> Ultimately, the reason that the startup died was because I did not do the due diligence in discerning whether this was a problem that I genuinely wanted to solve with my entire being. That's the bar for creating a successful startup, you need to find a problem that you're willing to dedicate yourself entirely to solving.
My own startup journey has led me to a contrary belief: At the earliest stages of building a business, being flexible and continuously re-evaluating your assumptions in order to find real market opportunities is more useful than having a lot of passion solving a single problem.
If anything, I've met many many founders who have had too much passion about a single problem, which hurts them gravely when they refuse to consider the possibility that the problem they are passionate about is not a problem at all and they need to pivot.
I'm excited by this post because I think Jimmy deserves this success. I've never met him in person, but I owe him big time because:
1. His community was a big factor in my SaaS business getting traction among copywriters and content marketers.
2. I took a bike tour near his area and he saved me from trying to bike through a mudslide that had recently washed out part the route.
Biases aside, I've been a member of Superpath for awhile now and can say that he's put together a unique community that has a strong backbone of "givers" that can help the "takers". The vast majority of professional communities (especially free ones) devolve into places with endless questions with no one to answer them. Superpath isn't like that at all. Questions turn into threads with insightful answers and discussions.
We are looking for a quick-witted QA Engineer to join us as a founding member of a new team responsible for creating a portfolio of marketing products for our publishers. Our team's charter is to help our community of 3,000+ independent publishers grow their audience and you will help us empower them with the highest-quality tools.
• RAPIDLY GROWING COMPANY - In the past year, the company has risen to become the 11th largest digital property in the U.S. (just under Viacom and Apple) and manages 175M monthly unique visitors.
• ESTABLISHED REMOTE CULTURE - CafeMedia has been a fully remote company for years before the pandemic and knows how to create effective remote teams.
• POWERFUL MISSION - Our product enables thousands of creators and independent publishers make a living. We are a force for the open web, freeing creators from the walled-gardens of Facebook and Pinterest.
I'm a big fan of this thread because it helps correct the preconceived notion that culture is on a 1 dimensional spectrum between "bad" and "great".
At our 30-person company, we did an experiment where we took a culture framework that was evaluated on 2 axes, and took internal surveys between two years to determine where on the spectrum employees felt our culture was currently at, and what their ideal culture would be.
For anyone in a position to explore these questions at an organizational level, I would highly recommend doing an exercise like this. It gives more agency to the employee to express what direction they think would be optimal and brings awareness to the fact that totally different cultures can both be considered "great".
Yes, with that kind of attitude life does seem pointless.
My opinion is that not everything we do in life needs to aimed towards the lofty self-actualization of mankind... or even the lofty self-actualization of one's self, which is the point being made later in the blog post.
Sometimes you wanna build something and see what happens. Hell yea I'll praise that.
Most human progress is made incrementally and in all directions, with many of the paths failing. The original versions of many extraordinary things seemed like meaningless branches of a capitalistic society.
There was a time when people played chess over telegraph, and considered telegraphy as a technology nothing more than a strange novelty.*
* For more, I highly recommend checking out the book "The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers"
Boo to all of the people on this thread who are hating on what you've built. Why can't you build a business selling emails, or automatically posting to GitHub?
If you hate getting spam emails, hit "spam" and get that domain blacklisted, it creates a natural balance where the quality of cold outreach grows. And I doubt real hiring decisions are being made from git commit history badges.
Kudos for going out there and adding value to the people that are paying for your products.
We’re looking for senior engineers and a UX/UI designer to join our small 24-person team. We offer a competitive compensation package, and have a flexible remote work policy.
Over 5,000 brands use TINT to power their content marketing. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding. Every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
BENEFITS (besides the competitive salary and equity...)
• TEAM TRANSPARENCY - We calculate compensation based on a formula that we all agree on. Cap table is made available to all employees. Business financials are known by all teammates. Even cofounder meeting minutes are sent to the team.
• FLEXIBLE REMOTE WORK - We have a flexible remote work policy that allows employees based in San Francisco to work remotely for extended periods, and for engineers to join us remotely full-time.
• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM - A monthly stipend and program designed for self-improvement. Every month, we individually choose goals to accomplish and are given a stipend to accomplish them.
We’re looking for engineers and a UX/UI designer to join our small 24-person team. We offer a competitive compensation package, and have a flexible remote work policy.
Over 5,000 brands use TINT to power their content marketing. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding. Every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
BENEFITS (besides the competitive salary and equity...)
• TEAM TRANSPARENCY - We calculate compensation based on a formula that we all agree on. Cap table is made available to all employees. Business financials are known by all teammates. Even cofounder meeting minutes are sent to the team.
• FLEXIBLE REMOTE WORK - We have a flexible remote work policy that allows employees based in San Francisco to work remotely for extended periods, and for engineers to join us remotely full-time.
• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM - A monthly stipend and program designed for self-improvement. Every month, we individually choose goals to accomplish and are given a stipend to accomplish them.
We’re looking for a Front End Engineer to join our small 30-person team. We offer a competitive compensation package, and have a flexible remote work policy.
Over 5,000 brands use TINT to power their content marketing. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding. Every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
BENEFITS (besides the competitive salary and equity...)
• TEAM TRANSPARENCY - We calculate compensation based on a formula that we all agree on. Cap table is made available to all employees. Business financials are known by all teammates. Even cofounder meeting minutes are sent to the team.
• FLEXIBLE REMOTE WORK - We have a flexible remote work policy that allows employees based in San Francisco to work remotely for extended periods, and for engineers to join us remotely full-time.
• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM - A monthly stipend and program designed for self-improvement. Every month, we individually choose goals to accomplish and are given a stipend to accomplish them.
Related to increasing productivity and a public view option, one thing that Ricardo Semler brings up in his book, Maverick, that is a big productivity boost for teams is to incorporate regular public mood feedback to allow an individual to communicate how they are generally feeling that day to the whole team. It can put a lot of interactions in context and is something that's been implemented by a number of companies, could be a potentially valuable addition to the product!
We’re looking for Full Stack Engineers and UX Engineers to join our small 30-person team. We offer competitive equity packages, full medical/dental, and free lunch everyday, among other benefits.
Over 5,000 brands use TINT to power their content marketing and help us generate $410k MRR. We are proudly PROFITABLE, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line. We aspire to be a company like Basecamp or Fog Creek Software. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
BENEFITS (besides the competitive salary and equity...)
• TEAM TRANSPARENCY - We calculate compensation based on a formula that we all agree on. Cap table is made available to all employees. Business financials are known by all teammates.
• CONSENSUS DRIVEN CULTURE - We foster consensus-driven rather than top-down decision making when it comes to important business decisions.
• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM - A monthly stipend and program designed for self-improvement. Every month, we individually choose goals to accomplish and are given a stipend to accomplish them.
We’re looking for Full Stack Engineers and UX Engineers to join our small 30-person team. We offer competitive equity packages, full medical/dental, and free lunch everyday, among other benefits.
Over 5,000 brands use TINT to power their content marketing and help us generate $410k MRR. We are proudly PROFITABLE, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line. We aspire to be a company like Basecamp or Fog Creek Software. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
BENEFITS (besides the competitive salary and equity...)
• TEAM TRANSPARENCY - We calculate compensation based on a formula that we all agree on. Cap table is made available to all employees. Business financials are known by all teammates.
• CONSENSUS DRIVEN CULTURE - We foster consensus-driven rather than top-down decision making when it comes to important business decisions.
• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM - A monthly stipend and program designed for self-improvement. Every month, we individually choose goals to accomplish and are given a stipend to accomplish them.
Senior Front End Engineer | TINT | http://www.tintup.com | San Francisco | ONSITE | $126K - $175K
TINT: A GREAT PLACE TO WORK
We’re looking for Senior Front End Engineers to join our small 30-person team. We offer competitive equity packages, full medical/dental, and free lunch everyday, among other benefits.
Over 5,000 brands use TINT to power their content marketing and help us generate $410k MRR. We are proudly PROFITABLE, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line. We aspire to be a company like Basecamp or Fog Creek Software. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
We’re looking for Experienced / Senior Front End Software Engineers (H1B Okay).
The salary range will be $126K - $175K. We offer equity packages, full medical/dental, 401k, and free lunch, among other benefits.
Over 45,000 customers use TINT to power their social media displays and help us generate $380k MRR. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line. An engineer who would mesh well with our team is entrepreneurial, embraces change, and isn’t afraid to work on projects that would normally be considered out of the scope of engineering. We value an engineer that cannot only code well, but also has a vested interest in making cross team contributions. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
Some upcoming projects include building a content scheduling system that will be the market leader for outdoor digital displays, creating new themes and visualizations for dynamic content, and scaling out an API to reach thousands of large brands and their millions of customers.
We’re looking for Experienced / Senior Software Engineers (H1B Okay).
The salary range will be $126K - $175K. We offer equity packages, full medical/dental, 401k, and free lunch, among other benefits.
Over 45,000 customers use TINT to power their social media displays and help us generate $380k MRR. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line.
An engineer who would mesh well with our team is entrepreneurial, embraces change, and isn’t afraid to work on projects that would normally be considered out of the scope of engineering. We value an engineer that cannot only code well, but also has a vested interest in making cross team contributions. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
Some upcoming projects include building a content scheduling system that will be the market leader for outdoor digital displays, creating new themes and visualizations for dynamic content, and scaling out an API to reach thousands of large brands and their millions of customers.
We’re looking for Experienced / Senior Software Engineers (H1B Okay).
The salary range will be $126K - $175K. We offer equity packages, full medical/dental, 401k, and free lunch, among other benefits.
Over 45,000 customers use TINT to power their social media displays and help us generate $380k MRR. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line.
An engineer who would mesh well with our team is entrepreneurial, embraces change, and isn’t afraid to work on projects that would normally be considered out of the scope of engineering. We value an engineer that cannot only code well, but also has a vested interest in making cross team contributions. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
Some upcoming projects include building a content scheduling system that will be the market leader for outdoor digital displays, creating new themes and visualizations for dynamic content, and scaling out an API to reach thousands of large brands and their millions of customers.
We’re looking for Experienced / Senior Software Engineers (H1B Okay).
The salary range will be $126K - $175K. We offer equity packages, full medical/dental, 401k, and free lunch, among other benefits.
Over 45,000 customers use TINT to power their social media displays and help us generate $380k MRR. We are proudly profitable, not dependent on investor funding, and have been consistently growing our top line.
An engineer who would mesh well with our team is entrepreneurial, embraces change, and isn’t afraid to work on projects that would normally be considered out of the scope of engineering. We value an engineer that cannot only code well, but also has a vested interest in making cross team contributions. We pair everyday, and every Friday we work on hack projects that we think will push the business forward. Our current stack is Backbone, Rails, MySQL, and AWS.
Some upcoming projects include building a content scheduling system that will be the market leader for outdoor digital displays, creating new themes and visualizations for dynamic content, and scaling out an API to reach thousands of large brands and their millions of customers.
My own startup journey has led me to a contrary belief: At the earliest stages of building a business, being flexible and continuously re-evaluating your assumptions in order to find real market opportunities is more useful than having a lot of passion solving a single problem.
If anything, I've met many many founders who have had too much passion about a single problem, which hurts them gravely when they refuse to consider the possibility that the problem they are passionate about is not a problem at all and they need to pivot.