[HN Gopher] Email to Former Board Member
___________________________________________________________________
Email to Former Board Member
Author : devlife
Score : 32 points
Date : 2020-10-17 21:10 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (docs.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (docs.google.com)
| dvtrn wrote:
| _I regret that we went thruogh the "diligence" process in just a
| few weeks_
|
| Does anyone work in M&A? What in your experience is a sufficient
| timetable for diligence and discovery? I ask working for a
| company that "grows by acquisition", and being in a middle
| management role I find myself often playing clean-up crew to some
| alarming things that _should_ have been caught during diligence,
| but am growing increasingly weary being told "we didn't have
| time".
|
| This is no attempt at malingering my duties, but I've lost one
| staff member already to the burnout from this, and am quite
| fearful I'm about to lose another. Both have told me "it's not
| you, you've been a great manager" yet both have lamented feeling
| like their jobs have turned into playing the 'janitor' role for
| messy acquisitions saying "you did what you could"
|
| My own complaints up the food-chain have been returned with
| shrugs by a director who seems equally powerless in a process
| that is burning people out--and I'm considering looking for the
| door at the end of the year from it.
| Animats wrote:
| Being in the middle of an acquisition is a form of limbo.
| Nobody wants to start anything new, partly because of
| management uncertainty and partly because it could change the
| valuation. It consumes all the time of top management, and
| nobody is minding the store. So you don't want to spend too
| many months stuck in that state.
|
| (I know a company that's in that position right now, and
| there's no visible planning for 2021.)
| silexia wrote:
| Be very, very cautious before ever taking VC funds. Unless you
| are a power plant, bootstrap.
| abnry wrote:
| Why would someone publicly post this letter, even with the
| redactions?
| unwoundmouse wrote:
| try and help others if you see yourself in the email
| mark-ruwt wrote:
| For those wanting/needing context:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24793170
| gkoberger wrote:
| Here's the context, from the author:
|
| "Simultaneously, we were forced to deal with a board member who
| was beyond counterproductive. After we bought him out fully in
| 2019, I sent this feedback email detailing the ways in which he
| had disrupted our board and company. Dealing with this issue was
| one of the loneliest times I faced as a CEO. To be clear, this
| email is unlike anything I've sent in my life, and I've thought
| long and hard about the decision to share it. I'm not doing so to
| disparage the individual in question; the only objective is to
| help others who might find themselves in a similar situation.
| (Nothing has been removed, including typos, from the email except
| for names.)"
|
| https://ryancaldbeck.medium.com/transitions-fa7ce4af435
| cwzwarich wrote:
| Releasing this as-is seems like a bad idea. He's likely
| addressing a former board member by name, as well as their firm.
| Couldn't you just look at all of the names of board members and
| their firms, compute the metrics of those names with the typeface
| being used, and then figure out exactly who he's talking about?
| unwoundmouse wrote:
| maybe that's the intent
| gkoberger wrote:
| I know a few people on Twitter have tried, but AFAIK no names
| have been leaked. But let's say he had said the name... is that
| a problem? People write blog posts about bad experiences quite
| frequently.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-10-17 23:00 UTC)