I joined a startup after working for 10+ years in regular companies and there was an incredible mix of highly competent and experienced people who knew how to get things done and were willing to put their egos aside to grow the product. As a small group, we made a product that was easy to sell. It was our market's "Iphone" moment. Our competitors were shaken and concerned because of our momentum and modern approach (they used Windows software on a yearly update schedule, while we were based on ios/android/web and updated daily).
I don't think the founder realised how lucky they were to have this combination of people, as this was their first startup after years in enterprise sales. There were other competitors that started around the same time as us, but they failed to deliver. I don't think we were necessarily better at developing, sales or marketing individually, but as a team we were able to work together really well.
When the founder raised a significant amount of money, they decided it was time to scale up and become a "real" company with proper hierarchy, reporting lines and processes. They hired people from FAANG who had impressive resumes, but were more concerned with titles and proving themselves. Constant rewrites, re-orgs and workshops to improve working processes made sure that progress halted, and most of the original team left. Today, the product is still alive as a minor actor, but they lost a lot of momentum and the competitors had time to launch their own "cloud" products.
It was painful at the time, but now I look back and I see it as an important lesson.
I don't think the founder realised how lucky they were to have this combination of people, as this was their first startup after years in enterprise sales. There were other competitors that started around the same time as us, but they failed to deliver. I don't think we were necessarily better at developing, sales or marketing individually, but as a team we were able to work together really well.
When the founder raised a significant amount of money, they decided it was time to scale up and become a "real" company with proper hierarchy, reporting lines and processes. They hired people from FAANG who had impressive resumes, but were more concerned with titles and proving themselves. Constant rewrites, re-orgs and workshops to improve working processes made sure that progress halted, and most of the original team left. Today, the product is still alive as a minor actor, but they lost a lot of momentum and the competitors had time to launch their own "cloud" products.
It was painful at the time, but now I look back and I see it as an important lesson.