How going too fast and furious might ruin your organization. The key fintech events in the recent week had a very different tone than 2021, which was full of huge rounds, partying, and high valuations.
Fast of all, a three-year-old one-click checkout firm, announced its closure after failing to find more funding. Given that there had been signals of difficulty.
As revealed by The Information the week before, the statement wasn’t totally unexpected. The startup only made $600,000 in revenue in 2021 after obtaining $120 million in venture funding earlier in the year (in a round led by Stripe). Speculations that the company was having problems acquiring new cash and would be looking for a buyer.
On social media (primarily Twitter), there were different reviews of the company’s death. I’ll skip the exact tweets and just say this: a company going out of business should not be a reason for rejoicing.
In spite of how much stupidity on the part of managers or others inside the group helped to the company’s failure. Most of its employees most likely worked extremely hard to help it succeed. They do not deserve to be derided or bullied, even if not directly.
Executive power, on the other hand, is a different issue. (For example, while announcing the closure of your company, don’t refer to yourself as a trailblazer.)
What’s the takeaway from this?
In life and especially in the startup industry, humility goes a long way.
Don’t start bragging about yourself until you have something to brag about. Even then, let your results speak for themselves. On a more positive (and rather uncommon) note, BNPL behemoth Affirm announced. It will be hiring “the great majority” of Fast engineers, as reported by Natasha Mascarenhas.
Better.com has made the news yet again, this time for its hubris. On April 6, the digital mortgage lender offered corporate personnel, product, and design.
The engineering staff has the option to voluntarily leave the company in exchange for paid severance and 60 days of health coverage. When I contacted the corporation, I was told that it was losing as much as $50 million every month.
The next day, TechCrunch received a recording of a Zoom meeting in which Better.com CEO Vishal Garg addressed the remaining employees. The company fired off 900 employees, or around 9% of its workforce, on December 1. In a nutshell, the recording was harrowing.
Garg made a number of alarming
Damaging admissions during the recording, including confessing that the company “pissed away” $200 million of the $250 million it made last year. He lacked discipline when it came to Better’s hiring plan at the start of the pandemic. CTO Diane Yu was moving from her role as Chief Technology Officer a position she had just begun in January 2021.
Better.com had a solid business that was doing well at one point, as my friend (and other EquityPod co-host). Alex Wilhelm and I talked on the episode this week — good enough to attract the likes of SoftBank and to be intending to go public via a SPAC. (Not that we didn’t see the deck.)
Former employees also agree that the firm’s underlying technology is actually rather good.
In any event, simply by virtue of the mistakes its leadership has made over the last few years, it’s safe to conclude that, like Fast, many Better.com employees are reeling from what has happened, and my heart goes out to them. Alex and I both agree that humble CEOs frequently achieve better results than their less humble rivals.
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