Joe Rutherford

Companies ghosting you is not new. I hear from product managers that in this market, companies are becoming less applicant-friendly, to the extent that they regularly ghost candidates after interviews. I agree with that. But it's not a new behavior. It has increased temporarily because there is a supply-demand gap favoring a large supply of product managers and not enough jobs. But let's break it down: why does this behavior exist? It's not because companies are bad or recruiters are inherently evil. It's because 1) Their incentives are all towards getting the right person in fast and 2) People generally avoid unpleasant activities - like paying a bill or telling a candidate that they were rejected Here's what you can do as a candidate: 1. If you don't hear back, don't just assume you did not get the role. Recently, one of our clients did not hear back for two weeks and assuming he did not get the role at a significant Fintech company, only to get later informed that he was indeed moving to the final stage 2. Follow up many times over with the correct language 3. Always position yourself as the prize. Never appear desperate in your reachouts 4. Move past ghosting or rejections fast. In our program, we emphasize radical acceptance, which means that candidates should get out of this loop quickly. Remember, ghosting is not new; it's just become more common. But at the end of the day, you own the impact it has on your mental state. --- P.S., If this resonates with you, and you: - Are a product manager - You love to take action - You are committed to career growth But if you need help landing that ideal next role, DM me "dream role" and I will send you details. We only work with selected folks and have started to limit how many people we accept every month.

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Looking for a Product Leadership role? Explore these top opportunities to drive innovation, lead teams, and shape strategy at these companies: 1. SVP, Product Management – MasterControl, Salt Lake City, UT (Remote) Lead product strategy and development for MasterControl's quality and compliance software portfolio while managing the product management team. MasterControl provides cloud-based quality and compliance software to over 1,000 companies in life sciences and regulated industries. 2. Group Product Manager - Microsoft Security Service Edge – Microsoft, San Francisco, CA (Remote) Lead Microsoft's Security Service Edge (SSE) offering, driving product strategy and development for Microsoft Entra Internet Access and Private Access solutions. Microsoft is a global technology leader with 228,000 employees across 190 countries, focused on empowering every person and organization to achieve more through technology. 3. VP of Product Management – Benevity, Seattle, WA Lead product strategy and development for Benevity's Finance Platform, managing a product team while driving vision, roadmap execution, and platform operations. Benevity is a B Corporation that provides social impact technology to Fortune 100 companies, enabling corporate giving, volunteering, and other social action initiatives. 4. VP of Product – Banyan Software, Chicago, IL Serve as a key executive leader at SoftSmiths (a Banyan Software portfolio company) responsible for driving product strategy, innovation, and execution in the energy sector, initially working independently with potential to build a product team. Reports to the CEO of SoftSmiths, working closely with VP Technology. Banyan Software is one of fastest-growing private software companies in the US that acquires and grows enterprise software businesses with dominant positions in niche vertical markets, operating with a permanent "buy and hold for life" strategy. 5. Director of Product Management – Mark43, New York, NY (Remote) Lead the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) product line and Mobile applications, managing a team of 2-3 Product Managers while driving product strategy and development. Mark43 is a technology company that develops cloud-native software solutions for law enforcement and public safety agencies to improve community safety and quality of life. 6. Head of Product – 0x, San Francisco, CA (Remote) Lead Product team overseeing consumer and developer platforms while driving product strategy and fostering team growth. Reports directly to the CEO. 0x is a Web3 company providing developer APIs for token access and liquidity, having processed over $130B in trading volume through major platforms like Coinbase and MetaMask. Want more Product Leadership roles? Access the weekly updated database: https://lnkd.in/gq9qY6s4

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"Early-stage startup" and "maternity leave" sometimes feels at odds. Many parents opt for the big companies during their parental leave years, but I've taken three maternity leaves at early stage startups. As I transition back into full-time work after this last parental leave, I took some time to reflect on how the three leaves I've taken have been similar or different. I hope it is useful to others! (link in comments)

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Product for Engineers dropped another awesome post recently: How we decide what to build. It’s a beautiful building-in-public look at how PostHog goes about product development. There is so much to learn from this newsletter. I love it. https://lnkd.in/ewNBSpu4

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Hiring a strong founding engineer is one of the hardest but most impactful decisions a startup makes. Three methods to find founding engineers I’ve seen work well on PeopleGPT: - Engineers at Seed / Series A companies - Former VC-backed CTOs or founders - Current founding engineers In each case, the searches filter for 1) background in a high-growth or venture-backed environment (powered by PeopleGPT's integrated funding data), and 2) significant IC experience. Do you have other strategies? Share in the comments below 👇

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I saw a rare example of bad advice from YC recently. They told folks that it doesn’t matter if you’re passionate about your company’s product / mission. While that’s fine from the #VC’s perspective, as lots of enterprise b2b applications are extremely profitable, which was their point. And their business is driven by repeatably successful actions. Growing a b2b business in their wheelhouse, with their network is definitely a successful and repeatable activity. However … most people should not even be an #Entrepreneur. Let alone a founder of a VC-backed startup. The lifestyle will make them miserable. To be a successful #founder, you need to be motivated to get up and work on your company 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s all-consuming. Usually for an entire decade. So focusing on a product and customers that you don’t care about … that will compuound the personal pain and build a personal hell. I’ve seen that happen to a number of my friends and associates over the years, even when they were seen as tremendous successes. Focus first on what matters the most … your happiness. That includes solving a problem that you’re excited about. But only if you’re actually an entrepreneur. Before you dive into being a business owner…figure out if that lifestyle is for you.

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An early startup that we don't have the capacity to help asked what they could be doing to hire some good early engineers. Below is what I shared. I don't think companies want to hear that there's no secret stash of candidates and that it takes hard work to make hires. But it's the truth and also worth it! === I'm not sure if you're already doing this but I would suggest making a list of all the companies and teams that employ these engineers and systematically reach out via LI or email to engage them about this opportunity. Reaching out to ~10-15/day of the best engineers in the space will get you 3-5 high signal intro calls per week that over a few weeks/months should get you the few hires you're looking for. In addition, you can post the roles on LinkedIn and/or other engineering sites and also encourage referrals from your team. Regarding the latter, you can try to offer referral bonuses and also set up sourcing jams where you get some pizza or virtual Doordash and everybody mines their networks for good engineers to contact. This is what a recruiter would do to make these hires. Let me know if any of this prompts questions. Hope this helps and good luck out there. Hiring is most definitely a grind!! But also worth it when you're able to find and hire great people.

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🚨 We're hiring a head of engineering at Warmly,! Who's the best of the best you know? Offering a $5,000 referral bonus for direct intros to someone we hire. You can comment them in directly and then intro We're looking for an engineering leader who's highly technical and scaled a team and product during a period of hypergrowth, $4MM to $30MM+ in ~ 2 years or something similar Our app engineering team is based in the US/Brazil. Meet our Tech Leads Marcos Cury & Scott O'Connor. Our data engineering team is based in Israel. Meet Uri Steinfeld and Dror Ventura brought in from our acquisition of Immagnify (acquired by Warmly). And our QA team is based in Pakistan. Meet Muhammad Ali Arif and Abeer Khan). They're welcome to work out of anywhere. Though we all work US hours. And we have quarterly company off sites - most recently in Mexico City, Greece, and Austin Texas! Our system is complex but resilient. We process millions of real-time website visits/day, orchestrate tens of thousands of automated AI sales & marketing campaigns/day and sync hundreds of customer’s CRMs and email platforms. We move quickly but deliberately. Design, product, and engineering collaborate to come up with the best solutions. It's never a should we build it question, it's a "this vs that" question. Looking for 10x solutions, not just 2x. As a member of the exec team, they'd be part of all the top level decisions we make as a company. No politics here. Just efficient business decisions. We're all humble, open minded, and want every other member of the exec team to win. Know anyone that comes to mind?

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Most startups choose Stripe for billing, but soon realize there’s more infrastructure needed to manage pricing & packaging. This "additional infrastructure" usually involves building & maintaining admin panels, feature flags, entitlements, and a bunch of UX for plan management (e.g. upgrade paths, usage meters, customer portals, pricing tables, etc). Developers shouldn’t have to build or maintain any of this—none of it is core to their product. At Schematic, we call this "the last mile of pricing & packaging." Central to what we're trying to do for customers is make it easy for developers to outsource this last mile, so they can focus on shipping new value and avoid getting bogged down in the latest pricing or billing initiative.

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If I were the founder of RB2B, here's what I'd do instead of overloading with features that don't add real value because I believe more features ≠ less churn, common mistake many founders run into 1. Own the value Rb2b sells intent data. It's not a complete platform like 6Sense or Dreamdata that marketers can also use. So, a subscription model doesn’t make sense. 2. Switch to pay-as-you-go Sell credit packages to unlock profiles. Users can buy what they need, and yes, revenue won't be predictable, but that’s just the nature of this business. 3. Free plan + credits (No more sharing profile details for free) Everyone starts on a free plan with 30 credits to unlock profile details (like name, LinkedIn profile, email). Notifications only show account names and page visits , users decide if they want to spend credits. Credits don’t renew monthly but last a year. I’d also tie the free credits to the domain or company level rather than per sign-up ID. May be I charge a small monthly fee for slack notification if needed. 4. Refocus website messaging I’d shift the focus from agencies to enterprise customers in the site messaging. I believe this approach might add real value and align better with what customers actually need!

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Replacing employees is expensive. I've analyzed 100s of SaaS companies employing over 580k people to look at what people choosing to leave cost them each year - and I'm giving it away for free. For example, Datadog had 1010 people leave voluntarily in the last 12 months. When factoring in things like lost output, replacing them costs an estimate of over $16 million. Per year. Employee retention is big $$$. Curious how your company (or any other specific company) compares to the rest of the industry? Like this post and comment what company you're interested in, and I'll give you the full comparison.

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“So we try to work with founders and CMOs to get them to come through that process with us, and I think what we find then is once they know the process, the process is great, the process is cool, but we will then suggest some pretty differentiated and unique stories that they could be telling, and that’s when the rubber hits the road. Are they comfortable being this ambitious? Are they comfortable stretching to having a strong opinion on this or that, or do they kinda want to just play it safe and get all the goodwill from branding without doing some of the hard work of taking a stand? That’s where it gets dicey.” Quote of the Day with Shannon Deep and Kevan Lee in conversation with Leah Tharin about brand marketing. Some of the best brand marketing experiences I’ve had was doing rapid press response, in which a journalist would reach out writing a breaking story and I would provide a paragraph quote for them to cite. Whenever I took a definite stand on an issue - not veering into controversy for controversy's sake - it would always be published in the article and we would see the benefit. I find a lot of material on LinkedIn to be bland and samey and safe, and frankly that bores me. Even though I too have the pull to ‘play it safe’ at times, if I have a strong opinion, that may even run counter to the prevailing opinion, I try to be true to myself. There was a question asked the other day: Can you build a successful personal brand, if you have no personality? I don’t think so. I’m an introvert, so it’s not about having a gregarious extravert personality, but it’s definitely about having an opinion, calling it as you see it, even if you’re wrong. I’m certainly more engaged with brands that have opinions. But I find most to be bland and filled with safe corporate speak. What’s your opinion?

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🫵 I want to help you get into Iterative. No seriously. We want to invest in as many great companies as possible but sometimes great companies have bad applications. It's hard to understand what they do, what's unique, etc. If you're a great company, I want to tell you how to write a great application. I'm hosting an event on 13 June at 6:00 PM SGT to share what a good Iterative application looks like and how you can increase your chances of securing a spot. Date: Thursday, 13 June 2024 Time: 6:00 to 7:00 PM SGT Location: Zoom Join me to discover.. 😍 The types of founders and startups Iterative invest in ​🪄 Tips to improve your chances of securing an investment 🚩 Common mistakes to avoid and the red flags we look for in applications We'll dedicate a good portion of the hour to Q&A, so bring any questions you have about the program or application. If you are thinking about applying for our upcoming batch or just curious how investors think, you should come. Look for the 📌 in the comments to register.

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Positioning is everything for job seekers right now. > The Product Manager who owns the roadmap... vs. the one who's turned user research into a competitive advantage > The Partnerships Manager who "has a deep rolodex" vs. the one who knows how to monetize > The Eng Director who's led teams of 30 vs. the one who's brought revenue-generating products to market with speed and efficiency Same people. Two different ways of talking about their experience. One makes them sound like everybody. The other lands interviews. Do you know what your competitive advantage is?

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I enjoy having bugs. Let’s be real. Waiting for perfection is a fast track to missed opportunities. Some of the most successful products started off imperfect, but they were out there—being used, getting feedback, and evolving fast. - Instagram had a ton of issues at launch. - Slack wasn’t even close to what it is today. - Facebook? Glitches galore in its early days. Launching early allows you to: 1. Get real user feedback early on. The best lessons come from your customers, not your team. 2. Adapt quickly. You’ll know what to fix and what to prioritize based on actual usage. 3. Move fast while your competitors are still trying to perfect their product behind closed doors. It’s not about being flawless—it’s about learning fast and iterating faster. If you’re waiting for that bug-free launch, you’re missing the moment to capture attention and gain traction. Launch now. Iterate later. Does your product have bugs at launch? Good. That means you’re ahead of the game. PS: I am Benjamin Bourdeau, founder at Get Clone I post about AI/tech, follow me for more.

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This doesn’t mean coding is dead (sorry, Jensen Huang). Instead, what we are seeing is how deeply polarized the tech market has become in 2024 and how wide the gap is growing. Fewer tech jobs = fewer tech companies hiring. And traditional SaaS companies are at the center of this shift. Because: 1) VC money isn’t flowing like it used to. Historically, most of the VC capital raised by tech startups went to hiring and customer acquisition. Now, with funding rounds slowing, there’s less cash to fuel headcount growth. 2) Growth has stalled. Many SaaS companies are paying the price for their “growth at all costs” phase, especially now that the ZIRP era is over. There's a ton of zombie companies out there—still walking, but essentially dead. Some are going for “life raft” options: selling at lower multiples, turning to private equity, acqui-hires, or raising funds at steeply diluted valuations. And of course, this means no expansion, hiring freezes, or worse—mass layoffs after the 2022 bubble burst. Now, on the other side of the gap is AI, grabbing all the money, headlines, and triple-digit growth. But even within AI, there are two distinct markets. 1) Core AI infrastructure – AI-focused hardware, software, and services. 2) AI-embedded companies – Businesses that natively integrate AI (like LLMs) into their applications. In 2024, every company is calling itself an “AI company,” slapping AI into their apps or pitch decks to ride the hype wave. This approach works for now—they’re raising capital, iterating, and searching for product-market fit. But in 5–10 years? Many of these companies might not be sustainable. Their AI offerings are often easy to replicate, and their competitive edge fades quickly. Moat-less. The good news is, we are starting to see more enterprise spending in the application layer and I think more value is being created. Agentic applications are really moving the needle now. Which is critical - the entire AI movement rests on the future of application builders. AI infrastructure, on the other hand, has more staying power IMO. These companies—especially those working on hardware—are playing the long game. Yes, they’re capital-intensive, but the opportunity is massive. The proverbial diamond mine of AI is far from fully explored. And as history shows, the ones selling the tools to dig the mine will often be the biggest winners. What do you think? Let me know your thoughts. P.S. Great data from Bigdata.com and Linas Beliūnas

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Founders - if you're raising a seed round and the VC across the table says your employee option needs to be 20%, push back. I've had multiple DMs over the past couple weeks from founders who are in the middle of negotiating their seed raises. One major sticking point - the employee option pool. No surprise why VCs would push for a larger pool (before completing the round): it saves them from some dilution! But 20% is almost always too large a reserve for a company at this stage. I've resurfaced some data below from 28,000 cap tables on Carta that shows the median for seed-stage valuations is around 13-14%. Especially with seed-stage startups growing headcount at a much slower pace than in prior years, the option pool should reflect the hiring needs of the next 2 years or so, with a little wiggle room. You can replenish the pool at the next fundraise as needed. Obviously I still advocate for employees to be given generous equity grants - they're the bedrock of company success after all. But founders can do that while also minimizing their own dilution just starting out. Thinking of doing a mini-series on the real data for the most common cap table sticking points for early-stage deals, let me know if you have topics you'd want covered below. #cartadata #ESOP #employeeoptions #founders #startups  

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