
Why Startups Should Train Their People - apu
http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/14/why-startups-should-train-their-people/
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aditya
I'm not sure how this applies to 2-10 people startups. And, honestly, once a
startup reaches the scale where it has multiple hierarchies of management and
engineering organization that requires formal training, it's not a startup
anymore. It's a different kinda beast... small business perhaps.

Not saying informal training isn't useful, it's just not something you'd
formalize at a small startup.

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eru
Perhaps you can formalize in a light weight manner? E.g. just write down what
kinds of training steps seem to work well, in which don't.

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jasonkester
One of the defining qualities of a Startup is that it's small. The implication
there is that everybody on the team needs to be running at full speed right
out of the gate, and if anybody is not pulling their weight the entire venture
will probably fail.

I don't see where training would fit into a team like that. It seems that
there is no room in a startup for employees that need training to do their
job. Nor is there much in the way of slack time to train people to do things
that aren't their core.

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blrgeek
Case 1. You hired me for my engg. skills, but I suck at managing my time.
Spending an hour teaching me time management is going to give far more returns
than anything else you can do.

Case 2. You hired me as a junior sales-person. I've done product sales, but I
don't understand solution selling. Training on solution selling is going to
pay off.

Case 3. You hired me for sw devel. I can do some design, but I'm not as good
as you are, and you can see that I'm not that good. Spend time coaching me on
design, instead of criticizing my design work.

You don't hire a person for just one thing. Anyone you hire is likely to be
strong in some things, and weak in others. Training is what's going to plug
their gaps and make your team stronger.

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jasonkester
All that makes sense in the context of a company. Startups don't really have
time for it. If you're going to burn into the ground inside of 6 months,
there's simply no room for training.

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blrgeek
I don't think a startup is defined as having a life of 6 months or less. The
large majority of startups must have a few dozen employees - which is exactly
where training would help.

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10ren
google view of the pdf "Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager"
[http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://benhorowitz.files.wo...](http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://benhorowitz.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/good-
product-manager.pdf)

\- "Good product managers decompose problems. Bad product managers combine all
problems into one."

\- "Good product managers err on the side of clarity vs. explaining the
obvious."

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Luyt
From the 1996 PDF:

"Good product managers send their status reports in on time every week,
because they are disciplined. Bad product managers forget to send in their
status reports on time, because they don't value discipline."

I can't help reading 'TSR Reports' there.

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sokoloff
You mean 'TPS Reports' I presume?

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blogimus
At the very bottom of the page:

 _Warning: This document was written 15 years ago and is probably not relevant
for today’s product managers. I present it here merely as an example of a
useful training document._

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gojomo
Horowitz referring to the example PDF he links to -- which internally contains
Netscape branding and a 'Summer 1996' date. The blog post is all new.

