What do CXO exits in a profitable startup mean

Be it about investors, co-founders, hires, freelancers, family, or yourself

Today’s startups are using the interns/employees to the point of exhaustion(taking work of 12-14 hours) but returning in penny without any job security, you just do a small mistake(actually which may not be called a mistake also) and to fulfil their ego the management will kick you out anytime. It’s we, the employees, who are helping organisations show upper trend so that they can bag Series A, B etc. Whereas the co-founders and higher hierarchy members are enjoying limitless wealth in form of salary and also going every then and now on holiday trips. Today’s co-founders are not leaving any stone unturned in reaching a new low.

I'm seeing so many posts where startup employees are cribbing about things like layoffs, work culture etc etc. Doesn't seem like they have perspective on everything it takes to build a startup. I've built a failed startup myself and have immense respect for founders who are grinding it out there in such difficult recessionary circumstances. And then you have so many of the engineers and PMs cribbing about basics without talking about important things like learning growth, building for the future etc. Why such myopia? I work at a big tech and envy the speed at which startups move, the big responsibility everyone gets to handle, the fast career growth. All these things are being cribbed about. They crib about founders wanting more. Their job is to ensure success, not to give lifetime jobs to entitled people. They have more headaches you can imagine. In my small startup I had a million headaches. I can only imagine how hard it must be to run larger ships. Is everyone joining a startup these days looking for a get rich quick scheme?

Fast learning and fast paced growth aside, after 15 years of MNC experience I joined a startup to get some ESOPs.. and hopefully a good buyback .. I have worked in 2 startups now.Both of these were already Unicorns when I joined . While I love the culture and dynamic pace of a startup i feel my chances of getting a payout are slim... My personal learning is to get a good reward you have to be in top 10 employees for sure ... otherwise it's not worth it .. There is no point joining a Unicorn in middle management...or second in command in any function... Happy to hear your thoughts !

Hey Viners, do you think Startups should provide the details of their financial health to new employees so as for employees to know where they stand ??? Many startups, no financial transparency, founders who say we have enough runway, all bs and in the end laying off people, reducing benefits. Doing secondaries for founders and making big money and running away

Hi , this post is intended to be a disclaimer to anyone who is planning to join Yubi. A lot of things are happening here that show some signs of an impending layoff 1) Several senior folks in tech and product have quit. Also there is no replacement hiring planned for them. Several projects are also getting shelved as a result. 2) there were several open roles a few weeks back and almost all of them are on hold as of now across all depts( tech , business , ops) 3) rampant cost cutting. The lunch options have been reduced to just 1 dal , 1 veg , rice and chapati. Snacks have been removed too. Because of several folks quitting in less than 6 months and no replacement hiring , load has increased tremendously on existing members who are themselves trying to leave. People have serious doubts on whether any hike or bonus will be given or not this year.

1. Fancy talks from founders such as ownership, independence, building for next generation, speed etc 2. Learn new tech 3. Glofiying working at odd hours 4. Don't talk about stress and anxiety Start ups are not for weak heart and normal humans who have life after work. It's only for people who will give up their life to build somone else dream. Prove me wrong. An ex ola person cried infront of me for the workplace stress and unrealistic push

NextLevel has entered maintenance mode. Friends working on it have kind of confirmed. Idk why they even started this product. There was zero need for it, but management just HAD to have their way. Everyone working on NextLevel has basically given up at this point. We're in maintenance mode, just waiting for the official announcement. The product roadmap was a joke from day one. Instead of focusing on something actually useful, they kept adding random bells and whistles. Oh, let's make it like Gas app with polling! Let's throw in some Inshorts-style news! 🙄 Here's a pro tip: copying features from 3 different products doesn't magically create one great product. It's like they threw spaghetti at the wall and hoped something would stick. This is a lesson for anyone trying to build in the consumer space. You can pour all the resources you want into something, but if your thinking is fundamentally flawed, you're just burning the money. Management needs to actually listen to people who know what they're talking about. But nah, they'd rather chase their pet projects and ego trips.

Is it a choice or a force? I somewhere heard PocketFM leadership was forced to exit. Is this accurate? I am curious, why so many leadership exit in start ups(Upstox, Swiggy, Zomato, PocketFm etc). Good leaders are made to exit and bad to worse leaders are continuing eg: Cars24, TimelyAi, Dukaan, Apana, Slice etc

1. What was your profile before exit - MBA vs Bachelors, how many years at consulting, key reason for exit 2. What industry/ role did you exit in - was it related to any case you did, how did you zero in into the role 3. How is the overall compensation, what is the expected growth rate expected? 4. Do you plan on coming back to consulting in future?