On Management

Choosing the Only Management Style Startups Can Afford

If your startup is working well, you won't have to manage.

It’s both true and untrue at the same time, and it all depends on what your definition of management is.

When some people talk about management, what they mean is therapy. For them, management is trying to uncover problems or frustrations by probing into another's psyche.

And, yes, if that’s your definition of management, then the best startups don't need management. Or any startup for that matter.

And this is no shade on mental health. Mental health is incredibly important. It's just not your boss's job to be your therapist. I've seen exactly what this does firsthand at StartPlaying (SPG).

At one point, SPG was disorganized and poorly run. This was directly after we raised from a16z and started to scale. We hired somebody to fix it. And they believed the solution was workplace vulnerability. Their definition of trust was not a belief in thorough delegation in order to hit business objectives, but understanding teammates’ vulnerabilities.

So we spent a lot of time talking about vulnerabilities.

During our first “trust-building” exercise, we sat face-to-face, knee-to-knee, close enough to see individual nose hairs, and we vented frustrations.

Hearts were wrung, tears were shed, and I developed a month of chronic pain due to the stress of it all.

But look, we were failing. We were organizationally mismanaged. So anything is better than no change, I thought.

At our next offsite, we had a "coach" come in and interrogate us about vulnerabilities. They browbeat us for hours and forced us to relate tragic personal tales. And this time, it wasn't just the founders. The entire company circled up, and we talked about our deepest, darkest moments.

It was awful. The company was not made safer. Airing our trauma this way was traumatic itself.

For many people, this was the nadir of the company. We got nothing done, and we felt like everyone was out to get everyone else. It was a hostile jungle.

Worst of all, the proponent of these strategies thought they were a great manager. They were constantly discovering problems. Direct reports were opening up and crying in calls. And while this person may have been an excellent therapist (though I doubt it), their efforts didn't help. They almost tore the company apart.

It took months to undo that period when we thought management was therapy. It is not. And if your employees need therapy, invest in better healthcare, not “management”. If you’re not a licensed therapist, don’t act like one.

There's one other view of management that’s half true for startups: management as a career coach.

This view is absolutely correct at larger companies. Your goal is to develop your talent internally, make them the best versions of themselves, prep them for promotion, get them promoted, and level up your team. I think this is awesome. And some parts are needed for startups.

The only problem is promotion at startups hinges on two things: the individual's ability to get the job done, and more importantly, the company’s ability to meet objectives.

If the company doesn't grow, no one can get promoted. This is so important, I'm going to say it again. If the company doesn't grow, no one can get promoted.

This fact is the secret to how startups should be managed.

The way I think about management at startups is through the lens of a sports coach.

Now, when I say coach, I mean something pretty damn specific. I am not talking about your

Little League coach. Your Little League coach's job was not primarily to win. Their job was to provide a structured environment for you to learn and become a better person.

Instead, I'm talking about the coach of a professional sports team, whose job it is to win. Unlike a Little League team, they can kick players off if they aren't conforming to the program. They can demote them, they can hire new players – all that is necessary in order to win.

The beautiful thing about a sports coach is they have a definite objective. And if your CEO has done their job, your company will too. That means your primary job as a manager is to win at the company objective, to grow your company the fastest.

And let me be clear, you cannot career coach at a startup without winning, without growing. Even if someone becomes an excellent IC and has the potential to become an even better manager, you should not promote them until they have a team to manage. And they won't have that team unless the company grows.

You can see why this is so important. This aligns the company, manager and employee in the same direction. In order to have career growth, more salary, more responsibility, more impact in the long run, the number one thing that you can do at a startup is grow the startup.

So that's your job as a manager.

This involves resource allocation primarily. As a manager, you have a team. You best understand who fits what job in order to best achieve team objectives.

But there’s one more thing you must do as a manager. And this is equally hard, if not harder. You must set high standards.

When I was in high school, I used to run cross-country, a great sport for setting high standards. We had two different coaches on the team. One coach would always smile and pat me on the back, no matter how I performed, "You did great. You ran a good time out there. You really did your best."

The other coach would look at me and see my potential. And when I didn't meet it, they'd let me know, "You could’ve done better out there. You should’ve trained harder. Why didn't you push yourself 100%." They would push me to do better than I could alone.

Alone, I’d follow the 80-20 rule: get 80% of the value from 20% of the effort. And for the most part this worked. But at a startup, the 80-20 rule is never good enough. Users, especially consumers, expect high quality products. You can't just ship an 80% product and win the market. Instead, you need to ship 110%. You need to ship the best work that your team has ever done in order to win. And this is why a coach pushing you to give your all can be so helpful.

What’s even better, is that your team will thank you for pushing them. When your team does shoddy work, it's forgettable. It's like running a 5K at a mild clip. The miles just pass you by. Nothing is memorable about it. But if you push, if you make something that’s truly great, something that matches or exceeds your full potential, you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.

It will be tough. It will suck. But this is the reason why people join startups.

At a big company, you're always cushioned. You're always throttled. And only when you're going against reality, against the hard gravel of ground, can you go at 100%. And oftentimes, what drives folks at startups is knowing how far they can push themselves.

Just like a 5k, it’s hard to know whether you’ve got that final sprint in you, unless you go all the way. Runners hot on your heels. Elbows out. Lungs on fire. Body telling you no. Then and only then do you know what you've got. What a feeling.

It's your job as a manager to demand the best out of your employees. To help them fulfill their goals and their objectives, because they can't succeed unless the company succeeds. And because you're providing them an experience that everyone craves, but is hard to achieve on your own.

To do this, you need to become the master of saying little nos. Your team will constantly show you projects. And when the quality bar is too low, you have to say, "You can do better.”

This sucks. Humans aren't built for this. Humans are built to be reciprocal, to say yes as much as they say no. Saying no 95% of the time goes against every instinct you have, but it will make your company succeed and will bring true meaning to your teammates.

This also means when people don’t uphold high-quality standards, you need to let them go. In this case, you shouldn’t be saying no 95% of the time, but you’ll be saying no more than you want.

I remember a post on YC's internal forum about statistics of Series A startups. On average, 50% of employees do not make it past one year. They don't work out.

So yes, you’ll have to do this. Because if one person on your team is slacking, not pulling their weight, getting away with "cheating," the rest of the team that’s hauling ass will feel terrible. We’ve all heard, "A's hires A's and B's hire C's," but there's a fundamental truth to it – humans are lazy. If I see my friend putting in half the effort I do, but getting paid the same amount, well, that's a pretty big tell that I can be lazier. I can get away with it.

Despite knowing, it’s the right thing to do, firing is hard. I know this first hand.

The fixer that we hired, that pushed the idea that management is therapy, almost tore the company apart. And I let the problem fester for over a year, despite knowing what I had to do. Despite the mounting evidence.

I almost left the company to avoid making this decision because it was so hard.

But I faced it. And with the unwavering support of my cofounders, I let them go. From that point on, we stopped being therapists, stopped trolling for trauma, stopped avoiding the hard decisions, and started to manage.