Few startups fail due to technical reasons. They fail because of management and execution. Unfortunately, Comprehend is no exception to this, despite having been vetted by some other well-respected companies.
- No leadership accountability
Nobody knows what the two cofounders do anymore. Instead, an executive of questionable character keeps calling the shots, despite extremely high attrition rate among direct reports.
At this point, the leadership has gone around and blamed every team (sales, marketing, engineering), but the problem persists. That should tell you the problem must be what's left constant. Use common sense, get to the problem and take action. Who will you blame when everyone is gone?
- No transparency
The leadership was all about transparency when Series B funding came around. Then it became radio silence as it became clear the company had nothing to show for the next funding round. They try to "shield" the employees from the bad news (e.g. negative market response, etc), when often times it's already public knowledge among employees. When there is little transparency, employees have no choice but to resort to backchanneling - or "whining", as certain others call it.
- No long-term anything
No long term {planning, career development, employee appreciation, investment in people, ...}.
Let's take the layoffs as an example. The management claimed that it was a calculated, strategic move that has been very carefully planned out. But then they contradicted themselves by having to reach out to the people they had just laid off to ask them to unlock their laptops. They have also vastly overestimated the number of engineers that will stay on after the layoff. None of this feel very planned - at all. Not to mention that each time the company has let go of people, they did so very poorly, and at this point, they have burned the bridges with most ex-employees.
And all these helped create a very political workplace environment - at a company of < 30 people.
