helps clients optimize their integrated channel strategies and media options to rapidly improve campaign performance, increase efficiency and drive more consumer response.

SymphonyAM’s analytics solutions combine behavioral data and survey-based solutions to provide actionable strategic insights on advertising performance across all media, including online, TV and mobile. Clients include leading global brand advertisers in the media, automotive, financial services, pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods and telecom industries. Learn more about SymphonyAM at www.symphonyam.com.

SymphonyAM is part of part of Symphony Technology Group (STG), the global leader in marketing intelligence whose portfolio of companies include Symphony IRI, Teleca, and EYC.

Ahem, worth keeping an eye on.

Discover The Patterns Of Successful Internet Startups In The Startup Genome Report - Startup Genome

Required reading...


Sent from my Windows Phone


From: Richard Edwards
Sent: 28 May 2011 21:59
To: richard@media-science-digital.co.uk
Subject: Discover The Patterns Of Successful Internet Startups In The Startup Genome Report - Startup Genome