
The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup - yarapavan
https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8
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ta1234567890
> The Cadence is an operating philosophy that I first learned as COO of PayPal
> (during the so-called “PayPal Mafia” founding era) and then adapted for SaaS
> as founder/CEO of Yammer

And then what happened with Zenefits? Seems like the system isn't foolproof,
even when being implemented by an expert veteran.

It's interesting how almost everyone that succeeds, looks back afterwards and
comes up with some rational explanation of their success. However very few
people aknowledge the outsized influence of just pure luck, being in the right
place at the right time and knowing the right people to make it happen.

If the reasons that people come up as explanations for their success were
true, then they would be able to repeat the same thing over and over at
virtually zero risk, because they now have the formula for success. But it
just doesn't happen (or just very very rarely).

David Sacks' cadence system looks cool, and by all means adopt it if it helps
you run your company better, but don't dream about magically becoming a
unicorn just because of it.

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spyckie2
From a random article discussing Zenefits' rise and fall:

> This institutionalized cheating finally caught up with the San Francisco-
> based Zenefits last week, when Parker Conrad, the 35-year-old co-founder and
> CEO, was forced to resign over what the company described as widespread
> failures of regulatory compliance. The shakeup, announced in a blistering
> memo from David Sacks, the executive who took over as CEO, stunned the tech
> establishment, which had supported Zenefits' rise.

It seems that Sacks inherited Zenefit's problems, not created them. I think
citing Zenefits is not a valid argument, either a straw man or just low on the
hierarchy of disagreement.

It is fair to point out that he states it is the main cause of why Yammer
became a billion dollar company, and by implication, this will also help you
become a unicorn, in very self-help novel writing fashion.

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bsder
> It seems that Sacks inherited Zenefit's problems, not created them. I think
> citing Zenefits is not a valid argument, either a straw man or just low on
> the hierarchy of disagreement.

Uh, no. Sacks doesn't get to slide out of this.

Zenefits didn't just have a single instance of this due to one person. It was
widespread up and down the _entire_ chain and was the typical "move fast and
break things" of Silicon Valley.

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Aeolun
But in this article isn’t he arguing for the opposite?

His methodology is to go fast but steady.

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seizethecheese
Whether you agree with this or not, you must admit that it’s not the typical
VC fluff piece. It is specific and actionable.

Is there a similar guide for consumer companies?

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slgeorge
I will say that _as a coo_ I really like this first sentence:

    
    
        You think you need a COO. What you really need is an operating philosophy.
    

I don't like the world "philosophy" but perhaps I'm just playing to type since
COO's are known for not liking the hyperbolic :-)

The point is that lots of teams assign operational discipline to an individual
leader or later a team. Irrelevant of the specific methodology ingraining the
idea of "create a plan, report on plan" is really important. I don't think
that the specific cadence or the nature of the plan matters anywhere near as
much as simply having something and measuring yourself against it. That's
something the whole team has to take on board - rather than just making it one
person's responsibility.

The cadence thing is driven by how much forward view you have, how big the
organisation is and how much resource you have available for
planning/reporting. The goal is to do "just enough" to drive the business
forward - your constantly trying to manage the goldilocks level of chaos (not
too much, and not too little). As the business grows and there are more layers
and complexity then the length of the planned cycle and the requirements of
the cadence will increase.

I understand the point about difference cadence's, personally it's more
complexity than I'd like to manage.

Last thing I'd mention is that it's a lot easier to add process than it is to
remove it: the negative impact is that it will tend to slow-up the
organisation. While adding more process and systems is needed as you grow -
the organisation (and certainly the COO/Ops team) should regularly assess
whether the whole system fits - process/systems tend to accrete - sometimes
that means stopping doing things. The goal is to provide the conditions so the
organisation can function well (generally meaning grow) - you need just enough
scaffolding to support the organisations goal, as the shape changes you need
to remove some bits of scaffolding and support other parts that are under
pressure.

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algorithm314
Am I the only one that thought this was about the EDA company?

~~~
rusticpenn
Me too :/

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droitbutch
Times change. This article would have been very useful 20 years ago, but after
reading about and playing with GPT-3, I can't help but feel the article is
dates itself. Focuses too much about operating at human-pace and fails to
recognize we're moving into bot-pace. Bots don't care about quarters,
calendars, or meetings.

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dashwav
I think that is a very optimistic view of how things are currently - I think
80-90% of all business still operates in a similar organizational fashion as
it did 20 years ago, and it is changing linearly at best, not exponential.

~~~
mrgreenfur
Pretty sure the parent is joking that robots will take over...

