9 People You Meet at a Tech Startup

(Author’s Note: this list is an amalgamation of my own experiences with contributions from a number of friends who work in tech. If any of these descriptions sound like you, it’s probably just a coincidence. And vanity. Unless your name is Zach Boyd, in which case, yes, you are most definitely The Unmanageable Marketer.)

1.     The Founder – part visionary futurist, part over-mythologized origin story, The Founder had a really good idea one time and he’s been trying to screw it up ever since. He’s basically the George Lucas of your startup. The entire apparatus of the company was built to minimize the damage he can do. As quickly as possible, he should be transitioned into a “Senior Executive Advisor” role so he can be invited to meetings but safely ignored. Trot him out at company Christmas parties and the occasional all-hands meeting to talk about “the early days.”

2.     The Grumpy Engineer – if you ask him, the Grumpy Engineer is “the only one around here who knows how this damn thing actually works.” If you ask anyone else at the company, he’s “is he that guy in the Mickey Mouse t-shirts who’s always dropping obscure Doctor Who references in Slack?” Both are correct. You can’t have a startup without him. Just don’t ever, EVER speak to him when his headphones are on. Which is always.

3.     The Sales Bro – the position of “Sales Bro” was created when it was realized that college football players would need jobs after graduating. Their ability to convince total strangers to pay for non-working wireframes earns them the highest paychecks in the company. Their attachment to pithy aphorisms (e.g. “sales not tales” “quota don’t care”) earns them the derision of all. When they’re not bumping chests and banging gongs in the sales area, you can find them in the HR office responding to harassment claims and tagging other Sales Bros in comments on Grant Cardone videos on LinkedIn.

4.     The Customer Whisperer – The Founder cast a grand vision. The Grumpy Engineer built 30% of it. The Sales Bro sold 200% of it, and thus…meet the Customer Whisperer. She is the sorceress who can somehow keep early customers from cancelling despite the fact that your product doesn’t work and your multi-year contracts are unenforceable. As far as most of your paying customers are concerned, she is your company. She is a genius. Pay her more.

5.     The Growth Hacker – as much as you’d love to hire a marketer with real world experience and a relevant college degree, those things – and the people who have them – cost money. So what you want instead is someone who has read [parts of] every Seth Godin book and who isn’t above paying $20 for 5,000 “mostly real” Twitter followers. You want a Growth Hacker. The Growth Hacker has a proven, super-secret system that is GUARANTEED to 10x your sales leads in half the time for 1/10th of what you’re paying right now. (Hint: it’s gated content plus Facebook ads.) The only challenge with him is getting him to take a break from building his personal brand on LinkedIn long enough to actually growth-hack your startup.

6.     The Adult Supervision – the Adult Supervision was hired because she has the logo of a tech company you’ve heard of on her LinkedIn. She’s worked at a tech behemoth before, which of course means she knows what it takes to build a tech behemoth from scratch. You’ll find her wandering the halls mumbling about “leveling up,” “scalability,” and “Microsoft in the nineties.” Six months later, she’ll leave for a non-descript Director role at another tech behemoth when she realizes that no amount of options and C-Suite ego-stroking are worth having to work this hard. 

7.     The Unmanageable Marketer – marketing at most startups is a black box of vanity metrics, jargon, and ill-advised facial hair. And within each marketing team is a black sheep who couldn’t possibly give a damn about…well…pretty much anything. Remote working restrictions and unspoken dress codes don’t apply to him. He talks openly about quitting. He’s growing a mullet because “eff you” that’s why. Unfortunately, he’s also a copywriting genius and can seemingly conjure qualified leads out of thin air. He’s the Terrell Owens of the team. A tremendous pain in the ass. But too talented to get rid of.

8.     The “No” Man – startups thrive on their ability to say yes to everything. Every customer who doesn’t fit their product application, every harebrained new feature, every extravagant user event. Everyone except The “No” Man, that is. The “No” Man has never met a go to market strategy, capital expenditure, or product enhancement that he actually liked. In fact, he’s not even sure you should be “going to market” at all. If The “No” Man had his way, the sales and marketing teams would be fired to free budget for additional financial audits, user research, and planning meetings. He’s a real buzzkill, but he’s also the only reason you didn’t run out of cash 18 months ago. 

9.     The Worker Bee – despite the presence of the characters above, most folks at a tech startup defy easy categorization. They work long hours at below market wages in chaotic “open floor plan” warehouses without any of the stock options or private offices of the other people on this list. While you might consider raising their pay or improving their benefits, what you should do instead is print their names on arbitrary awards with fun names like “Chief Hustle Officer” or “Lord of the Grind” and then hang one next to their desk whenever they feel like testing the job market. Non-monetary “atta-boys” truly are the opiate of the masses.