<story><title>Later Stage Advice for Startups</title><url>http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/later-stage-advice-for-startups/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hacknat</author><text>I think really good advice to late stage companies, before any of this stuff, is, &amp;quot;Have you actually found product&amp;#x2F;market fit?&amp;quot; If so, what is the product, what is the market?&lt;p&gt;I have spent a lot of time with startups (as an employee), and I have never seen this question answered properly, at least up close.&lt;p&gt;Very often product&amp;#x2F;market fit becomes &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;ve solved all these peoples&amp;#x27; problems and they pay us money.&amp;quot; The problem? The problems and the people are all different. I&amp;#x27;ve witnessed so many companies turn themselves into specialized consulting companies thinking they&amp;#x27;ve built the product that&amp;#x27;s going to take them to the finish line, when all they&amp;#x27;ve really done is networked their way into solving a bunch of separate business problems for their network. A product should be so good that your users are almost embarrassed to file support tickets.&lt;p&gt;IMO, sama is wrong to suggest founders take their eye off the product ball at all (even just a little) until they are 1000% sure they&amp;#x27;ve built a machine that will scale, and now all they have to do is scale it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Later Stage Advice for Startups</title><url>http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/later-stage-advice-for-startups/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>RKoutnik</author><text>sama, if you&amp;#x27;re reading this, I&amp;#x27;d love to hear more about&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Senior People: In the early days, hiring senior people is usually a mistake.&lt;p&gt;I know a lot of folks (including myself) are of the opposite opinion - it&amp;#x27;s a mistake to hire non-seniors to build the first round.  Senior folks can often see pitfalls ahead of time and dodge them, saving valuable time while the company is pre-product&amp;#x2F;market fit.  I can think of plenty of definitions of &amp;quot;Senior&amp;quot; that I _wouldn&amp;#x27;t_ hire (overspecialized, &amp;#x27;senior&amp;#x27; in years only) though.  Our disagreement may only be one of definitions [0].&lt;p&gt;I have seen startups die due to lack of talent early on (I worked at a startup that died due to technical debt, but that&amp;#x27;s another story).  What scenarios have you seen that were caused by senior folks that causes you to see hiring them as a mistake?&lt;p&gt;[0] More on my opinions on what &amp;#x27;senior&amp;#x27; should mean: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rkoutnik.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;implementers-solvers-and-finders.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rkoutnik.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;implementers-solvers-and-fin...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>