
Your Job as a Founder Is to Create Believers - guiseppecalzone
http://josephwalla.com/your-job-as-a-founder-is-to-create-believers
======
riebschlager
I worked for a stretch at a startup where I was asked to "believe". The
company's core values were made into wall artwork and recited aloud at staff
meetings. It was all eerily similar to my Catholic upbringing. Including the
guilt. "Oh, you want to leave work at 5? Yeah, that's fine. I just thought you
_really_ believed."

You have to be a little insane to start a company, I totally get that. But
you're truly doing yourself a disservice if you're attempting to amass a
legion of followers.

A good developer might not give two shits about your carefully crafted mission
statement, but she'll do some kick ass work. Isn't that good enough any more?
Why is "startup culture" so obsessed with maintaining the appearance of
success rather than focusing on creating something amazing?

~~~
joncalhoun
A few potential downsides to an employee not believing:

1\. If they are offered an identical position at a company they believe in,
they will leave. You won't be able to do anything to keep them around, so you
have less ability to retain valuable employees. Hiring and training new
employees is expensive.

2\. They won't push back when bad decisions are made. Would you waste your
time arguing about a bad decision if you didn't give a shit about the company?
You want people who will work for the best interest of the company. Granted
there comes a time when you need people to accept a decision, but you want
their to be a discussion around those decisions.

3\. They will negotiate for more salary than equity/options, giving them less
incentive to help make the company succeed.

4\. They are less likely to convince their friends to join the company. Stripe
built an incredibly talented engineering team through mostly referrals[1]. You
lose that if you are hiring people who won't convince their friends to join.

I'm sure I am missing many others, and all startups may not need a team so
dedicated that they would give up their salary, but having a team who believes
in your company does have real benefits.

[1]: [http://firstround.com/review/How-Stripe-built-one-of-
Silicon...](http://firstround.com/review/How-Stripe-built-one-of-Silicon-
Valleys-best-engineering-teams/)

~~~
Kalium
1\. If you cannot offer something better, you don't deserve to retain valuable
employees. You need to be a better founder and boss.

2\. Yes they will. You'll spend time arguing about a bad decision because it
has an effect upon your life.

3\. Salary is an incentive too. I like mine to keep coming. Those of us who
aren't terminally naive regard equity as nice to have, but generally worthless
unless we get extremely lucky.

4\. If you are a good founder and boss who has a good company that's a nice
place to work, they absolutely will. A _company_ , not a _church_.

You can't scale a company entirely with believers. You can do just fine with
mercenaries. You just have to treat them as rational actors, which isn't so
hard at all if you're a good leader.

~~~
hkmurakami
Particularly regarding #4, a friend observed that, "people join startups for
the vision. They stay for the culture (#4)"

~~~
jarek
... probably not the least because "the vision" tends to get lost in pivots
and priority shifts

------
victor9000
In order of priority, your responsibilities as an employee are:

    
    
      1.  To yourself and your family
      2.  To your career and professional development
      3.  To the company
    

Don't ever sacrifice 1 or 2 for 3 because the company will not do the same for
you. Part of meeting responsibilities 1 and 2 is making sure that you are
fairly compensated for your work product and for the value you provide to the
company. If you are not being fairly compensated for your work then you should
make some effort to rectify this imbalance. If your efforts yield no fruit
then you should walk away. Capable employees are too valuable to be
squandering their potential drinking kool-aid for the benefit of others.

~~~
zenbowman
For the most part, this is correct.

It would take an exceptional company with a grand vision for me to swap 2 &
3\. I could see myself doing that if I worked for Seymour Cray's companies in
the 60s and 70s, or Bell Labs in its heyday, or a company with a grand vision
like SpaceX today. But for the most part, you are right.

------
digisth
I think his point is one that seems obvious, but isn't always. First, you
should believe in your product, then your job is to get others to do so.
Treating people badly, not paying them, lying, etc. are all terrible and we
should not ever praise those parts, but that doesn't mean his overall point is
wrong at all. There are a few things going on there:

1) If you as the creator don't believe in it, you're probably going to have
more trouble convincing others that it's worth using, unless you have some
kind of interesting personality quirk.

2) The value of something - and it may be very valuable - might not
immediately be obvious. AirBnB, for example, sounded insane to many people
before it caught on. The founders had to believe in it, and they had to
convince others to do so.

3) For things which are purely subjective (and I know some do find this
distasteful, for sometimes good reasons), convincing others of its value is
the entire point. Think about things like fashion, music styles, toys /
novelties of various kinds - even certain kinds of technologies which only
shuffle the deck in terms of functionality / UX may need to have users
convinced. The effects of this one can be net positive (something starts out
looking like a fad, turns into incredibly useful thing [Twitter]), net
negative (unhealthy fad diets), or neutral (Webkinz? Furbies?), but even if
you hate these things, you can't wish them away or deny they exist.

~~~
dudul
That the founders and the investors have to believe in a product is
undeniable. If we agree that "believe in" means "believe that it's gonna catch
on and make a shitload of money", not necessarily "make the world better".

But why should you care as a founder if your employees believe in your
product? Your employees are professionals, pay them to get shit done and
that's it, why do they have to believe in your idea of "Uber for strippers",
or "twitter for baby sitters"?

The only ones who have to believe are the ones who put their ass on the line
for a potential big reward. And startup employees are _not_ in this category.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I'm not exactly sure why _you_ as a founder should care (nor do I care what
exactly you as a founder actually do care about), but many would rather work
to make the world better than just "get shit done" that potentially gives the
"ones who put their ass on the line" (which doesn't include them? [not
following your logic here]) a big reward.

More generally, this is known as alienation of labor. Many humans, when they
are reduced to pure commodities, don't feel too great about it and may begin
to suffer mentally and physically as a result.

~~~
dudul
> the "ones who put their ass on the line" (which doesn't include them? [not
> following your logic here]) a big reward.

The big reward is a big chunk of money. Employees very rarely make a lot of
money after an acquisition.

> More generally, this is known as alienation of labor. Many humans, when they
> are reduced to pure commodities, don't feel too great about it and may begin
> to suffer mentally and physically as a result.

I never said that. People may not care about your big dream of saving the
world and still be experts in their domain and be excited about the technical
challenges that come with your idea. I've worked in many industries without
caring at all for them (think finance, gambling, advertising) but I was still
very stimulated by the technical problems to solve.

There is a big line between not drinking the kool-aid of "we're making the
world a better place. Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum
code reuse and extensibility." and alienation of labor.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>The big reward is a big chunk of money. Employees very rarely make a lot of
money after an acquisition.

Yes, I believe that is what you claimed previously. You also seemed to suggest
that it was deservedly so (that employees not share in the "big chunk of
money")?

> People may not care about your big dream of saving the world

You're changing the parameters. I'm assuming you only care that your product
is going to "catch on and make a shitload of money".

The employees are manifesting the product and are the ones who have invested
their life in the company. I believe you claimed that employees do not "put
their ass on the line" and therefore don't get to share in the "big reward"?
What qualifies as putting your ass on the line?

>I never said that.

I didn't say that you said that. I'm saying that what you are describing fits
into the more general framework of alienated labor. Feelings of alienation
occur when there is little to no connection between the one doing the work and
the work itself, which sounds pretty much exactly like what you described. If
the game is reduced to "shut up and do what you're told because I write the
check" and the employee requires that check to survive, the employee is at
high risk of losing autonomy over their work as they may become ever more
dependent on their founders and investors (founders and investors may openly
exploit this fact). At the same time, the founders and investors may be
extracting ever more value from from the company (by which I mean, the
employees).

I don't think alienation of labor is a single binary condition. Some work is
more alienating than others for various reasons, including founders,
investors, managers, colleagues, product, workplace conditions, tasks
assigned, etc.

Many people find it alienating to hear founders and investors talk about how
they are going to make a shit-ton of money all while claiming that the people
doing the actual work haven't put their ass on the line and won't share in the
big reward that they are all working to realize.

------
beeperbot
The anecdotes are totally useless. You could replace "For 999 days [the airbnb
founders] didn't see traction. But, they believed." with "For 999 days [the
airbnb founders] didn't see traction. But, they brushed their teeth." and walk
convinced that dental hygiene is somehow key to success.

~~~
kluck
"For 999 days [the airbnb founders] didn't see traction. But, they brushed
their resume."

------
govindkabra31
I find it wrong that the author is using other successful companies as
examples that they were built on "belief".

No, airbnb founders did not believe. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg did not believe
either. Nor did Larry page.

They got there by learning from user, questioning their "belief" and
iterating.

Nate: '... so I at this point decided to move to Boston. Had other priorities
in my life. And pace suddenly slowed down .... Have you told Michael that I am
working on other things?'.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya0I6oz7q9U&fea..](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya0I6oz7q9U&fea..).

Mark: '.. well, it does not have to be anything more than a college friend
website. That is a great product.'
[https://youtu.be/aQ5otpv6kTw?t=252](https://youtu.be/aQ5otpv6kTw?t=252)

Larry page: ... tried multiple times to license their technology and later
sell the company for a few millions and later for a few billions. The gap in
their asking price and market offer kept them going.

------
jsprogrammer
I've been working on a theory that corporations are actually cults.

This is excellent validation.

~~~
nostrademons
So is every human organization.

The basic facts of life are that we're born, we eat, we sleep, we shit, we
piss, some of us reproduce, and we die. All other meaning beyond that is
socially constructed, from religion to power to currency and wealth to
corporations, cults, voluntary associations, friendship, identity, and so on.

All history has been the story of one social illusion replacing another. For a
couple millenia the church was dominant; for some period within that, it
jockeyed with the kingdom. Starting in the 1800s, the nation-state became
dominant; people have been increasingly losing trust in them since Vietnam.
The traditional big corp died, as a source of allegiance, in the 1980s.
Startups are moving in to fill a void - and, as productive organizations that
rely upon peoples' consent for their existence, I think they're a lot better
than many of their predecessors.

~~~
walterbell
_> productive organizations that rely upon peoples' consent for their
existence_

As a bonus for portfolio optimization and market experiments, they are more
disposable than their predecessors.

The half-life of socioeconomic belief continues to shrink.

------
sparrish
Your Job as a Founder Is to Create a Product People will Believe

------
pavlov
Corollary: "Your job, as a startup employee, is to drink the Kool-Aid."

~~~
dudul
+1. Do employees at the DMV _believe_ in their mission?

Why can't founders understand that employees are there for the paycheck? And
rightfully so. "Guys, it's your company too! Let's do great things together
and make the world a better place!" Yeah great. And for the next round of
funding is it gonna be "my company too" or is my 1/10th of a point gonna be
diluted?

~~~
Killswitch
Bingo.

When I started at the startup I previously worked at, while we were working
for pennies and not making money, it was "our company" because I had equity
along with the founders. Once we started making money and could have
reasonable salaries it went from "our company" to "my company".

~~~
chjohasbrouck
I'm a PHP developer, can I ask how you made the transition to Node? Did you
just start hacking away at personal projects with Node? Any advice on
resources?

~~~
Killswitch
Personal projects mostly yes.

r/node was a big help. I also make sure to learn JavaScript, not NodeJS
exclusively. A firm understanding of JavaScript is the best way in my opinion.
So start using frontend JavaScript stuff. Angular, React, etc. Once you're
very comfortable with that, start building your own stuff. Ignore the "but why
would I build my own when so much better exists?" because it's not about
building something someone else will use, but to help you understand the
workings of what you're building more.

Once you are comfortable in the frontend, NodeJS is just as easy.. Learn the
core modules, and ecosystem.

On the frontend you should already be using something like Browserify or
Webpack, so you'll already be familiar with using CommonJS based requires.

~~~
chjohasbrouck
That's interesting. I already have a lot of experience with Javascript so it
might not be so painful.

What do you think about Rails vs Node/Express/etc when it comes to startups?
Are more choosing Node lately, or is Rails still the startup gold standard?

This is the comment I've been responding to btw:

> I've been a PHP developer since 1997. December of 2014 I left PHP completely
> for NodeJS. Best decision of my life.

Can I ask why you feel that way?

Sorry for the interrogation, I'm just really curious and thinking of a
transition myself.

~~~
Killswitch
> Sorry for the interrogation, I'm just really curious and thinking of a
> transition myself.

No worries, keep asking all you want and I'll do my best to answer them.

> Can I ask why you feel that way?

Mostly because I was getting burnt out in PHP, the community was getting
pretty hellacious, and because I wanted to do something new.

Regarding the Rails question, I actually when decided to leave PHP I was
debating on learning Rails/Ruby or moving to NodeJS. But because I had been
tinkering with NodeJS already (I wrote a pretty extensible IRC bot with a few
friends to get the hang of things) and because I already have an understanding
of JavaScript I would go NodeJS.

It helps that I'm not jumping between 4 languages in my stack, PHP,
JavaScript, HTML and CSS to 3 languages.

Why I feel it was the best decision is mostly because it made me a overall
better developer. I started learning a lot more stuff, and found out very
verbose things in PHP are simplified in JavaScript.

I mean, look at popular PHP frameworks vs popular NodeJS frameworks... Laravel
and Symfony are orders of magnitudes bigger than Express and Hapi/Sails.

PHP while getting better at it, has the NIH mindset whereas NodeJS is about
building small packages that do one thing and one thing only and everyone uses
them.

> What do you think about Rails vs Node/Express/etc when it comes to startups?
> Are more choosing Node lately, or is Rails still the startup gold standard?

I think NodeJS is a solid alternative. There's huge companies using NodeJS
now, Walmart, Netflix, PayPal just to name a few. And with the fact that
NodeJS and iojs team have come together and the Node Foundation exists is
great. iojs has been expanding heavily and that's good. NodeJS v4.0.0 is due
out in the coming weeks and I can't wait.

------
unabst
When I read posts like this, I used to think I needed to be more persuasive
and crafty with how I presented what I was selling. I thought I lacked the
skills of a good salesman, so to speak. Then I read somewhere that the
greatness of a salesman begins at the products they choose to sell. They're
great not because they can sell anything. They're great because they
efficiently choose to sell the products that sell themselves.

As it turns out, great sellers aren't in the business of convincing people.
Persuasion is the craft of a mediocre salesman.

Hence, I think this is more accurate:

"Your Job as a Founder is _validated_ by the believers you create."

There is always something in between, such as a vision, a demo, a product, an
experience, a great speech, revenue, and so on. But founders don't create
believers per se. They _generate_ them. I feel this distinction to be quite
important.

------
brianstorms
Your job as founder is to create customers.

------
troels
And here I thought my job as a founder was to find a business model that
creates value.

~~~
Kinnard
Well, you'd have to believe that it creates value in order to say to yourself
and to other people(unless you're a con-artist) you've found one such.

------
minimaxir
The emotional appeal of "creating believers" doesn't work when investors want
clear, quantitative results and returns on their investment. That's why
"growth hacking" with intrusive modals and misleading marketing is an industry
in itself in 2015.

Airbnb, Evernote, and Twitter are _outliers_ from a nicer past.

------
ksenzee
This is idlewords's concept of investor storytime[0]. The only difference is
that here, the author thinks it's a good thing.

[0]
[http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm#ad...](http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm#ads)

------
DrNuke
motivational sh*t is the signal things will end in tears

~~~
smacktoward
DEmotivational sh*t, on the other hand...
[http://despair.com/collections/demotivators](http://despair.com/collections/demotivators)

~~~
DrNuke
eheh... rational commitment, domain knowledge and hard work are still better
companions in our nitty-gritty sh*tty life

------
mikejholly
Companies aren't about religion, they're about creating products people pay
for. Fin.

------
dagw
The other big problem about having company values is that people might expect
you to live up to them. I once took a job at company largely because I really
liked their espoused "values" and "mission statement" and I "believed" in the
same thing they claimed to believe in. Compared to the last place I worked it
all sounded like a massive breath of fresh air.

Anyway didn't take me too long to realize that all those claimed values where
just empty words and the new place was exactly like the old place, and that
certainly wasn't good for my moral.

------
Disruptive_Dave
For some reason the following quote came to me while reading this: "Our task
is not nurturing enthusiasm, but overcoming indifference." (Believe this was
from an older Wieden + Kennedy pitch deck.)

------
ElHacker
Sure, believing in your startup as a founder goes a long way. Keeps you
motivated in coming back to work at it and walk the extra mile. But is not the
founder's most important task to convince the press, investors, partners or
even a team to believe. A mindset like that is only looking for acceptance in
the external world.

The truly job of a founder is to focus on what really matters: user
satisfaction. Working on the features they need, creating a 10x quality
product, being the best at the specific area your startup is aiming at.
Everything else will follow.

------
endlessvoid94
I heard one of the current YC partners speak a couple years ago at a student
conference and this person phrased things really well. There was a question
from the audience, something like "how do you know when to quit?"

Their response: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. And try again.
And keep trying. But don't be a damn fool."

------
kluck
It seems all rather obvious: Of course you have to believe that what you do
makes sense in order to feel at least a bit of pleasure doing it. Everything
else is just a job.

What I am worried about is that maybe it is sometimes taken too far, into some
kind of religion at which point it is destracting from the actual practical
goals of the company.

------
parallel
Your job as founder is to create revenue.

------
rootedbox
He has a point.

blind faith vs. logical rational ... being in the in the first business of
selling to people(or employees) that work off of blind faith has always been
way more profitable in at least power, and sometimes even money.

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

------
brayton
Growth creates believers

------
pbreit
I might phrase it "...to _find_ believers". You run into a lot fewer problems
if you merely search vs trying to convince.

------
smacktoward
Wow. From one of the linked articles ([http://www.businessinsider.com/pandora-
didnt-pay-50-employee...](http://www.businessinsider.com/pandora-didnt-
pay-50-employees-for-two-years-says-tim-westergren-2015-4)):

 _In the run up to its 2004 Series B funding Pandora was running on financial
fumes. Pandora wasn’t able to pay its employees for an astounding two years
between 2002 to 2004 while it worked on producing a viable commercial product.
Not paying full-time employees is very, very illegal in California, where
Pandora is based._

 _“We had no idea we were breaking the law, " Westergren said._

 _Over that period, Pandora accumulated $2 million in back wages owed._

How this story did not end with Pandora getting nuked from orbit in a court of
law, I have no idea. And the bit about Westergren having "no idea we were
breaking the law" (wink, nudge, say no more, guv!) is the perfect cherry on
top.

I guess we're supposed to celebrate not paying your employees for years as
some kind of Triumph of Entrepreneurialism, though. And I suppose it is, if
you're Tim Westergren! (Not so much if you're one of the employees who he
essentially strong-armed into loaning him tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars at zero percent interest, but who cares about them.)

~~~
djloche
The crazy thing is - how did the employees manage to stick around? Did they
only hire people with huge lines of credit?

~~~
kanwisher
Even if you have the money in the bank, if I didn't salary for 2 years, I
would want founder equity

------
bkurtz13
The advice in this post seems like it could undergo a minimal rewrite and
apply even better to cult leaders.

------
nsxwolf
Sounds good. What JS library should I use to do that?

~~~
jonesb6
there's a React add-on for that

~~~
chrismarlow9
That's JSX... noob...

------
alcasans_head
So running a startup is like running a cult? Makes sense

------
Kinnard
If you don't believe in what you're building you're a slave. If you don't
believe in what you're selling you're a con-artist.

~~~
s73v3r
Or a mercenary, depending on how much you're being paid.

~~~
Kinnard
Touché

------
graycat
As a founder:

Always be selling.

Always be fund raising.

Always be improving the product.

Always be creating believers.

For each of the above, it is 99% of being a successful CEO.

Right! Now how to cram 4(99) into 100!

Somewhere in there am I also permitted to write good code?

------
ryanSrich
This can also be read as "Your Job as a Founder Is to Create Believers So You
Can Pay Your Employees Like Shit".

~~~
prawn
Or to be fairer to people just trying to run a company:

"Getting your employees to buy into your vision is usually more efficient than
overpaying them to stay."

There are many companies that don't underpay because they want to exploit
people but because they are trying to stay afloat.

------
idlewords
tl,dr to more effectively lie to others, learn how to lie to yourself

~~~
krapp
Remember... it's not a lie if _you_ believe it.

------
Animats
Suggested reading: "The Annihilation Score", by Charles Stross. This is the
latest in the Laundry series, about a unit of the British government which
deals with paranormal problems. They have to deal with someone who calls
himself "The Mandate". He has the power to make anyone around him believe what
he says, and he has political ambitions. (He can make _people_ believe him.
But the CCTV/face recognition system isn't fooled, and he's caught.)

~~~
fapjacks
You know the old question "What superpower would you have if you could have
any?"... I have _always_ answered this way. If you can make any number of
people believe anything you want, you wouldn't need any other superpower at
all. You would have absolute power over every other person in existence.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Sure, but you couldn't fly.

~~~
20100thibault
You could still get them to believe you can fly

