Startups Aim to Snap Up Laid-Off Tech Workers --- Early-stage companies, mostly spared the woes of the giants, set sights on new blood

"Flush with investor capital, technology startups plan to scoop up software developers, engineers and marketers flooding the labor market following job cuts at Twitter Inc., Lyft Inc. and other large tech employers.

Kathy Zhu said she is lining up candidates for engineering, customer service and other roles at Streamline AI, the two-year-old tech startup she co-founded. They include prospects from "two or three companies that just had big layoffs," she said.

"There's an abundance of talent right now, because of these layoffs," Ms. Zhu said. "A few years ago, there was no way we could've attracted candidates like this."

Millbrae, Calif.-based Streamline AI, which is developing a workflow-automation platform for corporate legal teams, in September closed a $3 million seed-funding round led by Oceans Ventures. Streamline AI has seven employees and hopes to add at least three more by the end of the year, and more positions early next year, Ms. Zhu said.

"There are people on LinkedIn saying things like, 'I've just been laid off at Lyft and looking for work,'" she said.

Lyft, a ride-hailing company, on Thursday said it would cut nearly 700 jobs, or roughly 13% of its staff. Online payments processor Stripe Inc. also announced job cuts Thursday, reducing its staff by some 1,000 positions to roughly 7,000.

Twitter began laying off employees on Friday, roughly a week after billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social-media giant.

Seed and early-stage tech startups, companies that often haven't brought their products or services to market, have largely been spared the impact of higher interest rates, persistent inflation and disrupted supply chains roiling public technology companies.

With more mature startups in a holding pattern -- wary of public market debuts or discount funding rounds -- many venture-capital investors are shifting their focus to nascent companies, which aren't expected to generate returns on investment for another seven to eight years, according to analysts.

Amid sharp declines in funding for later-stage startups, the median deal size for new U.S. startups has held roughly steady this year from 2021 at $2.8 million, with a median valuation of $10.5 million, according to PitchBook Data Inc. Deal sizes and valuations for seed startups hit record highs in the third quarter, the market analytics firm said.

"After years of early-stage companies facing challenges to compete in a very tight and expensive labor market, we are seeing a shift and these companies are in a great position to hire strong talent," said Maelle Gavet, CEO of Techstars, which operates accelerator programs and services for new startups.

Arya, a two-year-old automated compensation management startup in New York, aims to use funds from a $3.3 million seed round in May to hire at least four new employees by the end of the year, said founder and CEO Kunal Sarda.

"We're seeing candidates come through from the FAANGS of the world that we would never have seen before," Mr. Sarda said, referring to the stock-trading acronym for Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Netflix Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google.

Mr. Sarda said recently laid off tech-sector workers make up about half of the applicants he is considering hiring as product designers, engineers, and sales and data analytics staff.

Still, a growing pool of talent isn't likely to lead to a hiring boom by startups, said Kyle Stanford, a senior analyst at PitchBook.

"Even well-funded young companies will be more strategic in their hiring practices than we would have seen a year ago," Mr. Stanford said.

Large tech companies cutting jobs because of the souring economic climate "should be a warning to small companies to preserve runway and opt for a sustainable growth, if growth is still possible," he added.

At the same time, competition for tech workers isn't likely to go away. U.S. employers across all sectors posted nearly 317,000 tech job openings in October, up by more than 10,000 from September, enterprise-technology trade group CompTIA said Friday." [1]

1. Startups Aim to Snap Up Laid-Off Tech Workers --- Early-stage companies, mostly spared the woes of the giants, set sights on new blood
Loten, Angus. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 07 Nov 2022: B.4.

Muskas dirba, nepaisydamas įmonių guru

   „Per kelias dienas nuo tada, kai Elonas Muskas užbaigė 44 mlrd. dolerių Twitter Inc. pirkimą, jis dirbo, kad greitai pakeisti šį socialinį tinklą.

 

    Jis atleido daugelį aukščiausių bendrovės vadovų, įskaitant generalinį advokatą, vyriausiąjį finansų pareigūną ir generalinį direktorių. Penktadienį jis atliko didžiulius atleidimus iš darbo, pašalindamas maždaug pusę „Twitter“ darbuotojų. Pakeliui jis skleidė naujų produktų idėjas, šaipėsi iš vidinių valdymo mokymų, viešai atskleidė sumažėjusias pajamas ir užsiminė, kad gali būti ir kitų pokyčių.

 

    Greiti milijardieriaus veiksmai skiriasi nuo daugelio naujų lyderių, kurie pirmąsias 90 dienų dažnai naudoja susitikti su darbuotojais, išklausyti susirūpinimą keliančius klausimus ir įvertinti, kaip patobulinti įmonės produktus, prieš pradedant įgyvendinti strategiją, sako vadovai ir įmonių patarėjai.

 

    „Tai bent jau netradicinis požiūris“, – sakė buvęs „JetBlue Airways Corp.“ pirmininkas Joelis Petersonas, dirbęs dešimtyse įmonių valdybų ir konsultavęs įvairių pramonės šakų vadovus. „Tai ikonoklastiška, neįprasta, ne visi taip elgtųsi, bet aš jo dėl to tikrai nekaltinu“.

 

    P. Muskas, kuris kažkada laikraščiui „The Wall Street Journal“ apibūdino save, kaip „nano vadybininką“, įsitraukiantį į smulkiausias smulkmenas, panašu, kad taiko daug valdymo taktikos, kurią taikė, kurdamas kitas savo įmones „Tesla Inc.“ ir „Space Exploration“. Technologies Corp., sako vadovai ir patarėjai.

 

    Tai apima aistringą asmeninį įsitraukimą į sprendimus dėl produktų, nepasitenkinimą įmonių struktūromis ir susitelkimą į greitį.

 

    „Tesla“ yra vertingiausia automobilių kompanija pasaulyje, o „SpaceX“ – aktyviausia pasaulyje raketų paleidimo operacija.

 

    Vadybos specialistai jau seniai sakė, kad pirmieji keli vadovo kadencijos mėnesiai yra kritiški – laikas, kai įmonių vadovai gali planuoti savo darbotvarkę ir pradėti iš naujo nustatyti įmonės kultūrą. 

 

Gerai žinomos knygos šia tema, pvz., „Tu esi atsakingas – kas dabar?“ sako, kad nauji lyderiai turėtų išlaikyti pusiausvyrą, nustatydami lūkesčius viduje ir formuodami savo vadovų komandą, kartu mokydamiesi ir apie organizaciją.

 

    Peteris Cristas, vadovų paieškos įmonės „Crist Kolder Associates“ pirmininkas, sakė, kad nauji lyderiai paprastai pirmuosius mėnesius praleidžia, siekdami suprasti įmonės talentą, prieš keisdami personalą, sužino darbuotojų stipriąsias ir silpnąsias puses.

 

    „Paprastai iš išorės ateinantis generalinis direktorius pirmą dieną nenušluostys šiukšlių“, – sakė Crist ir pridūrė, kad greiti personalo pokyčiai gali sukelti netikrumo likusiems darbuotojams. „Turi būti ir įmonės modelis, ir, svarbiausia, talentų stabilizavimas, ir tai turi būti padaryta, palyginti, greitai“, – sakė jis.

 

    P. Muskas vargu ar yra pirmasis įmonių ikonoklastas. Jis taip pat yra daugiau, nei susipažinęs su „Twitter“, nes turi daugiau, nei 100 milijonų sekėjų.

 

    Be to, jis įsigyja įmonę, kuri ilgus metus atsiliko nuo jos konkurentų, prastai pritraukdama vartotojus ir generuodama pajamas, o pramonė susiduria su augimo sulėtėjimu ir kitais iššūkiais, dėl kurių sumažėjo tokių įmonių, kaip „Facebook“ savininkė „Meta Platforms Inc.vaidmuo.

 

    Buvęs mažmeninės prekybos bendrovės „Best Buy Co.“ generalinis direktorius Hubertas Joly sakė, kad pasikalbėjimas su klientais ir darbuotojais gali būti naudingas pradiniame posūkio etape. Kai 2012 m. J. Joly perėmė „Best Buy“ vadeles, jis kiauras dienas praleido mažmeninės prekybos parduotuvėse, stebėdamas klientų elgesį ir rengdamas picos susitikimus su darbuotojais. Tuose susibūrimuose jis darbuotojams uždavė tris klausimus: „Kas veikia? Kas neveikia? Ko jums reikia?“ – sakė P. Joly.“ [1]

1.  Musk Moves Defy Corporate Gurus
Cutter, Chip. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 07 Nov 2022: B.4.

Musk Moves Defy Corporate Gurus

"In the days since Elon Musk closed a $44 billion takeover of Twitter Inc., he has worked to rapidly overhaul the social network.

He fired many of the company's top leaders, including its general counsel, chief financial officer and chief executive officer. He conducted sweeping layoffs, eliminating roughly half of Twitter's workforce on Friday. Along the way, he floated new product ideas, mocked internal management training, publicly disclosed a decline in revenue and hinted that other changes could be on the way.

The billionaire's swift actions stand in contrast to those of many new leaders, who often use the first 90 days to meet with employees, listen to concerns and assess how to improve a company's products before embarking on strategy shifts, executives and corporate advisers say.

"At a minimum, this is an untraditional approach," said Joel Peterson, the former chairman of JetBlue Airways Corp., who has served on dozens of corporate boards and advised chief executives across industries. "It's iconoclastic, it's unusual, it's not what everybody would do -- but I don't really fault him for it."

Mr. Musk -- who once described himself to The Wall Street Journal as a "nano manager" steeped in the smallest details -- appears to be employing many of the management tactics he deployed in building his other companies, Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., executives and advisers say. 

Those include a hands-on obsession over product decisions, a distaste for corporate structures and a focus on speed. 

Tesla is the world's most-valuable car company, and SpaceX is the world's busiest rocket-launch operation.

Management specialists have long said the first few months of an executive's tenure are critical, a time when corporate chiefs can plot their agenda and begin to reset a corporate culture. Well-known books on the subject, such as "You're in Charge -- Now What?" say new leaders should strike a balance, setting expectations internally and shaping their management team, while learning about the organization, too.

Peter Crist, chairman of Crist Kolder Associates, an executive-search firm, said new leaders typically spend the initial months looking to understand the talent within a company, learning employees' strengths and weaknesses before making changes to staffing.

"Normally, a CEO from the outside coming in isn't going to wipe the slate clean on the first day," Mr. Crist said, adding that swift personnel changes can create uncertainty for the workers that remain. "There has to be both a stabilization of the enterprise model and importantly a stabilization of the talent, and it's got to get done relatively soon," he said.

Mr. Musk is hardly the first corporate iconoclast. He is also more than familiar with Twitter, having more than 100 million followers.

On top of that, he is acquiring a company that for years lagged behind its rivals in attracting users and generating revenue, and the industry is facing a slowdown in growth and other challenges that have slashed the valuations of companies such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc.

Hubert Joly, former CEO of retailer Best Buy Co., said listening tours with customers and employees can be helpful in the initial period of engineering a turnaround. When Mr. Joly took the reins of Best Buy in 2012, he spent days in retail stores observing customer behavior and holding pizza meetings with staffers. In those gatherings, he asked three questions to employees: "'What's working? What's not working? What do you need?'" Mr. Joly said." [1]

1.  Musk Moves Defy Corporate Gurus
Cutter, Chip. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 07 Nov 2022: B.4.