Bostonians headed underground into the Courthouse MBTA station-turned-Idea Lab Tuesday evening to attend The Future of Boston’s Startup Culture. But before the conversation got underway, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff Dan Koh took the mic to give the crowd a warm welcome.
“From day one, the Walsh administration has wanted to shake things up,” said Koh. He also gave a brief statement on Cambridge’s debacle with Uber. “Uber’s not going away. Any city that tries to fight Uber is making a big mistake. We won’t be making that mistake.”
Indeed, due to the Cambridge Licensing Commission’s meeting Tuesday night to publicly discuss potential Uber regulations, the on-demand car ride company’s Boston General Manager Meghan Verena Joyce was unable to make the panel. Still, the event was stacked with a handful of community catalyzers and entrepreneurs from companies of different stages, all of whom fielded questions through the occasional rumbling of the passing MBTA.
"Getting fired for the right reasons is actually pretty liberating."
Moderating the panel was Culture Amp's Corey McAveeney, who framed the talk by stating, “You don’t have to be a startup to have a startup culture.”
When it comes to building said culture, Matt Lauzon, dunwello and Gemvara co-founder, shared that it’s key to make employees feel “appreciated” and, perhaps most importantly, “aligned” as a company grows. “Even if the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ changes, ‘why’ never will,” said Lauzon.
Serial entrepreneur, PayPal Media Network COO and Start Tank Founder David Chang added another dimension to the discussion: What happens when people are on board with the “why,” but aren’t a good fit for, or have outgrown, their current roles? Often it’s best to put “the person before the company,” posited Chang, which sometimes means shifting people’s positions or replacing them after bringing on “fresher blood.”
Startup Institute Vice President Allan Telio echoed that sentiment, especially in regards to management positions. “If the people working for you have been promoted and are doing well, it means you are doing a good job,” explained Telio. He also shared that the organization had recently let go of its first employee. “They get to a point where it’s time to move on. ... Everyone in the office was crying. But it’s your role to support that.”
“I tell employees that they should view their own careers as a career itself,” said CO Everywhere Founder Dan Adams.
Chang even admitted to having to fire himself at a previous company when they had no choice but to seriously reduce its size.
"People can plan themselves into failure."
“Getting fired for the right reasons is actually pretty liberating,” said Telio, recounting his memory of being let go from his first – and worst – job as a copy editor.
“It’s OK to let people just move on. We’re wired to be done with something after a certain time,” stated dunwello Co-founder Matt Brand, sharing that, until his current startup, he had felt bored in prior gigs after a few years.
As startups grow up, teams have to consider in what direction they’ll move, too – not only in terms of strategy, but also physical location.
Lauzon and Brand were in agreement that co-working spaces have the potential to actually encourage early-stage companies to define their own distinct culture, rather than meld to that of the overall organization.
According to WeWork Boston's General Manager Hunter Perry, startups work out of co-working spaces for around one and a half to two years. It’s an especially good option for small startups, shared Roomzilla Co-founder and CEO Michelle Darby, adding that helping and gleaning advice from other founders in a collaborative setting, like her location at the Cambridge Innovation Center, is really valuable and makes for a less lonely entrepreneurial experience.
But eventually, the time comes to move out and move on. Adams shared that once CO Everywhere graduated from Start Tank and moved into its own office, “having [their] own space felt so right.”
“People can plan themselves into failure,” warned IdeaPaint Co-founder Jeff Avalon, in terms of company and personal growth.
So, stay flexible, future Boston startup founders. And innovate on.
