There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to assembling a startup engineering team; in the early days, everyone wears multiple roles.
However, as a firm grows, the recruiting process becomes more systematised, new hires are divided into discrete units, and a thin layer of management is added to keep everything on track.
Plaid was still financing its Series A when Jean-Denis Greze accepted the position of CTO in 2017, and the fintech startup had “approximately 20 developers who were still attempting to feel their way to product-market fit,” according to enterprise reporter Ron Miller.
Greze highlighted how Plaid transitioned from an all-hands-on-deck approach to a framework where contributors had clearly defined roles that they weren’t locked into during an interview.
When I asked Ron what shocked him the most when covering this storey, he indicated that Visa’s unsuccessful bid to buy Plaid last year made it easier to acquire new technical expertise.
People who didn’t want to be part of a startup but wanted to solve greater problems like size and security were suddenly willing to talk to them, Ron explains.
Previously, they believed Plaid was a touch too small for their ambitions, “says the narrator.”
We’ll have a crew covering Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 Demo Day today and tomorrow, including a few of our own.
Demo days are a showcase for the tech media, but do founders and investors still profit from this theatrical Silicon Valley tradition?
Michael Redd, co-founder and head of 22 Ventures, writes for TC+ on two things that make demo days less relevant: many entrepreneurs complete funding deals before the big show, and founders want to work with value-added investors.
“Removing the demo day will not help founders uncover, or allow investors to deliver, that value,” says Reed. “What we need to do is figure out why demo days aren’t working and how to source deals on a lot more personal level.”
