

Ask HN: Does your startup change directions on a daily basis? - samohacker

Hi, posting anonymously. This is my first time at a startup (I previously worked for one of the big internet companies).<p>Decision-making control at our startup is firmly in the hands of a few b-school types (sales, marketing). In the last six weeks or so, they've been changing our strategy on a daily basis. It's affecting the way we engineer our site and more importantly, we've lost faith that our product / sales / marketing teams can execute towards a common goal.<p>My questions for HN: 
1) Is this common for non-engineering-focused startups? 
2) How do you guys deal?<p>Thanks. Please share thoughts / stories.
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staunch
18 Mistakes #5

 _"But openness to new ideas has to be tuned just right. Switching to a new
idea every week will be equally fatal. Is there some kind of external test you
can use? One is to ask whether the ideas represent some kind of progression.
If in each new idea you're able to re-use most of what you built for the
previous ones, then you're probably in a process that converges. Whereas if
you keep restarting from scratch, that's a bad sign."_

<http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

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ryanjmo
I think generally the goal is by the time you have b-school types working in
your start-up, you have built a strong core for your business, which shouldn't
be changing that rapidly. However, it is good to be continually iterating
looking for ways to expand or capitalize further on your core.

If there is no core, established model behind what you are doing and you have
a bunch of employees at the company (especially b-school types), I think it is
reasonable to be concerned and perhaps consider other options available to
you.

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apower
Why are there so many sales and marketing folk in an early startup? Just 2
sales and 2 marketing guys and you burn half of million a year. Sales come in
when there's a product to sell. If the product is still in early development
(with the daily changes), the company has ramped up in the wrong order. It
will run out of fund soon.

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bdickason
I've been in a situation like this before. Sales was driving and couldn't make
up their minds. Either take a stand and fight for ONE strong direction (for at
least a week!) or leave.

The company won't be successful. "Pivot" means to plant one foot and move the
other. Not to hop around like an idiot all day.

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virtubill
this seems to happen even in engineering-focused start-ups. in the past i have
actually sat down with the business folks and talked about how the lack of
focus is affecting product quality which directly affects revenue. not to
mention what it does to moral when you feel like what you are working on today
will most likely just be thrown out tomorrow for some new agenda. there was a
lot resistance at first but i was very clear that i just wanted to open this
up for discussion since my main concern was for the overall success of the
company. it did not happen over night but it did happen, the goal was to find
a middle ground where we all committed to a long-term strategy to rech our
goals and engineering would try and stay open-minded to changes that would get
us closer to those long-term goals.

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AmberShah
There is a big difference between keeping your options open and being agile
versus "changing directions". I think it's very common to spend biz dev time
on exploring other options, even in a way that can have a huge impact on your
overall focus/product. Look at Groupon, they had a big focus, but spun off
Groupon as a side project and it turned out to be huge. So exploring is a
good/normal thing. However - that is not the same thing as rallying the troops
with a "full steam ahead on this brand new idea" every day.

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hga
Do you _literally_ mean "daily" (as in, say, every 1-3 working days)?

How are the b-school types measuring success? (Are they measuring at all???)

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damoncali
That's normal, unless you really mean _daily_. The trick is to find a balance
between agility and the focus required to build something useful. Too much
agility and nothing gets done. Too much focus and the wrong things get done.
Cut the marketing guys some slack - they're working with precious little
information.

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coryl
You've talked to your colleagues I assume?

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samohacker
Yeah they know we are frustrated.

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petervandijck
1) no.

2) quit.

