Startups with Charity Majors & Nicole Forsgren

Bridget talks startups with two returning guests who both started companies after the live episode at DevOpsDays Minneapolis the previous July. Charity Majors is co-founder and CEO of Honeycomb, which is building an observability tool for when monitoring or APM runs into a wall, after Parse and its acquisition by Facebook. Nicole Forsgren is co-founder and CEO of DORA, with Gene Kim and Jez Humble, and before that was at Chef and in academia. Nicole opens with a warning that if you ask about the research, the talking will start.

The Crossroads

Nicole says the July conference found Nicole at a crossroads, having left academia just before tenure and spent about a year and a half at Chef, while DORA had been a side project that was getting big. Other companies were approaching Nicole, who didn't know whether to join a bigger one or run the startup. Bridget told Nicole to talk to Charity, whose advice was to decide what Nicole wanted, and if taking a job, to be transparent about the other project and promise a company only a year. Nicole says being about a year out hadn't been articulated until then. Charity says it was clear Nicole was in love with the thing. Nicole took over DORA, committing to Jez and Gene, who had been trying to convince Nicole for months.

Charity says that at the time of the last conversation, about six months had been spent heads down after a rough co-founder breakup, without knowing whether what they had was worth doing. Around Minneapolis, they decided it was real, and time to push the baby out of the nest. "The first 2 months that you were showing your product to people, you should be humiliated. You should be embarrassed." Now they have their first paying customers and are working through roughly 800 signups from Charity's Twitter feed. Charity says what's hard is to shut up and listen, and that hearing Bridget pitch Honeycomb to others was painful and one of the most valuable moments of recent months. Nicole says the same about the channel partner program.

Why a Startup

Nicole says the startup did the hunting. People kept asking to compare themselves with the industry using the State of DevOps data, and some things can only be measured by people, not systems, so Nicole and colleagues built it. Nicole swore never to do a startup and is completely risk-averse. Charity had always been an implementer, not an ideas person, and had assumed a startup would come at some point since it seemed like a missed opportunity in Silicon Valley. The core truth, Charity confesses, is disappointment with the roles offered coming out of Facebook and a successful startup: employers wanted a proof period as an individual contributor or a manager of three people. After a career of saying titles don't matter, Charity found they do, and "it was rage." Bridget is also angry all the time, and it fuels the work. Charity also notes pedigree counts for a lot in Silicon Valley, and that Charity was never going to be more fundable than right then.

Charity says "Nobody's a startup person," roughly 100% of people, but once in a while something smacks you, and it isn't always the idea. Sometimes it's the team, and the idea comes later, and everyone retcons it as if they always knew.

Teams and Balance

Nicole says the partnership with Jez gelled, and "individuals don't make software, teams do," so sometimes when a person leaves, you take the team. Charity says when your strengths and weaknesses mesh with someone's, it's magic. Charity's co-founder Christine says little but is right every time, so Charity copies Christine on everything. Nicole describes the balance of the three founders between focus and creative openness. Charity adds a rule: "Christine and I never freak out at the same time." They joke about whose turn it is to freak out and who's going to be calm in the next conversation. For the first six months it was mostly Charity, who hadn't expected to be CEO, and then Christine couldn't carry them any longer.

Hiring for a Startup

Charity says the risk profile is different: at a small startup each hire is one of two or three people and materially shapes the product, which Charity says is true of everyone they've hired, up to seven or eight. You're building a family, technical skills can be taught, but caring about what you care about is hard to tease out and matters more than anything. Charity has never simply interviewed and hired, and who Charity wants to sit next to eight to ten hours a day matters. A big company needs a filter, Charity says, but Charity criticizes Facebook for saying they couldn't lower the bar while having five women in production engineering out of 350, and admitting they found no correlation between interview scores and success. Bridget says a diverse interview panel prevents unconscious bias. Charity says "Great teams can fight well," like couples, and Nicole adds it's how well you resolve conflict. Charity favors transparency below ten employees, including cap tables, and shielding people only from chaos that would distract them.

Funding and Staying Lean

Charity says they took $2 million because it was offered on very good terms, are extremely fiscally conservative, and are racing to profitability. When people celebrate raising $100 million Charity sees failure to execute with what they had, and says giving up equity and control is often the unmentioned part. They are raising enough to get comfortably to break-even, so they can walk away from terms. Nicole says DORA is revenue-funded with no investors, which is the best way if you can do it but limits growth, so Nicole uses contractors for accounting, design and copy editing and is feeling scaling challenges. Bridget mentions Honeycomb becoming an ISV partner with Pivotal, and partnerships as a way not to hire.

Charity says startups need generalists who are fine changing their minds, and that you don't hire into a role until you've done it enough yourself to know what makes someone successful and have six months of work that justifies it. Charity adds that success shouldn't be measured by headcount but by what you deliver divided by the number of people, and is irritated by VCs and acquirers asking how many bodies Honeycomb has, while turning away world-class engineers.

Advice for Joining

Charity says the younger the startup, the more ownership comes with it, and you should look for founders aligned with where you want to be. Charity dislikes founders with a "them and us." People should ask far more questions, since many don't know to ask how many shares are outstanding, and look for ways to enrich the relationship before signing, perhaps with a trial period, or by taking friends who know out for drinks. Nicole's advice is to know who you are. Nicole is a big-company person who likes titles and transparency, and jokes about the nickname Crusher of Dreams, earned by spotting things that won't work and needing to be high enough to say so, with a filter that drops in front of the mouth. Charity adds that in your first 10 years you should push yourself, trying big and small companies, and "Running towards being uncomfortable is, I think, generally good life advice." Nicole says give it six months, and Charity says learning to tell good uncomfortable from bad uncomfortable is part of growing up, and that after staying a year and a day at two startups, Charity would now cut it short in a week.

Bridget chats about startups with Charity Majors (Honeycomb) and Nicole Forsgren (DORA).

Check Outs

Charity:

• Honeycomb has a public announcement/launch on April 11
• @goturbine for splitting traffic
• also check out buoyant.io

Nicole:

• DORA has an ROI white paper coming out soon
• State of DevOps Report releases June 7
• Book with Jez and Gene; early release is summer/fall

Bridget:

• Systems We Love - coming to Minneapolis March 16th!

Community & Event Stuff

If you have an upcoming conference you would like to see promoted on ADO, you can fill out the handy form at arresteddevops.com/conf

Upcoming conferences

• GOTO Chicago - Matt and Bridget hosting an entire day of Arrested DevOps Live! May 1-2 - $75 off with discount code "arresteddevops"
• Velocity San Jose - discount code "ADO2017" gives 20% off for Gold, Silver, and Bronze passes.

Open CFPs

• lots of DevOpsDays