324
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
324 points (97.6% liked)
Not The Onion
12269 readers
1179 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Comments must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I would imagine it’s very common. “Serial entrepreneurs”, angel investors and the like are often like sharks but their blood is maximum ROI with minimum turnaround time, and I believe they do their best to get people into leadership positions who’s greatest goal is to exit as early as possible based on some minimum ROI, whether that exit be by acquisition or IPO. Especially if the original startup founder is more focused on the product. “Hey man, you focus on the code, let me and Dave handle the business side of things, we’ll keep the sharks off your back” when usually they themselves, are in fact the sharks
This makes me think there are (at least) two kinds of naïveté. One is about business and money. That’s the kind that people know they have. They think “Oh I do need this shark on my team because I’m not savvy enough”, because they think of themselves as naive.
But there’s also naivete about the nature of quality and morale. There are limits to how far one can get from “the tao”, ie their passion, ie the pursuit of beautiful quality, and still maintain contact with it.
I would say the sharks are even more naive about this (maybe?), and it’s on the founder to discover this for their self and to protect it. Like, it’s definitely not a childish thing, but a transition to adulthood to understand and take responsibility for the spirit of their company.
One must be ruthless about that.
I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say. Maybe that the ruthlessness of the sharks is what is needed, but not in service of the sharks’ usual goal of maximum ROI. One must be ruthless in ensuring they keep their eye on whatever X they originally set out to create.