The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup
medium.com
medium.com
And then what happened with Zenefits? Seems like the system isn't foolproof, even when being implemented by an expert veteran.
It's interesting how almost everyone that succeeds, looks back afterwards and comes up with some rational explanation of their success. However very few people aknowledge the outsized influence of just pure luck, being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people to make it happen.
If the reasons that people come up as explanations for their success were true, then they would be able to repeat the same thing over and over at virtually zero risk, because they now have the formula for success. But it just doesn't happen (or just very very rarely).
David Sacks' cadence system looks cool, and by all means adopt it if it helps you run your company better, but don't dream about magically becoming a unicorn just because of it.
> This institutionalized cheating finally caught up with the San Francisco-based Zenefits last week, when Parker Conrad, the 35-year-old co-founder and CEO, was forced to resign over what the company described as widespread failures of regulatory compliance. The shakeup, announced in a blistering memo from David Sacks, the executive who took over as CEO, stunned the tech establishment, which had supported Zenefits' rise.
It seems that Sacks inherited Zenefit's problems, not created them. I think citing Zenefits is not a valid argument, either a straw man or just low on the hierarchy of disagreement.
It is fair to point out that he states it is the main cause of why Yammer became a billion dollar company, and by implication, this will also help you become a unicorn, in very self-help novel writing fashion.
Uh, no. Sacks doesn't get to slide out of this.
Zenefits didn't just have a single instance of this due to one person. It was widespread up and down the entire chain and was the typical "move fast and break things" of Silicon Valley.
His methodology is to go fast but steady.
Is there a similar guide for consumer companies?
You think you need a COO. What you really need is an operating philosophy.
The point is that lots of teams assign operational discipline to an individual leader or later a team. Irrelevant of the specific methodology ingraining the idea of "create a plan, report on plan" is really important. I don't think that the specific cadence or the nature of the plan matters anywhere near as much as simply having something and measuring yourself against it. That's something the whole team has to take on board - rather than just making it one person's responsibility.
The cadence thing is driven by how much forward view you have, how big the organisation is and how much resource you have available for planning/reporting. The goal is to do "just enough" to drive the business forward - your constantly trying to manage the goldilocks level of chaos (not too much, and not too little). As the business grows and there are more layers and complexity then the length of the planned cycle and the requirements of the cadence will increase.
I understand the point about difference cadence's, personally it's more complexity than I'd like to manage.
Last thing I'd mention is that it's a lot easier to add process than it is to remove it: the negative impact is that it will tend to slow-up the organisation. While adding more process and systems is needed as you grow - the organisation (and certainly the COO/Ops team) should regularly assess whether the whole system fits - process/systems tend to accrete - sometimes that means stopping doing things. The goal is to provide the conditions so the organisation can function well (generally meaning grow) - you need just enough scaffolding to support the organisations goal, as the shape changes you need to remove some bits of scaffolding and support other parts that are under pressure.
The critical flaw of this thinking is the belief that business is a finite problem. Any major business has literally unlimited work. If every single engineer worked at maximum capacity, doing 70 hour weeks for an entire year the backlog wouldn't have even decreased.
Work creates work. Automation unlocks work.
In a previous role I developed an automation platform for our Customer Service and Operations staff that reduced most of their workflows from hours to minutes. What happened after this? Both teams increased in size by 50% or more.
From a 30.000 feet view, historically speaking you are not wrong. But sadly your comment glosses over the dirty details. But it is these dirty details that made life miserable for many people directly or indirectly affected and living through times of massive automation.
Yes. Their children and grandchildren often had a better chance of finding work. Often in a rather different society than their (grand)parents.
These global systems are complex and changing stuff is so too. I am not arguing against automation. But the current trend in job creation, at least in Europe, is that well paying jobs are being automated, while precarious jobs are being created. Currently it is primarily the owners of the automation (and shareholders) reaping the benefits, while society bears the costs/problems like precarious jobs, old people needing wellfare after having worked their whole lifes, young college graduates not being able to find high paying jobs to pay back their tuitions. And so on. I know my examples are not more than that. Singular examples and one could probably find counterexamples.
But I strongly believe that with automation we also need to think about distribution of the positive effects these automations generate on a societal level.
Similarly, when massive corporations of enormous scale have nearly entirely automated supply chains end-to-end then poor people receive massive benefits in kind. Those benefits are cheap goods and food and lower cost of living.
I don't buy your argument at a fundamental level. Agricultural automation lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty. That, in itself, is a widely distributed positive effect of automation.
European societies vehemently vote in favor of massive welfare and high tax programs, so it's no surprise to me that massive brain drain and lack of innovation results. As a consequence, Europe has less of a need for well paying jobs.
Put it this way: European tech workers get absolutely screwed on salary. Swiss tech workers don't (in fact it's one of the highest paying countries after the US). Perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
For a lot of the farming process, humans are still intricately involved in the process. I won’t consider it to be truly automated, until such point as when robots take over most of the work.
So your argument is in favor of people should suffer now for future generations to profit. Or am I misreading you? And what about the impact of (to stay with your example) industrialized farming on the environment? Is this a net positive still if you factor in the externalities?
Even if I agree with your argument, you are comparing people living today (or some time after the industrialization of agriculture) with people living through these times and loosing their livelihood with the need to migrate to the cities and get precarious jobs. Something by the way that paved the way to the french revolution (probably a net positiv in the long run) and at least two massive wars in the 20th century as well as Maos regime (not so sure on the net benefits of that).
I am not sure what this part about "European societies vehemently vot[ing] in favor of massive welfare and high tax programs" has to do with any of this. Sounds more like an "ad hominem" to me as I am an European.
Also - as you are derailing the discussion, let me answer the second stream here as well:
> European tech workers get absolutely screwed on salary. Swiss tech workers don't (in fact it's one of the highest paying countries after the US). Perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
Well. If I were to live in CH, my cost of living would at least tripple. Does my Salary account for that? Also Switzerland having a way smaller talent pool market forces dictate that salaries should increase - relatively regardless of the amount of taxes to pay. If there is no talent to be easily had one has to pay a premium for talent.
I for one (German citizen) am happy about some social netting covering my ae in case my company goes under.
Surprised you're the only comment on the whole thing though.
What else is there to say?