What's š„ in Enterprise IT/VC #247
How to scale from 100 to 700 people in 2 years? Here's Dipti's (VP People) playbook from Snyk
The war for talent could not be more brutal these days and I love solutions like the Future Founder Promise from GraphCDN and TurboRepo - itās what makes the startup world go round and round!
Speaking of talent, Dipti Salopek, VP People at Snyk ( a portfolio co), shared her playbook for scaling your talent engine and published her Hypergrowth Playbook. Iāve seen Dipti firsthand help Snyk go from 100 to 700 people in two years with hires from all over the world and highly recommend learning from her experience. Here are 7 š to start as you go from startup to scaleup:
1. DonātĀ just recruit, build a recruiting engine
2. Keep raising the talent bar
3. Lean in to your culture
4. Create a learning organization
5. Adapt how you communicate
6. Strengthen your Core HR processes
7. Operate with Data
As always, šš¼ for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues.
Scaling Startups
Rahul at Superhuman (a portfolio co) is one of best storytellers I know and here he shares how to tell a billion dollar story along with parallels to the Heroās Journey (I recommend reading the classic book, the Hero with a Thousand Faces)
With the right story, you can close investors, captivate customers, and inspire your team toward your next big milestone.
The most powerful stories have 3 key ingredients ā and the way you tell them will make or break your startup. Let's dive inā¦
Call to Adventures, Victory Over Crisis, Transformationā¦
Letās not forget this šš¼
Marcelo Lebre@marcelo_lebreRemote work is not the future of work, it is a way to get there. The future of work is working to achieve your dreams and not sacrificing your dreams to work.2:54 PM Ā· Jul 19, 202171 Reposts Ā· 478 LikesSo many ways to hire and scale - here is one at Gumroad
Sahil@shlOur hiring process at Gumroad is now 100% asynchronous except for a 15-minute phone call. Meaning thereās now a bunch of people I work with everyday and I have no idea what they look like.1:47 PM Ā· Jul 22, 2021144 Reposts Ā· 2.97K Likesthis could be you - Zoom acquired Johnās company for $14.7B
john sung kim@JohnSungKimI started @Five9 in my apartment in SF many years ago with the idea of liberating call center agents (like me) from centralized boiler rooms. As a longtime fan and user of @Zoom, Iām proud to say that this is the final chapter for my first startup. google.com/amp/s/texasnewā¦
2:28 AM Ā· Jul 19, 202180 Reposts Ā· 1.35K LikesLove this
Nick Mehta@nrmehtaIf you intend to run your company for a long time, one key role as CEO becomes being the "historian." Many people that work for you won't have the context of how your team got to where they are at - and of why things worked and didn't work. It's your job to remember the stories.1:54 PM Ā· Jul 20, 202193 Reposts Ā· 1.04K Likesšš¼ great advice from Mathilde (Front - a portfolio co) - a great skill to learn for founders as they continue to scale their business
Mathilde Collin@collinmathildeGiving AND receiving feedback is hard, so I wrote my best, most practical tips to make it easier for everyone. It's helped me both in my professional and personal life!collinmathilde.medium.com7 doās and donāts to get better at giving and receiving feedback
8:27 PM Ā· Jul 13, 20211 Repost Ā· 36 Likes
Enterprise Tech
Great read from Jean Yang at Akita Software Why Arenāt There More Programming Languages Startups along withš§µ on HackerNews: donāt let title mislead you as itās beyond programming languages and also about dev tools and developer needs in general
ā”ļø Jean Yang ā”ļø@jeanqasaurWhy aren't there more startups based on programming languages and software analysis? There's definitely a need for SOMETHING, as developers have so much pain. I was recently on a panel where someone asked this question. I didn't have time to answer then, so here's a thread. 1/7:12 PM Ā· Jul 14, 202139 Reposts Ā· 266 LikesAnd šš¼ this is huge and many times forgotten and the difference between a true developer first tool and one that is not
ā”ļø Jean Yang ā”ļø@jeanqasaurI also often see programming tools people ignore design. Design isn't about increasing prettiness, it's about reducing friction to solving valuable problems. Today, there's a design gap in between many cool programming technologies and the tools they could become. 5/7:29 PM Ā· Jul 14, 202115 Reposts Ā· 105 LikesState of DevOps report from Puppet is out
Yvonne Wassenaar@ytechdataOne decade ago @puppetize released our first #StateOfDevOps Report. Today I'm proud to share our 10th report with you. This report is focusing on cultural blockers are keeping mid-evolution firms stuck in the middle. Download it now:bit.lyState of DevOps Report 2021 | Puppet
2:45 PM Ā· Jul 20, 20215 Reposts Ā· 12 LikesCapital One is one of most forward thinking Fortune 500s - still so much room for innovation for everyone else which means more spending on š„ļø and developers š° - Capital One Adding 3,000 Tech Staff to Build on Cloud Banking Leadership
More than 75% of this yearās expected 3,000 new hires will be engineers, he said, with expertise in areas such as cloud, data, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and security. Designing for mobile will also be a key area, he added, since online and mobile are increasingly popular ways that Capital One customers interact with the bank.
The bank decided 8 or 10 years ago that to compete it had to develop its own software.
āBefore that, Capital One leveraged third parties to build apps, but the bank recognized the winners would be great tech companies with the risk management skills of a leading bank. In 2012 we started to redefine who we were as a company, with the goal to being a bank that a tech company would build,ā added Nims.
āWe have reinvented our operating model, moving to 100% agile for delivery of software, leveraging micro services and building on open source software. By moving to AWS and re-architecting our entire data set we have dramatically advanced our ability to manage data at a larger scale, which created the foundation to leverage machine learning.
šÆ - best open source and developer first cos I know subscribe to this and over time it becomes an incredible moat
GREG ISENBERG@gregisenbergDon't build a customer base. Build a fan base I'd rather a fan over a customer any day of the week2:27 PM Ā· Jul 20, 202181 Reposts Ā· 708 LikesMany times forgotten since focus is on code when it comes to APIs and dev tools - but documentation and ease of use matters as you only have seconds before a dev goes somewhere else
Matt Asay@mjasayThe best doc writers don't get paid what the best developers do. Should they? Arguably they have as great an impact on the adoption of that code.... Would love your thoughts tek.io/2UQzj73 by @mjasay for @TechRepublictek.ioShould documentation writers get paid more than developers?
4:17 PM Ā· Jul 19, 202115 Reposts Ā· 50 LikesWithout great documentation, great code...isn't. Great documentation, after all, makes code more approachable, more useful. Bad code? Well, asĀ The Taproom CEO Kelly Vaughn tweeted, "Please, please, PLEASEāI am begging youāinvest time and resources into your documentation. I've been running in circles for 3 days now trying to solve the same problem because the documentation is terribly lacking."
If you want a quick summary of the NSO Groupās spyware story, read this š§µ
Bill Marczak@billmarczakTHREAD with a couple of interesting bits from @AmnestyTech's new report on what they learned from looking for NSO Group's spyware on phonesamnesty.orgForensic Methodology Report: How to catch NSO Groupās Pegasus
4:46 PM Ā· Jul 18, 20211.08K Reposts Ā· 1.74K Likes
Markets
Whatās ahead for the economy?
AlexisOhanian.eth 7ļøā£7ļøā£6ļøā£@alexisohanianš· Bubonic plague ā”ļø Renaissance š· Spanish Flu ā”ļø Roaring 20s š· COVID-19 ā”ļø ???2:21 PM Ā· Jul 19, 202188 Reposts Ā· 808 Likesš¦š¦š¦
erin griffith@eringriffithThere are now 900 unicorns worth $1 trillion š¤Æ news.crunchbase.com/news/unicorn-sā¦news.crunchbase.comThe Worldās Unicorns Are Now Valued At $3T ā Up By A Trillion In The Past Year. Who Invested?
12:43 AM Ā· Jul 20, 202140 Reposts Ā· 125 LikesMore on Zoom acquisition of Five9 - never quitā¦
someguyCarl@TheRealCarlChi1I love the Five9 story. IPO'ed in '14. Growth deceled - ended 2014 @ 17% Q4 growth and low 20s full year (ouch!) Stock was left for dead but the team put its head down and executed. Averaged 27%+ annually from 2015 - 2020 and accelerated massively in 20/21. 40x stock from bottom.1:40 AM Ā· Jul 19, 20215 Reposts Ā· 151 Likesš¤Æ
Ari Levy@levynewsThis is crazy Zoom went public a little over 2 years ago with a market cap of $9.2 bln. Now itās buying a company for $14.7 bln.2:57 AM Ā· Jul 19, 202145 Reposts Ā· 445 LikesA rising cloud lifts all boats - IBM
Total cloud revenue grew 13% compared with a year earlier to $7 billion with Red Hat sales surging 20% during the quarter. IBM reaffirmed its prior outlook of delivering revenue growth for the full year. āWe are pleased with the early signs of progress,ā Krishna said on a conference call of the companyās shift to cloud and AI. āHowever, it will take time before we realize the full benefit of these changes.ā
