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Hypergrowth

The Hidden Cost of Hypergrowth: Scale Without Sacrificing Stability

Karat CTO Neil Kumar shares techniques for hitting hiring targets without sacrificing product deadlines In 2018, total venture capital (VC) funds invested totaled , surpassing invested during all of 2017. Compared to 2017, the median VC deal size experienced double-digit percentage growth across all investment stages — the highest jump since 2015. $131 billion $84 billion The primary investment targets of these funds are software-driven companies whose products and solutions are expected to change the way we do everything, from how we commute to the way we’re treated for cancer. These funds are often invested in companies that show huge potential in the short term, pushing them into hyper-growth mode. If these hyper-growth phase companies funnel their capital into the right teams and develop the right products, they will propel significant revenue growth in the very near future. For many companies, this means hiring software engineers to do that product development. But two challenges quickly rear their heads: 1. Software engineering talent isn’t as plentiful as capital. 2. There isn’t enough current engineering capacity internally to conduct the interviews needed to hire new engineers and hit product goals. At Karat, we see that the average company in a high growth or hyper-growth phase will increase the size of its software engineering team by 117% in 2019. Many have teams that are 100% dedicated to software development to begin with, with no available time for interviewing. As a result, engineering leaders are fielding questions about the ability (or inability) to hire as well as reach product deadlines. Who among us hasn’t heard these questions like these, only moments apart: “Your team needs to hire 20 new engineers this quarter, but you’ve only extended 5 offers so far. What’s going on?” Followed by: “Why is the deadline for X feature being pushed? Customers are begging for this.” The answer may be tough to swallow. The fact is that you can rarely achieve both when you only have a portion of the existing team size you need to achieve product and corresponding revenue goals. Due to this Catch-22, companies often miss hiring goals by as much as 40%. This leads to a significant amount of anxiety among tech hiring managers and recruiters. feel that the tech talent shortage has hurt their business through lost revenue, slower product development, market expansion and/or increased employee tension and burnout. 83% I’ve been responsible for growing software engineering teams in a variety of circumstances as talent and capital markets have fluctuated. I helped grow the software engineering team at Yelp from 12 to over 200 software engineers. I conducted thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of first-round interviews and onsites in the process. It wasn’t easy then and it’s not easy today. Yet, there are techniques you can use to get through it and optimize the hiring process while climbing a steep growth curve. Here are a few approaches I’ve taken in the past and continue to find helpful today. 1. Streamline the hiring funnel and reduce the number of onsites per hire. When I was the VP of Engineering at Yelp, I created a recruiting team within my software engineering team. This was necessary because the skills we were looking for were incredibly specialized. We found that building strong relationships between these two teams helped them make informed decisions on the cultural add and technical skills candidates would bring to the table. Recruiters and hiring managers should be able to speak about these topics early in the interview process. If they wait until the onsite interview to figure this out, they’re wasting time. However, if you’re trying to increase the size of your team by 50% or even 150%, you’ll probably need to look at other options to gain efficiencies throughout the hiring funnel. These options may include decreasing the number of onsite interviews you need through more and more rigorous first-round technical interview. 2. Pair a structured and consistent interview with a flexible candidate experience. Investing in candidate experience will leave a big (and positive) impression on candidates. Consider that say a negative interview experience can change their mind about a role or company they once liked, while 87% say a positive interview experience can change their mind about a role or company they once doubted. 83% of talent Dedication to establishing interview success criteria early in the recruiting process and quickly responding to candidates give you a speed advantage that other companies might not have. Also, recruiters who build relationships with candidates can more easily keep track of those who took offers at other companies, helping you better understand your hiring bar. Technical interviews should be structured and consistent across your organization so that candidates can be evaluated on their merit and skills. Structure and consistency make repeatability possible. If multiple engineers are aware of this process and the criteria for success, then they should be able to assess each skill with equal reliability in the onsite loop. As a result, interviews won’t get delayed by scheduling. Interviewing 24/7, giving candidates the option to redo the interview and the ability to schedule their interview directly with the interviewer will make your company stand out — no matter how sexy or unsexy you may feel your product is. Speed and flexibility are both critical to the candidate experience. At Karat, we see that when given the opportunity, 60% of candidates interview outside of business hours and 14% will redo their interview. 3. Unlock software engineering time and put it into product development. Software engineers are motivated by solving problems. Interviewing can be a major distraction from that primary motivation. I’ve heard software engineers say that when interviewing, they only get about one and a half to two productive coding hours in a day. That’s a shame. You can take steps to mitigate the amount of time software engineers spend interviewing and reward those that do. To help maximize productive coding time, consider accommodating schedules. This approach to scheduling recognizes that creative employees, like engineers, are most productive when they aren’t interrupted by meetings and interviews. Instead, it may be better to book them for blocks of time, rather than 30-minute interviews sporadically placed throughout the day. Schedule interviews in blocks of time: maker Your team will ultimately decrease the number of onsite interviews software engineers need to participate in. Then, the creativity and time of a happy and focused team can be unlocked and reinvested into product development. Test your technical interviews to verify they can accurately identify candidates that meet your hiring bar: It can be very demotivating for software engineers to spend time interviewing and feel that it’s a tax on job performance, rather than a benefit to themselves and the team. Consider recognizing and evaluating interviewing skills on performance reviews. This way, you can reward it as well as look for opportunities to team members to improve. Recognize interviewing as a skill in performance reviews: Tech companies claimed the top five spots in the U.S. for R&D spending in 2017, investing a combined total of . In order to keep up with the largest tech companies, it’s imperative to be strategic with how you motivate your software engineers and allocate their time. $76 billion Getting out of the hyper-growth catch 22 It’s true that there isn’t enough software engineering talent to meet demand. The tech talent shortage is real and the competition is not going to relent. However, you can find competitive advantages by: Working in lockstep with recruiting to streamline the process Testing your first-round technical interviews to ensure they identify talent that meets your bar Ensuring your interviews are structured, consistent, but are part of a flexible and fast process Reducing the amount of time software engineers spend interviewing altogether As you look forward to your growth plans in 2019, you may feel like achieving your hiring targets while reaching product development deadlines isn’t possible. To be frank, if nothing changes in the existing process, that might be the case. To achieve your hiring targets and product development goals you’ll have to do what you’ve always done as a tech leader: experiment, innovate and lead by finding a better way to solve a very big problem. To learn more about Karat and what we’re doing to increase interviewing capacity on software engineering teams, visit us at Karat.com .

Are you stuck in the Catch-22 of hiring for hyper-growth?

Credits: Advancing Women in Product Team, Alok Gupta , Kanika Kapoor Traditionally, companies in the enterprise software industry have been known to be significantly different from their consumer based counterparts. While consumer companies are focused on quick iteration cycles, with extreme focus on user experience, and consumer virality, enterprise companies have been stereotyped to be far slower moving with more emphasis on pure functionality for enterprise clients. However, the enterprise industry has recently been undergoing major developments and change as the industry shifts more towards cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based solutions, with Salesforce as the pioneer. Notably, this allows for faster iterations of the product, more metrics (as a faster rate) to help drive data-driven decisions, and more predictable recurring revenue models. In addition, building these SaaS products for hypergrowth has required Product Managers to rethink how they build and ship these products to their customers in order to maximize immediate value for the customer and be sticky in order to maintain and grow their revenue stream. To share their stories and discuss their approaches to building SaaS products for hyper growth, (AWIP) hosted a panel of Product Managers at the inaugural South Bay Chapter event at Rubrik’s HQ in Palo Alto. The panel featured speakers (SVP of Product, Rubrik), (Director of Product at Nutanix), and (VP of Product at Applitools) with (Senior Product Manager at Google) as the moderator. The following are some of the highlights of the panel’s discussion. Advancing Women in Product Shay Mowlem Nikita Maheshwari Aakrit Prasad Judy Chang How do you define a successful B2B product? What are some trends you’ve been seeing in the space? From our hunch 10 to 15 years ago that customer experience was probably important, we’ve evolved to thinking that it’s absolutely foundational to the success of the product. The shift has gone to almost maniacal focus on the customer, their experience using the product, and helping them understand the true value of the product as quickly as possible, Shay shared. Enterprise customers today expect their enterprise product design and experience to be as simple to use as consumer products. To that end, Nikita shared that at Nutanix, they have an entire team that is focused on setting up and installing the product as quickly as possible. In addition, it’s absolutely critical to make it easy to try new product offerings and get upsold on the value of these additional offerings. To do so, minimizing the friction to try these new products and services is tantamount to the growth of the business. The companies that are able to scale rapidly have products that are quick to setup, install, and start using. Can you think of an example SaaS company that has done really well in this area of ease of use and great experience, besides Salesforce? One great example of another company that has excelled in this area is Atlassian. Although some of their products didn’t do so well, such as their Slack competitor Stride, they nonetheless hit their target user bases needs very well. Specifically, they have done a great job in building a versatile suite of dev tools that resonate really well with their core users. Their main products (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc.) have taken off so well and provide great end to end solutions for problems their customers face in their day to day. The products are well designed, easy to use, and Atlassian has done an awesome job in making it easy to try and purchase additional services/add-ons, which shows considering the impressive growth of the company over the years. Another great example of a company with high focus on ease of use and customer experience is AppDynamics. As a part of a research study that Nikita and her team conducted, it was found that AppDynamics’ setup process involved only three clicks to get started with the product. Minimizing the friction in order to get started with the product helps the customer quickly understand the true value proposition of the product and how it can solve their problems for them. For businesses, this can mean faster sales cycles, more product stickiness, and far more opportunity to upsell customers beyond their traditional offerings and into their new services or addons, generating additional growth through this loop. With SaaS products, you can get metrics/results quickly and iterate upon this. With all of these different data points, how do you most effectively prioritize features? Indeed, with faster feedback loops that SaaS products offer, getting metrics, results, and general performance indicators of the product is easier than ever before. You can see how your product is performing, how your customers like the product, if it creates value for these customers, and if it’s a sticky solution. Having been at Nutanix when it grew from 250 employees to over 4,000 employees today, Nikita explained how the company made it easy to prioritize features that your large customers wanted since that would most easily push your metrics, particularly revenue figures. However, it’s still extremely important to also focus on the tail end of your customers (in size) to build features that work across all customers rather than ad-hoc solutions for larger individual customers who often may have specific, customized needs. While in the short term you may not notice the direct impacts of this, you’ll notice it over a period of time as these features that work across multiple types of customers will help attract new customers and further fuel your business. It’s important to be aware and cognizant of your customers needs but you can’t let that entirely dictate your product roadmap and planning. In order to stay ahead in the market, it’s important to plan for the future and get to where the puck is going instead of only focusing on where the puck is today. In addition, the ability to try things, fail fast, and validate releases with a subset of customers before rolling out to all customers is important for staying ahead. Customers will always give their requirements, but as a Product Manager it’s important to be able to distill that into your roadmap that maps to the strategy you have based on the company’s business goals. How do you make time to think 10x for your product and put together a strategy to get there? It’s often too easy to have tunnel vision as you focus on the growth and success of your product, losing sight of the larger picture and landscape. It’s definitely important to take a step back and understand how your product strategy of today aligns with the goals you have outlined for the business moving forward over the next X years. At Rubrik, Shay is focused not only on becoming a multibillion dollar company but also understanding where they need to be in the next 4–5 years. The goal isn’t just to have a high valuation but rather focus on how to become a staple company in the Enterprise market, joining the likes of Salesforce and Oracle. The main question then revolves more around how to keep delivering incremental value on top of the core backup and recovery over the years to keep growing at such a rapid scale, therefore building exponential value over time. How many women PMs are there in your company? What percentage of the PMs in your company are women? The general consensus here seemed to be “lower than it should be.” At AppDynamics, The story remains similar at Nutanix, where only 3 out of the 20 Product Managers were women. only 4 out of 60 Product Managers are women. Clearly, there’s an imbalance in the ratio of women PMs in these companies, which is fairly reflective of the industry as a whole, especially in B2B companies. However, it’s important to have women in Product as it helps contribute to the diversity of thought and provides additional viewpoints that are impactful to the success of the product and therefore, a businesses’ bottom line. Nikita explained how originally, she was intimidated as a female Product Manager in a room full of men but turned this into her advantage as she found she was able to provide new perspectives and viewpoints that her male counterparts didn’t have. On the topic of scaling, how do you help assist the rapid growth of a company as a Product Manager and how do you keep up with your goals? It’s easy to get into the day to day doing deep dives on your product and develop a sort of tunnel vision in this way. However, it’s important to push yourself out and understand the larger picture and landscape of the industry. Nikita does this by attending conferences to understand the shifting of trends and learn about new developments in the field. To further broaden her understanding of her customers, she spent 3 months in the Amsterdam office of Nutanix to better understand her European customers, which often had different needs than the traditional American customers she was used to interacting with. When acquiring companies, it helps to sit down with the CEO to understand their story, background, and where they’re coming from to better understand the company’s context, mission, and user base. In addition, working at rapidly growing companies provides the unique opportunity of having many new people to speak with to learn from and help further broaden your understandings. Overall, the inaugural South Bay chapter event for AWIP was a success and there were many insightful takeaways from these Product Managers who are working on scaling these B2B products for hypergrowth. Key Takeaways: Have extreme focus on your customer, their needs, requirements, and feedback. Make the process of getting started with your product as simple as possible — let your customer spend more time using the product to understand the value of it rather than merely setting it up. It’s important to have a broad set of perspectives — while it’s easy to get lost in the day to day of your product, take time to step out and understand where the industry is today, where it’s going, and better understand the landscape as a whole. To watch the full panel discussion that was hosted by AWIP, you can . watch the full video here How to stay updated with future events: // Follow us on , and Sign up! Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Like the AWIP Facebook Page Follow the AWIP Twitter Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter updates

Scaling B2B SaaS Products for Hypergrowth — An event by Advancing Women in Product (AWIP)

I joined Skyscanner in 2009. At the time the team was less than 30 people working on the flights meta-search product that had just enough Product-Market-Fit. Following continuous year-on-year double-digit growth in both users and revenue; reaching 60 million travellers, using 30 languages and who were booking 2 million flights, every month; and growing a team of 900+ across 10 offices worldwide — . Skyscanner was acquired by CTrip in November 2016 for £1.4 Billion ($1.74 Billion) In late 2017, I was asked to speak at , giving them insights into what it was like to experience that level of hyper-growth seen at Skyscanner. The topic in question was around navigating the stages that organisations go through as they grow. This is a summary of that talk. . a knowledge sharing forum for ambitious start-ups in Scotland The slides are also available on Slideshare Navigating the stages of hyper-growth Hockey Stick Curve of Growth The is the aspiration of every ambitious / scale-up business. However, this smooth curve fails to accurately represent the reality. It’s zoomed out, smoothed macro-view allows us to intellectually apply models of business maturity and define the stages over the course of entire life of the business. perfect hockey-stick of growth achieved by those leading technology-led businesses start-up The reality is that at any point in time, it is never this perfect exponential curve. Living through it is different. For a business undergoing significant , the truth is actually more like a number of much more granular, smaller, cycles of hockey-stick growth. Skyscanner’s growth in monthly active users from 2003–2016 is a far more accurate representation. growth Skyscanner’s growth monthly active users from 2003 to 2016 Each year represents a new evolution or a new stage in the journey. There are points in the journey where conscious effort was required to ensure that we actively continued on that trajectory. The stages and cycles are much shorter and more numerous than a single lifetime model suggests. In his 1981 book, Only the Paranoid Survive, Andrew Grove, Intel’s co-founder introduced the concept of an Inflection Point: A strategic inflection point is a time in the life of business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end. In a high growth organisation these inflection points happen frequently — some are localised to one product area but some affect the entire organisation. Each one creates new conditions, new norms and requires different approaches. There may only be months between them, particularly early on as the organisation accelerates. Rarely, do you get years. Whether it is because you discover new insights that require a in your product destination or whether it is growing pains that come from doubling the team size, the fundamental shifts are . significant pivot inevitable Each inflection point is also unique to you and your business. There is no defined playbook for winning in your new context — to continue to thrive and grow requires your full investment in working through these challenges. Experience can help you recognise them, and help identify what may have worked in a similar situation but must be applied with caution. Continuously Improve , a Pre-Socratic philosopher who lived during the 6th century BC, is credited with this fragment. Heraclitus Everything changes and nothing remains still … and … you cannot step twice into the same stream As a software engineer, I have always known that has had a significant bearing on our discipline. As processors get faster, storage gets cheaper, new approaches and new systems are being built at an unprecedented rate. It is impossible to keep up with every advancement. Moore’s law What I have come to recognise is that it is not just a technological evolution. The technology is only a tool we use in achieving our goals. Our approaches to problems and the process that drive those solutions, must evolve as we scale in conjunction with the technology. We have to increase the effectiveness of the whole system. As organisations, teams and individuals, we have to continually improve — accepting that, in our new context, what was previous working for us, will begin to limit our success. What worked Yesterday, is Painful Today, Will be Broken Tomorrow As we open ourselves up to challenging our existing approaches, we will begin to look at problems from different, more original, angles and experiment as a way to discover the new approaches that will work today. We begin to recognise that failure really is just an opportunity. The essence to reflect and continuously improve is pervasive throughout Skyscanner. For the small agile squads, it has been natural for us to ask ourselves — “What worked well and what didn’t go so well” on a regular basis. What was considerably more difficult was when we started looking at large scale delivery problems spanning multiple teams. One such was our translation processes —when operating in 30+ languages this can slow us down significantly. We had to discover techniques and assess the whole rather than the localised problems a team faced. We stopped the flow of work and focussed on working through the problems. We applied Lean and Theory of Constraints techniques to review the weed out some of the bottlenecks and create a whole new approach that moved us from >2 weeks turnaround in translations to <2 days and subsequently <24 hours. Time it right. Look to Leading Indicators. One of the most used (and perhaps overused) clichés is Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. It has been re-used by the likes of Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet on occasion and is somewhat of a rallying cry for . However Gretzky’s ability to see where the puck is going has rarely been matched in the history of the National Hockey League — and he retired in 1999! It can only be asserted, that seeing where the puck is going to be is actually really hard. The intent of the statement, however holds true, which is why I suppose the quote is widely used. Product Management he still holds 60 NHL official records One of the keys to navigating inflection points is recognising, you are coming up to one, particularly when you are winning. If you have already passed the point and can see the decline, it is probably too late. Timing is crucial. Unfortunately, the ways in which we traditionally measure the success of a business, such as revenue, are lagging indicators. Lagging indicators are clearly valuable, but they are “after the fact” measures that tell you the results, but not the status in an actionable timescale. A dip in revenue growth may indicate a shift in the businesses foundations, but this might happen months after the development of the root cause. It is then considerably harder to arrest the decline. Leading indicators are better predictors of future events and can exit in near real time. They are most likely to be behaviour driven, rather than results driven. If you can understand the link between your customers behaviours and the end results then leveraging your leading indicators to affect the outcome is crucial. Leading Indicators equally apply to your day-to-day operations. Ask yourself: “What is changing, what is becoming more difficult for the team? Where is the pain in the team?” Given their closeness to the problem, your frontline teams are very much going to feel the pain that the beginning of an inflection point brings before you are even aware. Some of these symptoms will be immeasurable, intangible or based on a feeling — there maybe nothing concrete in your measures. But knowing your teams are feeling pain, is a signal to find out why, and fast. They are the essential part of your early warning system. During one period with Skyscanner, we were making decisions to deal with increased pain during releases, by reducing the frequency, increasing the overall size, but seemingly taking the pain more often. We were about to make a decision to replace a tactical 4 week release cycle with a 6 week one. Enough was enough. While product would get released, and monthly pain would reduce, we would create further challenges. Conventional wisdom applied that the same effort every 6 weeks was better than every 4 weeks. Ultimately the team, led the conversation to change the paradigm. We had an inflection point in our product delivery mechanisms. It took a significant amount of capacity and a number of months to vastly improve, but the path we set ourselves on resulted in hundreds of experiments being run every week by Skyscanner’s Product development team. Your team is critical Our organisation is a team and is made up of the people we hire to be the experts we are not. They bring their own uniques set of experiences and approaches. To move through inflection points we need the whole team to be supportive supported. Your team is the most critical asset when navigating inflection points. and Hiring the right people is therefore a critical to your overall strategy. No matter what the stage of your business, a quality that you want to look for in every candidate is a . Growth Mindset Growth vs Fixed Mindset Introduced by Carol Dweck, she argues that our mindset determines whether we believe we can learn and change and grow. People with a growth mindset believe they are capable of learning to achieve anything, they welcome problems and see them as obstacles to be circumvented and overcome. It is this kind of approach that you need to be able to constantly adapt to the changing circumstances created by growth. By looking for it in yourself and your team, you will naturally have the desire and resilience in the organisation to adapt as the business goes through a shift in it’s fundamentals. For one of the largest inflection points Skyscanner experienced, it necessitated stopping all active product development for a number of weeks to fix some core issues. This is not a decision taken lightly, it dramatically impacted everything. We were slowing down, not specifically caused by anything but the team felt it, the organisation felt it. There were frustrations building with our approach. This was the trigger — not a measurable item. Only through listening to those colleagues at the front-line, who’s growth mindsets were telling us we could find a better way and were willing to help guide us, did we identify we were hitting some significant blocks that we had to change our approach again. Conclusion Being an active leader in an organisation going through hyper-growth is a very special and invigorating experience. Most businesses will not see the type of success that Skyscanner has. But for those who aspire to be that successful, these are my 4 lessons to help you navigate hyper-growth: Inflection points are and . Embrace the constant change. inevitable frequent everything, recognising that things that previously worked are unlikely to work again. Continually Improve You have to by looking at your Time it Right Leading Indicators. Your is critical and your most valuable asset. Hire those with a Growth Mindset and empower them to be successful. Team

Navigating the Stages of Hyper-growth

At this exclusive event, attendees will learn how to take their from growth to to billion dollar exit from the Maven team and our — an incredibly talented group of the top experts in scaling consumer software businesses. We’ll focus on practical tips and tactics about consumer growth hacking, viral marketing, and network effects that will have immediate impact. We’re excited to announce our inaugural Hypergrowth Retreat on September 23rd in the Presidio of San Francisco. startup hypergrowth speakers The Hypergrowth Retreat will not be your typical boxed-lunch, sit-and-listen conference. We promise that attendees will leave with practical advice and meaningful new connections to make their startups more successful. Over the past several years, we’ve organized dozens of events connecting the best consumer growth mentors with our portfolio companies. Those events taught us a lot about how to effectively connect growing companies to critical resources, and we will utilize these learnings at the retreat. Here’s what we promise: An intimate event — not a traditional conference — at a beautiful venue with great food and company. Meaningful time with speakers through roundtable lunches, effective networking breaks, and a happy hour reception. Experts who have committed to spending significant time at the event. , relevant to every attendee, that won’t be found anywhere else. Targeted growth content An affordable price, set with the goal of covering our costs rather than generating a profit. Our team is very enthusiastic about hosting this day-long retreat. Founders can get away for the day and get help with their biggest growth challenges, alongside Mentors who have direct experience in their areas of need. With a relatively concentrated portfolio of 25 Maven companies, we saw this as an incredible opportunity to give back to and support the broader Maven community by making a few seats available to consumer software startup founders in our network. If you’re a founder (or have a portfolio company) interested in spending a day with Maven Ventures to unlock the viral growth of your own startup, we invite you to join us. Limited tickets are still available and early bird sales end tomorrow. This post was originally featured on JimScheinman.com

Unlock Hypergrowth at the Maven Retreat

One of the most repeated questions I get is: how do I evaluate whether I should join an early seed-stage startup? Embarking on a journey with a startup is akin to taking a leap of faith. While there's no guarantee of success, conducting due diligence can significantly mitigate risks. Having been in such a position a couple of times myself, I wanted to share the framework I use that may help you make your decision. For a quick background, the first startup I joined after my undergrad, MIME360, was acquired by Flipkart to build out its digital store. The four years I worked at Flipkart, it went through a hyper-growth phase to become India's biggest eCommerce company. After doing my Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University, I was fortunate to find another set of high performers with TellApart. TellApart ended up being Twitter's biggest acquisition, and I was fortunate to be part of that journey too. After spending 6 years building ad products at Twitter, I wanted to get back to early-stage companies, which led me to join Frec as a founding engineer. Frec is a fintech startup, democratizing complex financial instruments which were previously accessible to a wealthy few. Unlike MIME360 and TellApart, where I was very early in my career and also just at the right place at the right time, Frec was a very intentional decision. I had worked with some of the other founding engineers before, so I was confident the team was capable of executing. Josh McFarland (TellApart founder) was the lead investor from Greylock, so that was another huge vote of confidence. When I spoke to Mo Al Adham, the founder of Frec, his thoughts about the team and product-market fit complimented mine, and I was convinced I was making the right decision. Given my prior experience with small and medium-sized start-ups, some of my friends/colleagues reach out to me to help evaluate a startup they’re considering joining. Joining a new company is a big step, both personally and professionally. Making an informed decision is much easier with public companies since a lot of resources/metrics that you might need are already available like revenue growth, median salary for your role, opinion of current and past employees, etc. Such data is generally not available for most startups, especially the early-stage ones (pre-series B) which makes it quite a risky prospect. We know start-ups are inherently hard, and while there is no guarantee of success, you can definitely mitigate some risk by doing your own due diligence. Most start-ups are aware of this and are willing to share information with potential employees within reasonable limits. It's essential to remember that joining a startup is not just about being hired; it's a mutual exploration where you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. Before saying yes to joining a startup, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of what you aim to gain from the experience. With the hope that it can help others as well, I am sharing some of the things I considered when making my decision to join Frec. Product Understanding the product is fundamental as it forms the cornerstone of the startup's existence. What problem are you trying to solve? What positions you to best solve this problem? Do you have product-market fit (PMF)? If not, what does PMF look like to you? In other words, what metrics will convince you that you've attained PMF? Who are your primary competitors, and what differentiates you from them? What is the biggest pain point for your product/customers right now? Who is the target audience?

As a side note, it always helps if it’s a product you believe you will actually use (now or in the future) Company Evaluating the company's overall health and trajectory is vital for long-term commitment. You don't want to join a company for 6 months for it to run out of money. These questions will help evaluate the health of the company and what are their plans for the next 1-2 years. What's your burn rate and what are your future funding plans? Alternate: What is the current runway?
How much is the current revenue (if any)? Future plans for revenue streams? Team The dynamics and cohesion within the team can significantly impact your experience and success within the startup. Even if there is no financial success, you can still gain a lot by working with a high-performing team. Has anyone already left the company, and if so, why?
How do you facilitate onboarding for new team members?
How do people collaborate and resolve conflicts within the team?
What is the company’s policy on remote or flexible work?
How often do people work from the office? (This might have a significant impact on your decision as well. Early in your career, you want to work with people in the office as much as possible) Founder Understanding the vision and leadership style of the founder(s) can provide insights into the startup's direction. Is this the founder’s first startup or do they have previous exits?


Note: Founders with previous exists (IPO/acquisitions) have done it before and know the recipe well.



For solo founders: Why do it solo considering the percentage of success from solo founders is less? How does the founder brainstorm ideas? For multiple founders: How are conflicts resolved, and how are decisions made? Investors The motivations behind investor backing can shed light on the perceived potential of the startup from a third party. A lot of times startups will let you talk to their investors too. If you’ve already cleared the interviews, then they'll try hard to sell you. You should research the quality of investors backing the company, their past bets, success rate, etc. Why did the investors choose to invest in the founder/company? Are they betting on the team or the product?


What does PMF look like to them?


Hopefully, it’s aligned with Founders vision




Is the press related to the investment? Role Clarifying your role and expectations ensures alignment between personal growth and company objectives. For technical roles, understanding the technological landscape is crucial. A lot of times I’ve seen engineers burnt out by simply using bad tools for the job. How does my role contribute to improving the product?
What does success look like in this role, and how will I be measured? Alternate: Who is your ideal candidate?
What is the technology stack?
What processes are in place for planning, testing, and code reviews?
What is the on-call rotation like? How is deployment managed? As you might have noticed, we're intentionally skipping compensation/benefits in this set of questions, since it can be a post on its own. Not to mention startup compensation gets really complex with ISOs, options, PPU, 409a evaluation, strike price, exercise price, etc. Another aspect not covered that might be crucial to you is immigration-related questions in case you need a work visa. Remember, this isn't meant to be a comprehensive list. You might care about some criteria more than others. By asking the right questions and delving deep into various aspects of the startup, you can make an informed choice that aligns with your career goals and aspirations. One of the most repeated questions I get is: how do I evaluate whether I should join an early seed-stage startup? Embarking on a journey with a startup is akin to taking a leap of faith. While there's no guarantee of success, conducting due diligence can significantly mitigate risks. Having been in such a position a couple of times myself, I wanted to share the framework I use that may help you make your decision. For a quick background, the first startup I joined after my undergrad, MIME360, was acquired by Flipkart to build out its digital store. The four years I worked at Flipkart, it went through a hyper-growth phase to become India's biggest eCommerce company. After doing my Masters in Computer Science from Columbia University, I was fortunate to find another set of high performers with TellApart. TellApart ended up being Twitter's biggest acquisition, and I was fortunate to be part of that journey too. After spending 6 years building ad products at Twitter, I wanted to get back to early-stage companies, which led me to join Frec as a founding engineer. Frec is a fintech startup, democratizing complex financial instruments which were previously accessible to a wealthy few. Unlike MIME360 and TellApart, where I was very early in my career and also just at the right place at the right time, Frec was a very intentional decision. I had worked with some of the other founding engineers before, so I was confident the team was capable of executing. Josh McFarland (TellApart founder) was the lead investor from Greylock, so that was another huge vote of confidence. When I spoke to Mo Al Adham, the founder of Frec, his thoughts about the team and product-market fit complimented mine, and I was convinced I was making the right decision. Given my prior experience with small and medium-sized start-ups, some of my friends/colleagues reach out to me to help evaluate a startup they’re considering joining. Joining a new company is a big step, both personally and professionally. Making an informed decision is much easier with public companies since a lot of resources/metrics that you might need are already available like revenue growth, median salary for your role, opinion of current and past employees, etc. Such data is generally not available for most startups, especially the early-stage ones (pre-series B) which makes it quite a risky prospect. We know start-ups are inherently hard, and while there is no guarantee of success, you can definitely mitigate some risk by doing your own due diligence. Most start-ups are aware of this and are willing to share information with potential employees within reasonable limits. It's essential to remember that joining a startup is not just about being hired; it's a mutual exploration where you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. Before saying yes to joining a startup, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of what you aim to gain from the experience. With the hope that it can help others as well, I am sharing some of the things I considered when making my decision to join Frec. Product Understanding the product is fundamental as it forms the cornerstone of the startup's existence. Understanding the product is fundamental as it forms the cornerstone of the startup's existence. What problem are you trying to solve? What positions you to best solve this problem? What problem are you trying to solve? What positions you to best solve this problem? Do you have product-market fit (PMF)? If not, what does PMF look like to you? In other words, what metrics will convince you that you've attained PMF? Do you have product-market fit (PMF)? If not, what does PMF look like to you? In other words, what metrics will convince you that you've attained PMF? Who are your primary competitors, and what differentiates you from them? Who are your primary competitors, and what differentiates you from them? What is the biggest pain point for your product/customers right now? What is the biggest pain point for your product/customers right now? Who is the target audience?

As a side note, it always helps if it’s a product you believe you will actually use (now or in the future) Who is the target audience? As a side note, it always helps if it’s a product you believe you will actually use (now or in the future) As a side note, it always helps if it’s a product you believe you will actually use (now or in the future) As a side note, it always helps if it’s a product you believe you will actually use (now or in the future) Company Evaluating the company's overall health and trajectory is vital for long-term commitment. You don't want to join a company for 6 months for it to run out of money. These questions will help evaluate the health of the company and what are their plans for the next 1-2 years. Evaluating the company's overall health and trajectory is vital for long-term commitment. What's your burn rate and what are your future funding plans? Alternate: What is the current runway? How much is the current revenue (if any)? Future plans for revenue streams? What's your burn rate and what are your future funding plans? Alternate: What is the current runway? How much is the current revenue (if any)? Future plans for revenue streams? Team The dynamics and cohesion within the team can significantly impact your experience and success within the startup. Even if there is no financial success, you can still gain a lot by working with a high-performing team. The dynamics and cohesion within the team can significantly impact your experience and success within the startup. Has anyone already left the company, and if so, why? How do you facilitate onboarding for new team members? How do people collaborate and resolve conflicts within the team? What is the company’s policy on remote or flexible work? How often do people work from the office? (This might have a significant impact on your decision as well. Early in your career, you want to work with people in the office as much as possible) Has anyone already left the company, and if so, why? How do you facilitate onboarding for new team members? How do people collaborate and resolve conflicts within the team? What is the company’s policy on remote or flexible work? How often do people work from the office? (This might have a significant impact on your decision as well. Early in your career, you want to work with people in the office as much as possible) Founder Understanding the vision and leadership style of the founder(s) can provide insights into the startup's direction. Understanding the vision and leadership style of the founder(s) can provide insights into the startup's direction. Is this the founder’s first startup or do they have previous exits?


Note: Founders with previous exists (IPO/acquisitions) have done it before and know the recipe well. For solo founders: Why do it solo considering the percentage of success from solo founders is less? How does the founder brainstorm ideas? Is this the founder’s first startup or do they have previous exits? Note: Founders with previous exists (IPO/acquisitions) have done it before and know the recipe well. Note: Founders with previous exists (IPO/acquisitions) have done it before and know the recipe well. Note: Founders with previous exists (IPO/acquisitions) have done it before and know the recipe well. Note: Founders with previous exists (IPO/acquisitions) have done it before and know the recipe well. For solo founders: Why do it solo considering the percentage of success from solo founders is less? How does the founder brainstorm ideas? For multiple founders: How are conflicts resolved, and how are decisions made? For multiple founders: How are conflicts resolved, and how are decisions made? Investors The motivations behind investor backing can shed light on the perceived potential of the startup from a third party. The motivations behind investor backing can shed light on the perceived potential of the startup from a third party. A lot of times startups will let you talk to their investors too. If you’ve already cleared the interviews, then they'll try hard to sell you. You should research the quality of investors backing the company, their past bets, success rate, etc. A lot of times startups will let you talk to their investors too. If you’ve already cleared the interviews, then they'll try hard to sell you. You should research the quality of investors backing the company, their past bets, success rate, etc. Why did the investors choose to invest in the founder/company? Are they betting on the team or the product? What does PMF look like to them?


Hopefully, it’s aligned with Founders vision Is the press related to the investment? Why did the investors choose to invest in the founder/company? Are they betting on the team or the product? Why did the investors choose to invest in the founder/company? Are they betting on the team or the product? What does PMF look like to them? Hopefully, it’s aligned with Founders vision What does PMF look like to them? Hopefully, it’s aligned with Founders vision Hopefully, it’s aligned with Founders vision Hopefully, it’s aligned with Founders vision Is the press related to the investment? Is the press related to the investment? Role Clarifying your role and expectations ensures alignment between personal growth and company objectives. Clarifying your role and expectations ensures alignment between personal growth and company objectives. For technical roles, understanding the technological landscape is crucial. A lot of times I’ve seen engineers burnt out by simply using bad tools for the job. How does my role contribute to improving the product? What does success look like in this role, and how will I be measured? Alternate: Who is your ideal candidate? What is the technology stack? What processes are in place for planning, testing, and code reviews? What is the on-call rotation like? How is deployment managed? How does my role contribute to improving the product? What does success look like in this role, and how will I be measured? Alternate: Who is your ideal candidate? What is the technology stack? What processes are in place for planning, testing, and code reviews? What is the on-call rotation like? How is deployment managed? As you might have noticed, we're intentionally skipping compensation/benefits in this set of questions, since it can be a post on its own. Not to mention startup compensation gets really complex with ISOs, options, PPU, 409a evaluation, strike price, exercise price, etc. compensation/benefits Another aspect not covered that might be crucial to you is immigration-related questions in case you need a work visa. Remember, this isn't meant to be a comprehensive list. You might care about some criteria more than others. By asking the right questions and delving deep into various aspects of the startup, you can make an informed choice that aligns with your career goals and aspirations.

Beyond the Offer Letter: Questions Every Startup Candidate Should Ask

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. Hey everyone✌️My name is Konstantin Malkov, I’ve been in Product Management for over seven years, mainly working on consumer mobile apps. I love identifying what is it that people are trying to achieve in different situations to come up with a product that really matters. I am particularly proud of accelerating the growth of a fintech mobile app from 1.2M to 12M Monthly Active Users while building a product-led culture within the company. Besides work, I am really into writing. I started at 14 or 15 and haven’t stopped ever since. At first, I was writing about skateboarding. Then came interface copy, tech specs, pitches, and mission updates. My latest endeavor is reflecting on my professional experience and sharing knowledge with the community. While we are here, I want to give a special shout-out to my beautiful wife who has been through everything with me on this journey! Love you, P❤️ Interesting! What was your latest HackerNoon Top story about? It is a huge honor to be featured in HackerNoon’s Top Story with my article on . I have a real passion for crafting sleek, exceptional user experience by digging into what people are trying to get done. It is a privilege to be able to talk to customers and get a glimpse into their lives. 15 User Onboarding Techniques I Found In Consumer Mobile Apps Onboarding has a tremendous impact on both customers and businesses. The first impression matters. If onboarding doesn’t bring new customers to their first moment, they leave (and hardly return ever again). I love exploring how products from different industries approach this challenge of communicating value with clarity, care, and speed. a-ha! https://hackernoon.com/15-user-onboarding-techniques-i-found-in-consumer-mobile-apps?embedable=true Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? I love taking my professional expertise or at least personal experience as a starting point and then building up from there. For example, I’ve been lucky to build onboarding for three . Thus, it was only natural to pick up the topic for my very first article. While it’s hard to include years of experiments into a single post, I reflected on . In no way is it an ultimate guide, but it is a good, comprehensive place to start for those who are just breaking into the subject. mobile apps the general approach that I worked out to improve onboarding Another approach that helps me write is just documenting random observations. A new product I tried? Take at least one thing I enjoyed and share what’s so exciting about it. Receive an unusual newsletter? Figure out how it managed to capture my attention and post it on socials. Listened to a podcast? Note down some quotes that move me. The beauty of such observations is that even if they don’t give you immediate return they tend to add up over time. After all, that's how I wrote ! my top story for HackerNoon https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-onboarding-for-digital-products?ref=hackernoon.com&embedable=true Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) I wish I could relate to the common advice on writing: put your ideas into words as fast as you can without spending time on typos, grammar, and tone. Unfortunately, I end up all over the place every time I write. Even now, when I recall the advice above, I have to Google it to make sure I’m not quoting it wrong. While Googling, I encountered two other articles on writing that I immediately wanted to read. Luckily, I managed to put them aside by noting them in my to-do list so I could get back to answering this interview. One thing that works for me surprisingly well, is writing in a limited space. I mean, I literally make my Notes window like 1/6 of a laptop screen. That way, it looks like I am making progress really fast. And that, in return, gives me confidence to continue. As much as I don’t like typing on mobile, a small screen does the same trick for me. It is one thing to start an A4 page that doesn’t even fit into a screen. But it is a whole lotta easier to write an IG caption that looks significant, even if it is just 2–3 sentences long. Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? I know it is different for everyone, but for me, the main challenge is gaining confidence that I know the subject well enough. Otherwise, who am I to make judgments or spread yet another useless information? The Internet is full of low-quality content, not to mention crappy SEO pages. While I have nothing against getting exposure per se, it’s just too bad that it involves piling up the waste we have to go through when we really need to find something. I don’t want to add up to that. There is one rule of thumb that helps me avoid producing useless knowledge: would the information that I create help my past self? Would it save me time? Would it give me confidence? Would it entertain me? Would it help me make better decisions? If the answer to one of these questions is Yes, then there is a point in going for it. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? It is not specifically about achievements. It is more about gaining experience. I am fortunate enough to identify product/market fit for a couple of products and to scale up a company from 90 employees operating in a project-driven environment to 250 employees driven by product-led culture and working in autonomous cross-functional teams. My current interests revolve around the topic of sustainable growth. The tech industry is obsessed with growth. Exponential growth, growth hacking, growth mindset, growth team, growth engine, hypergrowth. If a startup doesn’t show enough growth, it is doing it wrong. Yet, there is less talk about the inevitable sacrifices the growth takes from both the product and the people who build it: lack of focus, abandoned values, growing tech debt that will be reworked as soon as a company finds its Ideal Customer Profile, chaotic environment, poor work-life balance, etc. I want to explore how things can be done differently. I barely scratched the surface with my article on . The next big step is to figure out the path to sustainable growth myself. Hit me up on if you are up for the challenge. 5 Tech Companies That Work Differently LinkedIn https://hackernoon.com/5-tech-companies-that-work-differently?embedable=true Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? For years, I’ve been listening to tons of music on SoundCloud. For some reason, there is stuff there you can’t find anywhere else. Plus, you have remixes and mashups of your favorite songs that are legally forbidden for publishing on other platforms. Often, they sound more fun than the originals, haha. For over seven years, I’ve been making monthly playlists out of the tracks I enjoyed. Recently, I published my 86th one. Give it a listen! https://soundcloud.com/vacations_on/sets/mar-24?embedable=true Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Writing! I have been blogging about niche menswear and travel for over 10 years. Last year, I started in English. I believe in first-hand experiences. There is just too much generic stuff on the internet that holds no real value. I don’t want yet another '10 best things you should try‘ list. I want just one or two, but from a source I can relate. a newsletter I love digging. It’s not only about finding clothes that get better with age; it is about diving deep into the stories and intricacies behind them. It is surely not about fancy travel destinations; it’s about finding hidden gems that manage to stay true to their craft. In , I share these experiences first-hand. Hopefully, you can relate. my newsletter What can the HackerNoon community expect to read from you next? Writing is a powerful tool for learning new things. I have been going through lots of problem-solving interviews lately. At first, I didn’t know where to start. While information is abundant on the internet, finding sources you can trust becomes harder and harder. Of course, you have books written on the topic. But when you are just starting out, and everything seems to be extremely hard and scary, you want some very basic guidance that would help you make your first steps. I spent too much time researching what I could expect from a problem-solving interview. Now, I want to write a short guide on the challenge so that people spend less time researching it and more time actually preparing for it. Feel like I might be a good fit for a role at your company? Do not hesitate to reach out to me on . LinkedIn What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers? I am so thankful to HackerNoon for providing a platform and audience for tech writers who are just embarking on this journey. There is an enormous gap between industry-leading publications with acclaimed authors and no-name writers sharing thoughts on socials and blogs. HackerNoon is bridging that gap by helping new writers start and spreading the word to bring them recognition. Thanks for taking time to join our “ ” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? Meet the writer Thank you for having me! It means a lot. If I can be of any help, feel free to reach out to me on or even book a mentoring session on . LinkedIn Meander

Meet the Writer: HackerNoon's Contributor Konstantin Malkov - Product Manager

In the world of tech startups, the term «growth» has become almost the epitome of success. Exponential growth, growth hacking, growth mindset, growth team, growth engine, hypergrowth. If a startup doesn’t show enough growth, it’s doing it wrong. In his article published in 2012, the founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator Paul Graham argued that growth is the very essence of a startup: Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit. The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth. It comes as no surprise why growth is so coveted. We all know the success stories of Dropbox, Uber, Airbnb, Slack, and Revolut. They are the role models of startup growth. But few companies succeed. Exploding Topics say that 9 out of 10 startups fail. In 2021, AngelList expected 2.5% of venture-backed seed-stage startups to become a unicorn. Yet, most startups still commit themselves to growth, ignoring the inevitable sacrifices it takes from both the product and the people who build it. Bugs that never get fixed because they are low priority, misalignment between different teams, ever-changing processes and organizational structure, growing tech debt that will be reworked as soon as a company finds its Ideal Customer Profile, inherently outdated documentation, abandoned features, neglected career development plans, poor work-life balance, chaotic environment, lack of focus — these are all side-effects of startup growth. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this article, I explore 5 tech companies that approach growth differently, resulting in healthier business and working environments. 37signals The original rebel of the tech industry, 37signals is the company behind the project management platform Basecamp, email service HEY, and the recently launched line of purchasable (instead of renting) software Once. Initially a web design firm founded in 1999, the company switched to the development of Basecamp out of necessity to take on more projects. 20 years later, they have over 100,000 paying customers and make tens of millions of dollars in profit. We run a very different kind of business. We are focused on efficiency, we're not focused on growth. They're focused on growth. — Jason Fried on Lenny’s Podcast Almost everything about 37signals is different. It is a private company, with no venture capital involved. Under 100 employees, all working remotely (company founders even wrote a book aptly named Remote). They invented a product development framework called Shape Up that focuses on small, 2–3 person teams delivering meaningful impacts in 6-week cycles (they wrote a book about it too). They don’t have growth targets or OKRs; the only thing that matters is whether the company makes more than it spends. As 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson put it, It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work. Yes, it’s the name of a book as well. I find this quote by Jason Fried summarizes the 37signals’ approach best: I think one of the most important things though to remember … is just like, humans tend to complicate things. A lot of things are hard but they're still simple until you make them complicated. Just keep in mind that you can make a lot of progress with two people, you can do a lot of great work four weeks at a time max, and you can figure things out as you go, and you don't need to know exactly where you're going, and you can be a profitable business, and you can find customers who are willing to pay for things. These are all possible things to do. And you don't need to be a big huge company to be successful. And you don't need to be a big huge company to make significant amounts of money. You don't need to do that. — Jason Fried on Lenny’s Podcast Linear A company doesn’t have to be private or go through the dot-com crash to work out an alternative approach to work. Take Linear, a venture-backed project management tool for software development founded in 2019. Jori Lallo, Karri Saarinen, and Tuomas Artman started a company on the simple premise that software lost its magic. The computing power of today is far beyond what could be imagined 20 years ago. Yet, modern software is slow, distracting, and boring. Linear strives to bring back the magic by crafting a planning tool for teams that care about quality. The founders go beyond just building a tool. They think of it as a “way” to craft quality software. They call it opinionated software and they have Linear Method to build it. One example of a strong opinion is working in cycles instead of sprints. As Karri Saarinen puts it, . The goal is to create a healthy momentum instead of reaching a finish line. “We are not really sprinting anywhere” Another point is building in public. Besides being vocal about how it works with Linear Method, the company advocates for public changelogs and lists all of its employees openly. Linear’s opinion on growth? Hire less, but more experienced professionals and solve customer problems instead of moving metrics. …sometimes the high growth, especially on the employee side, is not that great. It can create a lot of chaos or just messiness. … We just believe that you can actually build better with less people than you can with more people. — Karri Saarinen on Lenny’s Podcast Wise It’s not just smaller companies that approach growth and work differently. Wise, a product for international money transfers, employs over 5,000 people and moves about $12 billion a month across borders. The company's mission to build the best way to move and manage the world’s money is refined with four key attributes: speed of transfers, convenience of transferring money internationally, transparency of fares, and lowest possible cost. But these attributes extend beyond just the product. Take transparency for example. A Wise customer can see the total breakdown of a transfer’s fare in advance, split by what goes to a bank and what goes to Wise. But the company took a step further by making its roadmap public, with quarterly updates on the progress towards the mission. Another thing about Wise is how the company builds a conviction on what matters the most for customers. On Lenny’s Podcast, Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise, calls it customer-led growth: Every business I've ever worked in, it's always got these two lists, a list of things to do for your customers, and then it's got a list of things to do to make money. And you generally do everything you need to do to make money, and you do two things with the customer list. The neat thing about Wise is that we just have one list of things that you need to do to make customers happy, and it's prioritized by impact on the really hard things. If you do these really hard things, they have an incredible impact on customers, but hence on your growth, and on your shareholder value. This approach of building a strong understanding of customer problems instead of experimenting with incremental results enabled Wise to reach profitability while still growing by 30%–40% yearly. Buffer One company that took the idea of doing things differently to the next level is Buffer, a social media management platform for small businesses. While some companies share their roadmaps or changelogs publicly, Buffer opens up its key metrics and employee salaries. You can go to the Buffer website now and see for yourself that CEO makes $298,958 a year, whilst a content writer earns between $114,672 and $132,782 a year. Or you can see how the subscription fee is distributed between marketing spending, merchant fees, operational expenses, and salaries. You might want to know that Buffer’s Annual Recurring Revenue dropped from $22M in January 2020 to $18M in January 2023 and remained stable throughout 2023. It’s that open. One might argue that having ARR not growing for four years isn’t exactly an example of growth. Well, it depends on the time horizon. According to ChartMogul, only 13% of SaaS startups make $10M in ARR after 10 years in business. Buffer is way beyond that already. And the company CEO Joel Gascoigne intends to continue growing sustainably: We will strive for the kind of healthy, long-term growth that we believe will naturally follow as we focus on creating trustworthy products and providing unexpectedly delightful customer service. In the 2023 Annual Shareholder Letter, Joel elaborates on how this vision allows the company to adapt its strategy without compromising on the mission to serve and help more entrepreneurs and small businesses thrive: Beyond seeing the challenges ahead in growing this way, I personally felt a real conflict in my own sense of purpose when we dabbled with going up-market. This is one factor which led to my decision to double down on individuals, the free plan, and our down-and-wide strategy. In the world of B2B SaaS, where traditionally companies are forced to go up-market by investors, it is indeed a privilege to be able to choose growth by going in the opposite direction. Even more so when the times get tough. Ghost I’d like to end this article with an extreme example. We have only two goals at Ghost: To create a product we're incredibly proud of, and a company that provides a great life to the team building it. To achieve those goals we've thrown away most other traditional measures of success. John O’Nolan started Ghost in 2013 to bring back the ease of publishing content online that WordPress once had until, in the process of growth, it turned from a blogging platform into a Content Management System. The idea proved to be so lucrative that a landing page that described it brought John 30,000 email subscribers followed by $300,000 raised through a Kickstarter campaign. 10 years later, despite venture-backed competitors like Medium and Substack, Ghost is still non-profit and open source, making around $6.4M in ARR. Just this month the company announced the First Round Review website is now powered by Ghost. Just like Basecamp and Buffer, Ghost ditches short-term growth in favor of creating a company that will be around in 20 years. In a world where startups come and go, such longevity is a competitive advantage in itself. But how does Ghost actually do this? Largely, through the concept of arbitrary constraints. Impose upon yourself an arbitrary constraint and watch how creativity suddenly flows from you in ways that you didn't know were possible before. Because the human brain, as it turns out, likes to get out of annoying, arbitrary constraints and find ways around. Find loopholes in things. It's been a remarkable source of creativity for me. — John O’Nolan on the Indie Hackers podcast Regarding growth, there is one arbitrary constraint that worked out surprisingly well for Ghost. Setting up a business as a non-profit foundation constrains the company from running for growth just for the sake of it. Because if there are no investors and a company can’t be sold, then its valuation doesn’t really matter. What was imposed as a constraint gives the company the freedom to focus on what matters — a strong product that helps publishers grow and a happy team that enjoys building it. Afterword This is by no means an exhaustive list of companies that approach growth and work in general differently ( ). Nor is it a call for companies to stop and reconsider the way they work. please leave more examples of such companies in the comments! Just like people, every company is unique, and there is no right or wrong way to do it. What these examples prove is that there are alternatives to common practices that prevail in the tech industry. Fortunately, these alternative approaches are driven by people behind companies, not products or industries. And people can be inspired to think differently too. Thank you for giving this a read. Please share your thoughts in the comments. Would love to hear your thoughts on healthy and sustainable growth.

HYPERGROWTH

hypergrowth.io

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HYPERGROWTH

hypergrowth.io

1-10 employees

Since n.d.

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HYPERGROWTH

EVERGREEN INDEX #5616

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