I just recently left a startup that was giving me Theranos vibes.
The founder seemed far more interested in attending conferences and becoming a "thought leader" in the industry than actually building the product and the company. I'd consider myself as someone who enjoys working in a startup setting with ambiguity and the opportunity to shape the product vision. But there never seemed to be any effort to try to resolve the ambiguity.
Instead, we had major problems with secrecy/lack of communication and the inability to be honest with the current state of the product. A lot of people in the company (including myself) tried to introduce some rigor and establish common ground, but none of us were successful.
And honestly, this felt like it was by-design. Every employee was only privy to understanding part of the problem and only the founder held all the cards. My opinions would frequently be superseded by "you're wrong because you only understand the user side, not the customer side" while my colleague who worked on sales/business-development would hear the opposite.
At a certain point, it just felt like an uphill battle with the founder that was no longer worth the debating and shouting. Any effort to measure efficacy was dismissed. No one could actually articulate the problem we were trying to solve, how our product solves it, and whether or not it was effective.
It's a real shame because on paper the domain and vision of the company is exactly what I'd want to focus my career on, but this was starting to feel more like a shell of a startup than an actual one.
The founder seemed far more interested in attending conferences and becoming a "thought leader" in the industry than actually building the product and the company. I'd consider myself as someone who enjoys working in a startup setting with ambiguity and the opportunity to shape the product vision. But there never seemed to be any effort to try to resolve the ambiguity.
Instead, we had major problems with secrecy/lack of communication and the inability to be honest with the current state of the product. A lot of people in the company (including myself) tried to introduce some rigor and establish common ground, but none of us were successful.
And honestly, this felt like it was by-design. Every employee was only privy to understanding part of the problem and only the founder held all the cards. My opinions would frequently be superseded by "you're wrong because you only understand the user side, not the customer side" while my colleague who worked on sales/business-development would hear the opposite.
At a certain point, it just felt like an uphill battle with the founder that was no longer worth the debating and shouting. Any effort to measure efficacy was dismissed. No one could actually articulate the problem we were trying to solve, how our product solves it, and whether or not it was effective.
It's a real shame because on paper the domain and vision of the company is exactly what I'd want to focus my career on, but this was starting to feel more like a shell of a startup than an actual one.