Is it must for a founder to be a douchebag to succeed in startups
google douchebag if you do not know what it means
Good question, well I don't know for sure. But what makes me think is how did people like Narayan Murthy, Azim Premji built companies that is already in its 2nd generation and our so called modern entrepreneurs/founders find it tough to make their company last without next round of funding.
Maybe it's because of the mindset. Older entrepreneurs focused on building sustainable business while modern entrepreneurs are focused on chasing higher valuation which in turn makes the exit for founders lucrative. I feel, modern entrepreneurs never planned on running their company for lifetime. They always wanted to exit and hence chasing valuation.
Now as a result, to quickly achieve valuation, they want hyper growth within short span of time thus making the over-all culture toxic and aggresive and to run this culture, founders themselves have to be toxic.
don’t you think the Murthys and Premjis were douchebags too? who is happy working in those bodyshops
Interesting observation. Here are my thoughts. Major reason anyone would be unhappy to work in Wipro or Infosys would be salary. Other than that, I have not seen or heard people complaining about toxic work culture at Wipro or Infy. Sure, there are few teams always that are like that but we are talking about toxic work culture being a common occurrence across the organization (start-ups)
Now, for those, who are unhappy with salary, they can always upskill and switch to product companies. Reason for low salary in WITCH and high salary in FAANGs is purely unit economics, nothing else. But, in terms of wlb, WITCH are generally better. Real toxicity would have been making people work at low salary, firing them on whim, misbehaving with employees, fear mongering etc. It's rare to find all these in Wipro or Infosys unlike startups.
A while ago, someone in this forum mentioned about toxic co-founder of Quantiphi. So simply going by general pattern, older entrepreneurs may have created organization that are not paymasters but they haven't by design created organization where toxicity is practiced openly.
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