At two of the startups I’ve worked at, customers defrauded us of over a millions dollars. At three of them, employees defrauded the company of several hundred thousand dollars. Two times, we had a shortfall in customer support staff that caused a month-long wait time for responses. At one, the entire sales team quit within a period of two months. Once, we didn’t have enough money to make the next payroll and barely survived because an investor came through at the last minute. The product at most startups is buggy, vulnerable and often held together with duct tape.
Every startup I’ve been at looks like a slow-moving disaster internally. It’s very easy to start believing that everything is going to hell and you should find another company to work at. Given the low survival rate of startups, this is often the right call.
However, over the years of running startups, I’ve changed my view. The key is to not be scared by the pieces that are broken. This is a startup after all. Fix them but focus on the things that are, in fact, working. Why are customers signing up for what is obviously a buggy product? Why do customer continue to use our product despite a month-long backlog in customer support? Why do employees continue to be excited to work at the company? Why do investors continue to believe in us? Success in startups come from amplifying what’s working, not focusing all your time on what’s not.
One caveat: if you find the startup’s culture is broken and the founders have no intention of changing it, run for the hills!