Interview with Patrick Collison

http://growth.eladgil.com/book/chapter-5-organizational-structure-and-hypergrowth/you-cant-delegate-culture-an-interview-with-patrick-collison/

by arikr • 8 years ago

77 23 8 years ago

growth.eladgil.com

davidivadavid2• 8 years ago

So the whole book is available for free now? Wish I'd known that before ordering it 10 minutes ago. :)

askafriend• 8 years ago

Yeah I also don't understand this since I pre-ordered the book.

skipthemeat• 8 years ago

It looks abridged though, or are all topics just a single page or two?

arikr• 8 years ago

I think it is, but it's a better reading experience as a book, IMO. I'd say plus then you get to support the author but knowing the companies he's invested in I don't think he's doing this to make money from book sales :) (more likely to further improve his already impressive deal flow, and to help others)

davidivadavid2• 8 years ago

To be honest I like books and was curious about the quality of Stripe Press bookbinding, etc. so I'll be fine.

rajacombinator• 8 years ago

Eh. Smart guy as always, but I read anything on company building/management by unicorn startups with a large degree of skepticism. Basically, if you have a great product, and then exercise some moderate degree of thoughtfulness in company building and hiring, everything will work itself out. Every tech unicorn loves to preen about their culture, etc, but they’re all driven by incredibly strong near-monopoly products. They would have to actively try to screw things up.

ta1234567890• 8 years ago

Building any type of company requires a huge amount of active effort from many different people. The idea that a great product will make and grow a company by itself is basically engineering fantasy.

In the case of Stripe, they've worked their asses off not just building the product, but also raising a ton of money which in turn they used to market the crap out of their product. Without that money and the marketing, even with the same product, Stripe would have most likely already failed.

plinkplonk• 8 years ago

I really like the fact that this book is explicitly addressed to (CXOs of / senior managers of) companies that have already found a product / market fit, and is now transitioning into a 'BigCo', which means that startup founders who are not going through that stage of company growth can skim the book, (as can people who want to remain engineers). There is a lot of 'managerese' in the book, which is inevitable given its focus. I still can't decide if some of the interviewees are actually insightful, or just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and are now mouthing platitudes.

This book is really meant for people who want to be senior managers in a company that is growing like crazy, and want to take on the people and organizational challenges that result.

Also the book is very explicitly centered around the "SF way" of building companies, and I wonder how much of this advice would apply to, say, a Chinese unicorn. (I think, not very much. e.g: 'diversity' as key focus area for the CEO seems to be a very SF centric (or at least US centric) way of doing things, and reflective of social and political phenomena in the USA. I doubt Chinese or Korean CEOs spend as much time on 'identity politics' flavored 'diversity hiring' as a CEO would in SF)

So if you are scaling up a post product/market fit company in SF/the USA, and are in a senior management position in that company, this book is likely to be of great help.

Even otherwise it is a good roadmap to how you can "live long enough to see yourself become the villain" ;-).

The book has a different focus from many "startup" books and that is refreshing. Overall I liked it, modulo the 'platitude problem' I mentioned above.

I really liked the interview with Patrick Collison, who seems to have his head screwed on right.

GuiA• 8 years ago

I doubt Chinese or Korean CEOs spend as much time on 'identity politics' flavored 'diversity hiring' as a CEO would in SF

There are many responses to that statement, but one of the most notable ones is that there are significantly more non American users of American software products than non Chinese/Korean users of Chinese/Korean software products.

Building a diverse team that will be able to reason about how your product will be used in a variety of cultural contexts, by people from a wide array of different backgrounds, is therefore much more important in the former situation than the latter.

ironjunkie• 8 years ago

The issue is that the commonly accepted definition of diversity is always about having different gender, race and sexual orientation represented.

The important thing though is to achieve diversity of thought, which is a positive thing since it brings a larger set of creative ideas to the table.

In the SF Tech Bubble, people look diverse but they all think more or less in the same way as the "Culture" part of hiring will remove anyone not fitting in the same mold. Also as soon as ideas get out of the spectrum of acceptable ideas, people get shamed and learn to shut up or lose their job.

I think that the current conversation going on about diversity completely misses the point. It mainly became a good way for companies/CEO to demonstrate a morale high ground.

privacypoller• 8 years ago

Culture is a difficult component to define, much less manage. Everybody thinks they're consciously pursuing major initiatives to build culture but the vast majority are just consuming the culture that emerges and then reinforcing it with the status quo.

Dan Shapiro has a decent take on it: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/06/your-company-culture-...

spamizbad4• 8 years ago

I've noticed a trend in recent interviews with founders and VCs where they lament employee entitlement and work-ethic compared to Chinese firms. What's the deal with this trend? I mean, look, you're building a unicorn: an individual engineer is likely contributing tens of millions of dollars of real value to your organization... and when you exit, you and your investors are capturing the bulk of the upside... why are you getting busted-up over tiny perks and engineers who work "only" 50-60 hours a week

Haircuts and lunches cost you way less in the long run than equity and salary. You're making out like bandits.

tlb• 8 years ago

If engineers work 10% less, you can’t just hire 10% more engineers to make up for it.

If you’re attempting something difficult, it might not happen at all with any number of engineers if each one doesn’t work pretty hard.

spamizbad4• 8 years ago

Which is all the more reason why you should be thankful that you can motivate them without surrendering equity.

"Rather than make you a millionaire in N years, why don't we give you 10 free haircuts instead?" SV Engineers: "DEAL!"

wand3r• 8 years ago

To be fair PC gives tons of credit for stripe to the employees. Almost every interview. One interview specifically is how I Built This with Guy Raz with him and his brother John.

no1youknowz3• 8 years ago

an individual engineer is likely contributing tens of millions of dollars of real value to your organization...

If that's the case. If as an engineer you can contribute millions to a company. Why don't you start your own? I'm sure each line of code you create will inflate the price by a million dollars.

Of course, I'm being flippant. But the point still stands.

Stefan Molyneux explains the true value of employees in a free market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYY11Ro4h54

Now you are entitled to argue against this and even dismiss this opinion. But go to your employer and demand one of the following:-

- 7 figure salary

- % of profit share

- Equity in the company

for your role in the company.

Please let us know how it works out. I'm sure a lot of like-minded people such as yourself will be very interested to hear.

geezerjay• 8 years ago

If that's the case. If as an engineer you can contribute millions to a company.

Because hard skills that are vital for the viability of a business don't translate to soft skills required to setup organizations, manage people, get proposals and close deals.

For a sports analogy, Michael Jordan might have been the absolute best basketball player but he is unable to build or manage a team. Does that mean to you that Michael Jordan did not deserved to be compensated for the "tens of millions of dollars of real value" that he brought to the Chicago Bulls in particular and the NBA in general? Do you actually believe that if he should've shut up and started his own basketball team to have any claim to any of the value he created for other organizations?

spamizbad4• 8 years ago

If that's the case. If as an engineer you can contribute millions to a company. Why don't you start your own? I'm sure each line of code you create will inflate the price by a million dollars.

But the same is true for founders and VCs: Everyone needs each other. VCs require founders. Founders require employees. An entrepreneur doesn't hire workers out of the goodness of their heart and most (competent ones) will hire as few workers as they think they can get away with.

This is why they absolutely should not be complaining about the so-called entitled employee: Demand for skilled labor is high. Normally, this would push wages upward, but organizations have managed to short-circuit this by offering non-salary compensation in the form of perks. They've completely hacked the labor supply/demand curve greatly in their favor. They should be delighted.

Stefan Molyneux explains the true value of employees in a free market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYY11Ro4h54

Not really. This video completely skips over all the classical and neoclassical thinking on labor economics and inadvertently lays the foundation for an argument on collective bargaining by employees.... but I don't think that's what the video's author was going for.

closeparen• 8 years ago

I'm confused. Why would your employees be disciplined and motivated to succeed, if not for their "entitlement" to the rewards of doing so?

Interview with Patrick Collison

Related Stories