1) A few insecure people in the senior leadership have instilled a blame culture and indulges in political power play which one usually associates with large organisations. I was surprised to see it in a startup. 2) The above point is epitomised by the marketing dept. who has built a big moat around them, have kicked out up-and-coming young talent, is a micromanager, is aggressively siloed, seeks credit when things go well and is adept at passing the buck when they don’t . Very skilled at blaming someone not in the room to defend themselves. It also explains why so much of their team’s work is outsourced to third parties – they are easier to point the finger at. 3) The firm spent a lot of money on rebranding , which was probably required but I felt the brand went from a bit cool to quite boring (the kind you see in a financial firm, not what you expect from a streaming platform). 4) They follow the ‘Get things done’ concept which is commendable, however the way you go about doing it is very important - it should be collaborative. Sadly, I found it to be too dictatorial, adversarial and pressurised especially for the engineering team. In my view this explains why they had a lot of initial success which led to the promotions of those who instilled this culture until it caught up with them up with them in the form of employee apathy, demoralisation and decline in quality. 5) There is a lot of unrealistic optimism from the CEO. For example, giving employees meaningless stock options one month because ‘we are doing very well’ and making them redundant the following month because ‘we are not doing so well’. And true to form- blames publishers rather their own decision making for the issues. 6) I joined despite knowing that the CEO's previous venture had failed and he had to make a lot of redundancies there. I felt that he must have learnt from that experience. My partner warned me against joining as she was wary of the setup. Wish I had listened. I got taken in by the optics and the speeches. Redundancies due to economic downturn and market forces are understandable, but that due to incompetency from the senior leadership and the uncaring way it was announced and implemented (the HR conveniently went on holiday for 2 weeks the day after it was announced) without any indication or warning was inexcusable. I won’t be surprised if a few in the leadership are dusting their CVs. I can't help but worry for ex-colleagues who became good friends in a very short time and all those who joined newly, believing in the firm. 7) The firm does optics very well - examples- a prime office location, parties , free snacks, drinks, coffee and pizza, unlimited holidays which nobody takes - all of which probably helps to hide the underlying issues. 8) I wish I had done some due-diligence on their private equity backers and had asked questions about their startup runway. 9) I still feel the business idea is great, however I also feel they have missed that window of opportunity where they could have made a real impact.
