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Podcast Interviews with Early Amazon.com Employees and Innovators

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Invent Like an Owner podcast

In April 2021, I launched a podcast called “Invent Like an Owner“, where I interview the folks who built Amazon.com. It’s mostly a passion project, to keep me busy, but I also thought it would be a fantastic archive for future entrepreneurs to learn from. Early interviews have included discussions with early Technical Program Managers, VPs of Engineering, Search Engineers, Custom Service Leaders, and more. The first 6 episodes are linked below, to make it easy for you to get a sense for what I’m trying to capture.

Click here to check out all of the Invent Like an Owner podcast episodes.

If you have suggestions for topics or guests, please contact me.

How do engineers know if they’re being screwed on compensation and equity?

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Compensation - Get paid what you are worthI recently met with an engineer who’s taken on CTO responsibilities for a very early-stage startup. Because the startup has been around for a while and initially tried to build the v1 product with an outsourced dev shop, she’s not a ‘founder’ and thus doesn’t have significant compensation (neither salary or equity). She had a number of questions, but one that I’ve heard repeatedly went something like this — “How do I know if I’m being screwed by the founder in terms of compensation and equity?”

There’s no perfect answer to this.  Obviously you’d want to check with your peers, but people often aren’t comfortable disclosing their own income for fear of finding out they’re out of whack, in either direction.  And their salary and equity can be significantly different than yours for valid reasons (i.e. if they founded the company, they may be taking little to no cash compensation since they own 50% or more of the company).  And you’d definitely start by checking industry comps at sites like GlassDoor, Payscale and new LA-based startup Comparably.

That information will help get you in the ballpark, but honestly, as is usual, the answer is “it depends”. There are many reasons that you may be justifiably underpaid.  Just because your CEO may seem to be underpaying you doesn’t make them evil; they’re balancing the needs of many shareholders, and trying to anticipate unknown risks.  My goal is to pay people (and issue equity) at levels that keep them both happy and motivated.  Ultimately, you need to decide if you feel like the pay/equity/experience/risk/reward tradeoff works for you, and you need to build your network to give you options.

These are a few of the payroll/equity factors that make it an ‘it depends’ situation:

  • The startup is not well funded.  If they still haven’t raised much/any money, they may not be able to compensate you at market rates.  In that situation, you could work with the founder to make sure that cash shortfall is offset with either deferred salary (payable after funds are raised) or extra equity to compensate for the imbalance.
  • You may be inexperienced.  If you’re in a situation where you’re drinking from a firehose and being given a chance to grow in many dimensions, part of your total compensation could be the value of that added experience and the opportunity to rapidly advance in a fast-growing company.  There are many stories about early employees at places like Uber where they came on board, took on myriad responsibilities, and are now senior managers (and future billionaires).  And I saw this firsthand during my early product management years at Amazon when I was given immediate opportunities to lead products/projects that future product managers would have to pursue for many years before given the same opportunities.
  • If you’re fairly paid, but under-equity’d, it may just be a timing issue.  Extremely early employees deserve more equity because they took a lot more risk.  Whereas if you’re coming in a year later (after a Series A fundraise has occurred), there’s a lot less risk and thus you likely aren’t going to get the same equity as employees who are doing similar jobs.  It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
  • Your geographic situation matters.  This should be obvious, but employees in San Francisco, New York and London get paid a lot more than those in Portland, Pittsburgh and Berlin.  So, try to compare apples to apples.

How can you improve your compensation situation?

  • Do your research and have the honest/open discussions with your boss.  Then, either get comfortable with your situation as quickly as possible, or move on (assuming you have other opportunities).  Obviously, you need to be able to walk away.  Don’t stay in a bad work marriage.  It’s unlikely to fix itself with time.
  • If you’re evaluating a position similar to the one the CTO got herself into, sign on as a contractor for 3 to 6 months.  That gives you time to demonstrate your ‘founder-ness’ to the CEO before you talk specifics on equity.  This way the CEO will know what they’re giving up if you leave because they aren’t willing to pony up for founder-level equity.  Of course, it also gives you a lower-investment opportunity to evaluate the CEO and company as well.
  • This particular person was also a recent London transplant, so her network wasn’t very established.  I recommended that she connect with a few of the active and respected local seed-stage VCs (LocalGlobe, Notion Capital) and accelerators (Seedcamp, Techstars, Entrepreneur First).  They ALWAYS have teams that are in need of technical leadership.  But don’t go looking for a job.  Rather, volunteer to assist their teams with technical issues/questions and get to know a host of companies.  Then, when the light bulb goes off for the startup/investor and they want to make you a CTO/founder offer, they’ll be much more willing to pony up market-rate equity and salary.  That’s both because they have the funding to do it, and also because they already KNOW you’re a good fit.  Plus, you may land yourself with a higher-likely-success situation because they’re backed by savvy investors with strong support structures.

What obvious scenarios or complicating factors did I miss?

How to be a Good Mentor (6+ Mentoring Tips)

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The Techstars Barclays Accelerator (in London) is kicking off and that means that mentoring season is upon us. And although I’m doing my best to ‘just say no’ to anything resembling work in the near-term, I’m still meeting regularly with a few founders and early-stage-career folks every month. In fact, I have a mentor session (facilitated by awesome London VC, LocalGlobe) in an hour, helping a young woman develop her near-term career plan.

So, that had me thinking about what I’ve learned about mentoring over the last 10+ years, and why I’ve continued to invest the time.  Assuming you’re interested in the topic, I also recommend that you read the Techstars Mentor Manifesto — I haven’t read it prior to writing this post, so that it wouldn’t sway my own thoughts, but I try to read it at least once per year, as it gets my head screwed on straight before all-day mentor sessions.

These are my recommendations for being a good value-add mentor (in a startup-specific capacity):

  1. Listen (aka Shut Your Trap) – you’re not there to tell them what to do.  You’re just as likely to be wrong.  And they’ve thought about their idea for a long time.  Admit that you would have told the AirBnB team that they were nuts.  And you’d have told Uber to pivot to something else.   So, squint your eyes and ears, to see if they’re creating the future.
  2. Ask Questions – these will often help the startup team think about their product, or their situation.  This can often be a way to make suggestions without criticizing.  And by answering your questions, you’ll help the founders prepare for the same from investors, potential employees, the press, and more.  And those questions will possibly impact their product roadmap.
  3. Be Supportive – founders have enough fears and insecurities; they don’t need yours.  I’m not recommending lying to them.  But be tactful with your feedback.
  4. Give Honest Feedback – This is the complement to ‘Be Supportive’, and why I try to be brutally honest.  I try to ask questions, explain my perspective, and then get back to listening.
  5. Qualify Your Feedback – always remember to qualify your feedback with “this is just my opinion — see if others share the same…”.  Because they’re likely getting conflicting opinions from legions of people with opinions.
  6. Be Willing to Be Helpful – if you have an intro or lead that you think can materially benefit the founder, offer it (but don’t make it without getting approval from both sides).  Do not be an over-introducer!

That’s my short list.  I’m sure I missed a bunch, but if you follow the above list, you’d have a positive day for both you and the founders.

What did I miss?

Offsites for Startups – Why They’re Needed and How to Conduct Them

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Let me set the stage.  You started your company 12-18 months ago with incredible energy, formed a great team, raised some money, and got to work.  You talked with customers, implemented scrum, drank a lot of coffee, shipped some product, held some launch parties, and attended a ton of entrepreneur-focused events.  All was great, for a while.

Then you started noticing some signs that things weren’t all rosy on the home front, and fear started creeping in:

  • you felt like your team wasn’t working long enough hours during the week, and God forbid put in a weekend effort, even though sprints ended with undone tasks
  • other startups seem to have much better cultures, and overall get more done
  • you wonder why team members don’t stretch themselves more to take on additional tasks, or try new things
  • kitchen-cleanup never seems to be done by certain people
  • certain team members log 5x the bugs of anyone else on the team
  • the team is talking less with one another, and snapping at each other more often
  • folks aren’t as enthusiastic to attend happy hours together

If any of these are familiar, I’d recommend that you consider holding a team offsite, and make offsites part of your regular routine.  You may feel like they are a bit Dilbertesque, but I’ve personally found them to be very helpful, and I’ve also given this advice to other CEOs at rapidly-growing ($10s of millions in revenue) startups, and they came back with very positive feedback as well.

Why hold offsites?
They are a great way to reset the team – think of them as another CEO tool to engineer for peak efficiency.  You get a chance, out of the office, to (a) share high-level successes and failures, (b) set expectations, (c) get feedback from the team, and really, to remind everyone that they’re important parts of your unique culture and thus have both a right and obligation to actively participate (this is one of the reasons they’re working for you and making less money than they would at a big company, right?!?)  And, hopefully you’ll have some fun as well.

When should you hold offsites?
See above 🙂  It’s possible to just do them ‘as needed’; but you’ll likely find a normal flow to needing them.  My experience has been that they make sense every 4-6 months, as a certain amount of scarring builds up from the stresses of sprints, bugs, and realized inefficiencies.

How do you organize your offsite?
Obviously, you’ll come up with your own flavor over time.  But, if it’s your first one, and your team is 3-10 people, this is what I recommend as a rough template.

First, I’d recommend requesting/requiring ‘writing assignments’ from all team members.  They don’t need to be long (a paragraph or two can answer each, and grammar isn’t important).  Send these out a few days ahead of time, and ask them to email their replies to you the afternoon before the offsite.  Examples of questions we used:

  • Why did you join this startup?  What do you want to accomplish?  What’s success for YOU?
  • What do you expect from your co-workers?  And what should they expect from you?
  • Rank our core values in order of importance/relevance.
  • Are there any we should remove, or add?
  • What future features/product changes do you feel strongly that we should consider? (they don’t need to be on our current roadmap

I promise that you will be inspired by the answers you receive.  This simple exercise will remind everyone why they joined your company, and let them say in their own words what their goals are, rather than listening to you set the agenda.  And, they’ll help you course correct, as a team, if there are competing agendas.

Rough time/agenda:

  • 30-60 minutes (probably a few slides prepared by you to make it easy to follow) – review goals, accomplishments, failures (not finger pointing – they are what they are)
  • 2ish hours – have people read their answers to the writing assignments.  Do one question, with answers from everyone, before moving on to the next question.  There will definitely be some overlap in answers, but I promise you that the team will be inspired to hear the goals and expectations, coming from the individual team members themselves.  You should take notes, listening for themes that should be addressed, or issues that you can quickly resolve (do this later in the offsite, rather than real time, so that you allow everyone’s voice to be heard — this also allows you to stay out of tactical shifts in real-time).
  • Team lunch/BBQ – make it together (usually this is easy if you hold the offsite at someone’s house, or at a place where you can cook outside).  Invariably you’ll have a few team members who are more adept in the kitchen, and can drive this.
  • 30 minutes – review what you heard from everyone in the morning.  Are there themes that arose that can or should be addressed?  Any surprises from people?

These last sections could have some prepared slides to review with everyone:

  • 30 minutes – Review how you think your business model works (with actual metrics).  Get reaction to this — is it reality?
  • 30 minutes – Review current Product Backlog / Quick-Hit Backlog (top 20-40 of each).  How do these mesh with earlier discussions?  Any changes needed?
  • 30 minutes – Discuss ‘how’ you get work done.  Review your processes (scrum, release cycles, etc). Are changes needed?   Longer/shorter?  Work hours/effort needed/expected?  (you may be surprised that others want to see bigger efforts as well!)  Make some changes based on what the team’s telling you, if you all think it will help you achieve your goals.
  • 2-3 hours – true/fun activity.  Don’t force it.  Figure out something that fits with your culture, and includes everyone.  For TeachStreet, this may have been us taking a class together (and then going for beers).  But the connection to our culture/values was important, even here.

What do you do after the offsite?
I think it’s important that on the day after the offsite, you summarize what you heard (get feedback if anyone thinks you missed anything important), and share/implement changes or next steps immediately. Don’t lose the momentum from the day!  This can be a powerful way to reset expectations, and make it clear that everyone shared in them.

These are some examples of changes I’ve seen, or been part of.  You’ll come up with your own:

  • developed our list of core values
  • implemented new sprint cycle length because our initial one was too short (we were spending too much time planning, and too little time building)
  • started new process to share work product regularly, on Friday afternoons
  • added a new comped snack policy (people asked if we could have snacks — we quickly said “sure – $100-$150/week in snacks – only requirement is that we all shared the responsibility to place the order each week”)
  • new work-hour expectations (this is a never-ending challenge!)

Hopefully you’ll come out of the day with more collective energy, and renewed team focus.  And in a few months, you’ll likely need to do it all over again, for many of the same reasons.  Your organization is an evolving organism, so you need to constantly shed the bad behaviors, and try new ones that feel right for your team.  Good luck!

p.s. Please share any offsite tips in the comments.

Recruiting and Interviewing Tips for Early Stage Startups

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recruiting a great team

As part of my time with startups at AWS Office/Mentor sessions, I’m often asked to give a presentation on some interviewing and recruiting tips for startups. The advice is actually pretty germane to all recruiting.  This presentation can be found here (having issues getting the embed to work directly on my blog…).

End of day, recruiting for me is about a few things:

  1. Know what you’re recruiting for.  Of course, you need to know what specific skills you want for the role.  But more important, you need to know the culture you want for your team, and the types of people you want.  Then you have to set the bar for greatness and be 100% sure you nail your must-haves, and that the candidate raises the bar on at least a few dimensions.
  2. Know what you’re going to ask the candidates.  You should have prepared before the interview, and have your questions planned (and you should have used your questions with candidates previously, so that you know what a great answer looks like)
  3. Use a behavioral interviewing technique.  Once you know what you’re looking for, ask repeatedly for them to give you examples from their past where they demonstrated those characteristics.  Dig into their answers. Ask them what their role was on the team.  How did they know they achieved the goal, or failed.  What did they do change based on what they learned, and what was the person’s specific ownership/deliver element with that?
  4. Take a lot of notes during the interview.  What did you ask?  How did they answer?  Develop shorthand for flagging the good and bad, so you can distill it later, and/or ask follow-on questions.
  5. Develop a firm opinion.  Are they a strong hire?  A Hire?  A No Hire?  Or, a dreaded Strong No Hire?  Be ready to explain to the other interviewers why you said so, and be able to explain the questions you asked, and where they fell short.  This is where your notes are critical.

There are a few other tips/tricks in there:

  • Some questions I almost always ask at the beginning/end of interviews, and why, such as “What did you do to prepare for this interview?”, “What 3 changes do you think we need to make to our product, to blow away our customers”, and “What 3 adjectives would your past co-workers/managers use to describe you?”
  • How to structure interview loops, and why I recommend interviewing many candidates at once, if possible – it makes it so much easier to spot passion and preparedness when you interview several candidates on the same day, or in succession.
  • How to prepare all of the interviewers (everyone should have assigned characteristics to interview for; everyone should agree that they will independently determine a hire/no-hire vote with detail supporting it; debrief within 24 hours)
  • Why spending more than 2 minutes on a resume walk-thru is lazy/pointless, and a way to get a quick overview, but force them to tell you the story of why it makes sense that your role is perfect for them (and you)
  • What to look for with references (evidences of ‘greatness’; dig on anything where they aren’t raving about a candidate; everyone has dev areas)

Hiring for Startups (by @DaveSchappell) from Dave Schappell

I mentioned it on the final slide of the presentation, but it benefited greatly from contributions from Neil Roseman and Mark Suster (noticing a trend here?) — and another awesome post from Brett Hurt (founder at both BazaarVoice and CoreMetrics).