[citizenpaul]

>I spent nearly 4 years working on Workplace from Meta, so I’m familiar with building in this space.

Some VC guy said this is one of the biggest red flags he looks for in a startup. It almost always leads to failure. I dont remember the exact reasons but something like it means the startup doesnt understand fundamental market segment issues and grit required to overcome them.

[JacobAldridge]

I have a similar 'rule' (advising to small businesses) - as a company scales from 1 to 12 to 35 to 120 to 1000 people [1], they move through different phases.

So I see a lot of my clients in the 12-35 person 'Process' phase being excited when they hire someone from a 120+ person company, because of all the expertise they can bring. But that 'Strategy' phase expertise, often when they have a full team and budget to execute their ideas, rarely translates to a smaller business where they also have to roll up their sleeves and GSD.

Sitting in a team building stuff for Meta is definitely a whole other ballpark to convincing Dave's Accounting LLC to give your Slack-competitor a chance.

[1] https://jacobaldridge.com/business/the-growth-transitions-th...

[mikebenfield]

Sorry, could you clarify? What specifically is the red flag?

[WJW]

The statement "I worked on X at BigCo Y" does not imply that the person has enough knowledge about X to start a startup with. The problems you have when starting a new project under the wings of an existing company (especially one so large as Meta) are very different than you get when starting a new startup, so the experience does not carry over to the new company as some people expect.

[vehementi]

Presumably making your own Slack, or more generally spending time on things you don't have a competitive advantage at by reinventing someone else's wheel