Your Role in a Tech Startup

Why writing is your #1 KPI - no matter the role

These are two essays rolled into one. I want to talk about two things:

1. How to hire in a tech startup

2. The importance of writing

The two themes are intertwined in this essay: #2 leads to #1, and #1 leads to #2.

I’ll start with the first theme and then move on to the second.

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The Three Roles

In a promising tech startup, there are only two prominent roles:

1. People who help write the software.

2. People who help sell it.

Here’s something I’ve learned over the past 15 years of writing and selling software.

The Three Categories

The best people in the first two categories are those who write.

Best coders write. It’s not just about the code; it’s the documentation and everything else that accompanies it. They express themselves through text—whether it’s code or general writing.

The best marketing people write. They write a lot. And trust me, as a tech company, you’ll get nowhere today if you don’t have people in these two categories who can write—and write well.

Writing is slow and time-consuming, but it helps organize thoughts. Writing, like any other skill, improves with practice and deteriorates with neglect. Take me, for instance—I stopped writing long-form, and the results are evident in this hastily written blog. But I digress.

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The Third Category

Now, there’s another category: everyone in your organization who doesn’t fall into the first two categories. They sit in this third category, aptly called:

People who do neither but become significant enough in the company.

In my experience, this third category adds the least value and causes the most organizational damage. Ironically, it’s often filled with people with stellar resumes. Of course, they’ll have impeccable credentials—how else would they have been hired?

I ran my company for a decade before raising capital. During that time, I optimized exclusively for the first two categories. I neither had the capacity nor the budget to hire from the third.

But things changed when I raised capital.

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The Mistake of Hiring Category Three

When I first raised capital, I made the career-killing mistake of hiring from the third category.

I knew the first category intimately and had deep familiarity with the second, as I handled most sales myself. The third category, however, was a mystery. “Wow, you went to Harvard? Impressive.”

So, who did I hire first? People from the third category.

Very accomplished, so to speak—industry leads. Big mistake. Be very careful when hiring from this category.

People in category three usually don’t like software. Sure, you’re a tech company, but they think they know better. They don’t care about the software, can barely demo it, and don’t understand what goes into building it.

"I’m too good for this."

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Breaking Down the First Two Categories

Let’s return to the first two categories.

Category One: People Who Write the Software

This category has several subtypes:

1. Pure tech:
   a. Backend engineers
   b. Front-end engineers (focused on user experience)

2. Design:
   a. Designers
   b. Spec writers
   c. Testers

The most critical part of this category? Front-end engineers.

Yes, the backend is essential—my colleagues remind me of that often. But if your software isn’t visually appealing, no one will even try it.

Good design is a prerequisite for adoption, and front-end engineers are the ones who can program it effectively. Graphic designers, on the other hand, are often a tax. They push for flashy designs, which front-end engineers copy verbatim unless they have a solid grasp of engineering.

So, who do you need most?

• Priority #1: Front-end engineers who can program beautifully.

• Priority #2: Backend engineers to optimize functionality.

Spec writers and testers? You’ll need them, but ideally, they’ll be coders who can automate testing.

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What About Category Three?

People in category three have another role, which we’ll cover in the next section on sales.

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Category Two: People Who Sell the Software

People who sell the software are obviously as — and sometimes — more important than people who write that software.

The Importance of Selling Software

There’s no software without sales. If nobody is selling your software, you’re done. You might as well close up shop and go home.

You’d think people who sell software would look the part—suits and all. Turns out, that’s wrong.

Selling has two critical components:

1. The Team that Sells the Software: It starts with people who can write well.

2. The Act of Selling: Selling is not just an art; it’s a precise science, refined into steps that drive results.

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Building the Sales Process

It begins with people who can write about your software—the Content Team. Then you need experts who can create compelling marketing copy for brochures, websites, and other materials.

Once that’s in place, you need people to manage a list of leads and prospects. Finally, you require a team to contact these prospects and ensure the entire process runs like a well-oiled machine.

This needs to happen daily to build a strong sales organization.

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Structuring the Sales Team

Here’s how the sales team is broken down:

1. Marketing/Lead Generation

   • Content Team: A large team, possibly 20+ people, writing content every day.

   • Performance Marketing Team: Driving leads and traffic.

2. Inside Sales

   • Outbound Team: Actively reaching out to prospects.

   • Inbound Team: Handling incoming leads, split into:

     • LDRs (Lead Development Reps): Prospecting leads.

     • Sales Closers: Converting leads into customers.

For a billion-dollar goal, you’ll eventually need a massive inside sales team—potentially 10,000 reps in a single call center.

If you get this right, everything else will fall into place, including the creation of billions in value.

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Other Roles in the Organization

Finance Team
The finance team doesn’t fall into the third category. Their job, beyond statutory compliance, is to "sell" the company’s data internally and externally. They provide hard data points that validate the company’s performance.

• Internally: They provide valuable feedback as software users (Category 1).

• Externally: They market the company’s financial data to stakeholders (Category 2).

HR Team
HR helps build and maintain an incredible team. Their role spans Categories 1 and 2:

• Category 2: Selling the company to prospective employees.

• Category 1: Using the software daily and providing feedback.

That said, most good tech teams rely on their leaders for day-to-day HR tasks.

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Top Management

So, what about top management?

The fewer people you have at the top, the better your organization will scale. You need one person to ensure all teams work together in alignment with a clear, executable plan. This person requires a small, capable support group.

While the organization isn’t entirely flat, project managers still exist to handle coordination.

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Your Role as a Founder

What should your role be?

The truth is, you can’t directly hire for tech or sales. You can only fill the top of the hiring funnel and let the respective teams handle the interviews and selections.

What can you do, then?

1. Know the Product:

   • Not just superficially—truly understand how it works and how it’s used. This isn’t just rhetoric; it’s the foundation of your company’s culture.

   • A tech company without this focus is doomed.

2. Know the Industry and Competition:

   • Understand competing products, their demos, and how they position themselves.

3. Understand the Future:

   • Know where your product is headed, where the industry is evolving, and where your company fits within that trajectory.

My worst team members have been those who didn’t know or care about the product. I’ve made this mistake many times, and I strive not to repeat it.

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In Summary

• Know your product deeply.

• Understand the industry, competition, and trends.

• Lead by example, and focus on building a culture that prioritizes these values.

I could write much more on this, but for now, this is the essence.

sphinx @protosphinx

Chief of Staffs on Twitter: - Leave your job - Learn coding - Become an engineer Live your life with dignity.

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Projects, Project Managers & The Priority of Projects

Who are your leaders?

This is a common question: Who are the leaders in your organization? What does your org chart look like?

Your leaders are your organization’s Project Managers.

This is a crucial concept to understand.

Your org has project managers scattered across functions. They may not carry the title explicitly, but everyone is managing some ‘project,’ so to speak.

• Hiring? Project.

• Product features? Project.

• Sales? Project.

By definition, a project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular goal.

If there’s a goal—and a team working toward that goal—you have a project.

With multiple projects running in parallel, you need a priority list to make sense of it all.

The Priority of Projects is a list of all active projects in your organization, ranked by importance. The project managers responsible for these projects are your leaders.

That’s it. That’s your leadership.

So, coming back to leaders—if someone is designing your UX, that person is a leader. Their project might be “creating a great UX” or whatever goal you’ve defined.

Make your priority list. Identify the project managers.

That’s your leadership team.

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The Hierarchy of Hiring

How do you hire for your team?

This is a vast subject, and I can’t cover it fully in just a few paragraphs. Instead, let me focus on an issue close to my heart: the damage CEOs/founders can cause by hiring the wrong people and giving them undue organizational power.

I call this the Hierarchy of Hiring.

Here’s how it typically happens:

• You meet a promising young person.

• You like them and decide to hire them.

• Because you hired them, they become influential in the organization. Their success is tied to yours, so they bypass the usual mechanisms, frustrating others in the org.

The closer someone is to the CEO, the more destructive their influence can be—especially if they lack alignment with the product, direction, or future vision.

This is why I’m extremely careful when hiring senior people.

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Should You Avoid Senior Hiring?

Absolutely not. Senior hires, when done right, can add tremendous value. They can:

• Evangelize the product.

• Document and extend the company’s culture.

• Lay the foundation for scaling teams to multi-billion-dollar operations.

• Communicate effectively.

And once again—document. I can’t stress this enough.

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Writing as a Core Skill

One red flag I’ve noticed in weak candidates is their aversion to writing. They can barely create slides and absolutely avoid long-form writing.

This often stems from years of unproductivity, masked by politics. It’s a clear sign of incompetence.

All good managers write. All good techies write. If you’re senior enough in an organization, writing is the essence of your job.

Writing enables communication and alignment across teams. It ensures everyone is on the same page and working toward shared goals.

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Closing Thoughts

This was meant to be a quick essay of my scribblings. I used to use Twitter as a space to share anonymous ideas and experiences without much obligation to the reader. Those days are gone.

Now, people expect a well-thought-out, structured piece—not just a rant.

This has made things more complicated. I now have to read and re-read my content, ensuring it holds together well and doesn’t come off as a random rant.

But let me return to the core idea:

Your #1 KPI is writing—and writing well.

Everything else follows from there.

If you can’t write or don’t want to write, you have no place in a tech startup.

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