Our CEO once discussed the “paradox of growth” in that early on we grew because of the simplicity of our Company and technology. That combined with a builder’s mentality and truly exhibiting the culture “humble, honest and hungry” fueled rapid growth. As a Company grows however, it is a challenge to preserve the things that drove that growth and manage the complexity created from that very growth. What I have experienced is a dramatic, rapid change where we are increasing becoming similar to the companies that we sought to disrupt. A lot of this seems to be a natural outcome of hiring people from those monolithic companies without requiring to them to change their approach to fit our culture. instead they are imposing the same highly bureaucratic, out of touch style (especially in sales) where the Customer’s satisfaction is no longer the primary goal. I understand the changes that arise from transitioning to a public Company and keeping shareholders happy, but losing that Customer first mentality is very dangerous. We have also let go of much of our simplicity and it’s value proposition giving way to multiple licenses to charge for. This used to be a big differentiation for us but now we look like many other vendors when Customers see quotes. While this may improve profitability in the near term, it erodes one of the core advantages of being software defined and able to push out new capabilities with software releases. We are also failing to deliver much advertised capabilities with new products in a timely fashion and I fear we will suffer on main street, wall street and places like Gartner. From a sales culture perspective, it has become toxic. Headcount is added without any consideration or strategy but rather a mathematical formula. Our vision has become one not looking beyond 90 days, in quarter deals to focus on and analyze to death. We are also told that “we are on a 90 day contract”, that ‘they aren’t your Customers but the Company’s Customer”. These are the heavy handed tactics of the large, legacy vendors we were trying to disrupt and it sucks the morale out of sales Teams. The creative, best and brightest sales talents don’t flourish in this environment and will lead to an even greater exodus to other Vendors.
