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Surprisingly good, thoughtful, experienced,
well informed, mature. Definitely get
the transcript and slides. For some of the work, e.g., trademarks,
I would suggest getting those filed
earlier than "later-stage". Similarly
for the bookkeeping, tax planning and
taxes, accounting, employee benefits,
stock planning, where to put the
intellectual property
to lease back to the operating business,
etc. Altman suggested each year, for the
first 10 years, assign another
3-5% of the stock to employees.
That sounds generous and like it
would create one heck of an internal
fight for stock. Once an apparently wise adviser told
me, "Never give stock to an employee
who doesn't contribute directly to
earnings.". For some more on leadership and culture, also
draw from the AVC.com blog user JLM's contributions
and links, often back to JLM's Web site,
at Fred Wilson's blog AVC.com. JLM
has long been
the most popular contributor
to that blog. Altman seemed to want a fairly strict
organizational
hierarchy. He recognized that too little
hierarchical organization can be bad
but was not clear on just how much
a good hierarchy should do. A strict hierarchy can lead to a lot
of goal subordination
(where a middle manager
works for their own interests
largely against the interests of
the company),
process and
formality over reality and progress,
fighting with people down the hall
instead of against problems inside the company
or competitors outside,
arrogance, fear that any effort at
innovation could have a lot of
downside with nearly no chance of
upside, fear that good success
could lead to jealousy and
attacks from above, narrowly
just managing the existing
business with no interest in
progress for new business directions
or even for the existing business, etc. For how to get work done and evaluate
employees outside of just a strict
hierarchy, I'm entertaining borrowing
from other work. E.g., when someone
sees a problem, find a likely person,
or for a really big problem a person
and some assistants for a team, and
(a) have them investigate and
write a paper and give a presentation
describing the problem, its importance,
etc. If continue, then (b) have them
do some research and write a paper,
etc., on proposed solutions and give
a presentation. (c) If continue, then
have them write a paper, etc., planning
the implementation of the solution.
(d) If continue, then have them write a paper
on the implementation with budgets,
other resources, milestones, quality
control, due dates, progress
reporting, etc. (e) If continue,
then have them proceed as in (d). At employee evaluation time, look
at the papers and, especially, the
completed projects. I definitely intend to get the
transcript and slides. Apparently
Altman has learned a lot, somewhere,
in his own start-ups, watching
YC start-ups, somewhere. |