Know When to Say "No" to Venture Capitalists

content.txt

This text is taken from LinkedIn, where it was a response to this article by Bret Reckard at
Sequoia. Bret's article is reasonably well written and contains decent advice if you're a software
engineer looking to jump into a startup and become a VP of Engineering. Go check this one out,
it's short and worth a read:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/accelerate-your-path-vpe-join-series-startup-bret-reckard/

And now this is my response, which was originally a LinkedIn post plus a number of comments. I'm
reconstructing it here 'cause it's a lot easier to read without trying to guess which order I
originally posted things in.

Allow me to offer a reasoned response to the VC industry who wants you to know you could be a VP,
Engineering this time next week.

First off, if you're looking to simply cash out, Bret's article gives good advice.

If, however, you are looking to "Do Well," then there are other considerations.

First, learn some soft skills. As a VP/E, you're going to be directing a lot of motivated people,
so your current managerial style of yelling at people until they guess what you want will probably
work fine. As a CTO, however, you would be interfacing with customers, partners, vendors, etc. You
may want to develop strategies for approaching people in a manner that does not alienate them.

Steve Jobs was famously an asshole. But you are not Steve Jobs.

Second, learn how organizations are structured. Why is the Sales Department separated from the
Engineering Department? In an Agile/Cross Functional world, shouldn't we munge them together? The
answer is usually "probably not," but you should understand the reasoning behind this answer.

Third, learn about engineering. You're very likely not an engineer even though you have a CS
degree from Stanford. Why? because Computer Science is not Engineering. And you should know the
difference.

"Engineering" is a discipline which develops, maintains and utilizes shared mental models which
are dependent on physical laws most likely represented by reasonably beefy maths. Analysis of
engineering problems progresses as a largely analytical/rational process from a (hopefully) small
number of requirements and expands until it meets a common solution space where you use more
pattern-matching capabilities to match a solution to a problem.

Deciding which mongo driver to use with your node application is not an engineering problem.

But... you need to know what you bring to the table. Is it just your mastery of C++? That's
probably not enough for the brass ring. A mastery of C++, build systems and an understanding of
what motivates software developers and how to analyse business problems and design tasks and teams
so there is a high likelihood of success? Yeah. those are critical VP skills.

If you are talking to a funding team that is not evaluating you on those criteria... yeah... be
very careful with that company.

When you go into meet with the VCs, you should know your value and you should know specific tasks
and activities that will structure your start-up's engineering organization to meet the challenges
it is set against.

You *may* be able to learn this stuff "on the job," and several people have, but every moment
spent learning the basics is a moment you're not actively advancing the interests of your
business.

Make sure you're ready. It's okay to spend a couple years in the farm leagues 'til you can focus
on big league tasks.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, you should (hopefully) develop perspective regarding your role
in your family, community, society AND your company. Are you ready to spend 18 hours per day on
the company, ignoring your family, community & society? It's totally okay to do this as long as
you understand what you're doing and everyone's on board. Good startups funded by "above board"
VCs can lead to a liquidity event within a couple years and if played correctly, can enhance your
relationship with family, community & society.

It is completely okay to want to work at a startup. But before you make that leap, do everything
you can to set yourself up for success. Bret writes a good article, but I fear it side-steps some
of the personal development issues which will be critical to your success.