[cj]

In general, it doesn’t matter whether you’re open to the public or not.

What matters much more is that you’re open with your own employees.

The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation.

Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy, and one very easy way to do that is to show that you appreciate and respect them by sharing your company’s key metrics with them.

Not every month will be great, but that’s ok. If you’re running your business responsibly, you’ll be able to say “we didn’t have a great month, but we have 5 years of runway”.

If you hide metrics because your business is unsustainable, then yea, don’t show your metrics to anyone… and if you work for a private tech company with very guarded metrics, it’s safe to assume they are not doing well financially.

[fsckboy]

> Over the long-term, what really matters is keeping your people (employees) happy

<cough>customers<cough>

[FrontierPsych]

Probably the opposing vew to this is that if you keep your employees happy first, then they will be happy and keep your customers happy. If you have unhappy employees, they might not give a shit about customers and piss the customers off.

We've all been to those places where the employees don't give a fuck about customers, and basically tell you with their body language and tone of voice to fuck off.

Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7lGqmZprx0

You have to 1) break the egg first, then 2) put it in the pan and cook it, then 3) put it on a plate, then 4) eat it.

You can't do all those things simultaneously, you have to do them in sequential order.

1) Keep employee happy ==> then 2) you have a happy customer ==> then 3) the customer buys more shit from you

Employees come before the customer.

[dehrmann]

You have three pillars: customers, employees, and shareholders. Neglect any and bad things happen.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

Both

[havkom]

Yep. Employees and customers. Neglect any of them bad things happen.

Depending on your business you may have stable customers who just keep going. You can’t neglect these forever, but compared to employees it may be of lesser priority short-term.

If you neglect employees on the other hand, even short-term, bad things will happen short-term or long term. Employees remember when they were neglected and loyalties are hard to build.

[TristanBall]

Right. And the the my job/work/boss sucks trope is so relatable because?

There are many reasons people stay in a particular job, good and bad, but those same reasons allow for a lot of "employees neglect".

You have to neglect a lot of employees to an extreme level, for a long time, for it to actually make a significant difference. Mostly, you'll loose a few staff, who'll be replaced by new, keen, eager to please/succeed staff who's enthusiasm effectively mitigates poor management, and who's "tolerance for sh.tty management" counters have been reset to 0.

[cj]

Yes, but you do that through product + service. Customers don’t really care about your metrics.

[diob]

Not sure I agree.

Of the two places I've worked, the one who was hiding the metrics ended up having great financials and selling.

The other said they had to do layoffs but would be fine until X years later. A few months later they laid off another round of employees.

[whatshisface]

It's better to say nothing than it is to mislead or say something wrong, but best of all would be if they had been honest. I don't think that sounds like a disagreement.

[emodendroket]

Well, perhaps the issue is, how do I know whether I should trust what I am being told? So it puts you back in the same position anyway.

[chii]

> you appreciate and respect them by sharing your company’s key metrics with them.

So if those metrics arent painting a great picture, does the company assume that such trust and respect turn into loyalty?

In other words, the ultimate goal is to buy loyalty?

[no_butterscotch]

> The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation.

Similarly to me is the "democratizing X" startup. Those were never not about the same thing as every other startup: VC money and getting a return. But it was trendy to was "we're democratizing <thing>".

[ragnarsson]

For me democratizing can mean "We have done something hard and we are going to share the benefits of it for minimal gain". The business is not lucrative for others to copy because margins are low.

OpenAI is a capped profit company. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/. If they become as big as everyone today thinks they will become, they can be democratizing AI.

Also note that, lot of progress in AI has happened because big companies are willing to share their research publicly, which helps them in attracting talent.

The hard thing about Indie businesses is proving product-market fit. Rest of what they do can easily be copied even if they don't share info. Not sharing revenue numbers will just help them with others not going for similar ideas.

But sharing info leads to social media following, which is key to marketing for many of these companies.

[orra]

An 100x return on investment is hardly a cap, or a minimal gain.

OpenAI are a traditional for profit company, milking PR like “open source”, and “non-profit”, without being either.

[throw123123123]

Few phrases are as popular and as cringey as "democratizing X". Is it going to have voting? Political power? How did we get to the point that we use democratizing as a way to say popularizing.

And Robinhood still keeps saying this as a tagline!