"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
Pros
A solid mission. It's anonymous content app is focused on getting people to speak more authentically than on Twitter or Facebook. There aren't other outlets like this in the social media world. Fascinating content. People are saying some incredible things on the app, and this becomes "gold" when put together as stories. Just check out the website. Cutting edge technology. I mean, it's the kind of engineering that gets national press. Tasty snacks, lunch and dinner, on the house. They have had several remarkable chefs with an incredible variety of meals. Superstar talent. Their recruiting efforts have paid off by bringing in nice, down to earth, skillful, A-players.
Cons
Whisper is in a hurry right now to reach profitability, but the cash clock is ticking and time is running out. It's not impossible to beat the clock, but this executive team will trip over themselves and trip up any remaining employees along the way and ruin their chance for success. Startups don't have idea problems; they have execution problems. That's why it's critical to hire the best people, the experts, and then give them freedom and space to quickly roll out solutions. The Whisper execs found great people, but they often got in the way. I've never witnessed such massive micro-managing from the top. As if that alone weren't bad enough, their ideas were frequently wrong. So imagine being the expert, then being micro-managed, with bad ideas, and be forced to execute them, and then be blamed for the inevitably horrible outcome. Many employees have the passion to bring the vision to reality, but they were sadly thwarted at every turn. This style unfortunately caused many A-players to start leaving voluntarily over the last year. Those who hadn't left on their own accord, were laid off recently, or about 20% of the company. There's now a dearth of talent, the very resource needed to actually pull off the win. The mismanagement is precisely why it's highly doubtful that Whisper will beat the cash clock and succeed. Even if the sky opened up and millions of dollars came rushing down into their coffers, the executive team would repeat it's mistakes.
