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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Everybody so far is commenting on the woman who approached the CEO.

Let's not forget the CEO, who committed and risked resources on a hunch or instinct or who-knows-what.

If I had to pick one of the two to ask how they had the nerve to act and to learn from, I'd pick him. (Of course I'd prefer both and not to belittle her gumption and skills to back it up).

- What did he see to suggest risking those resources? ... To create a team of outsiders to work on the core app?

- How likely did he expect things to work out?

- How did he explain the expenditure of flying the others in to the CFO or whomever?

- Or did he make a unilateral decision without asking others?

- Did he just get lucky?

- Had he done things like this before and succeeded? Failed?

- Was he worried about making waves in his organization? Did he?

Plenty more questions pop up...

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I have some doubts about the CEO.

It's very common in these kind of scenarios that either a) the same criticism / suggestions have been made regularly over a long time by people inside the company which have gone ignored, or b) the company has a culture in which that information never reaches the CEO, either out of fear or because of middle management layers.

In both those cases, the CEO is actually mismanaging the company and completely undermining the motivation and loyalty of his employees.

I've seen this happen time and time again. CEO's and managers don't accept internal criticism or suggestions, don't give their people the freedom to take action themselves, but some outsider swoops in with an impressive Powerpoint presentation (or dress) and suddenly they see the light.

It's the opposite of taking risks (you can blame the outsiders if it fails), it's actually cowardice.

There may be a big amount of variables playing here that we might no be taking in consideration so I wouldn't say that.

Even if that's the case, I think sometimes this is what needs to happen that makes you realize the change/s that has to be done to be better. (be more transparent, fire some managers or key people, etc.)

Just to be clear, I'm not saying this is the case here, but it's definitely a common scenario.

Either way it's a very strong vote of no confidence in the existing staff by the CEO.

Unless there is a long story of trying to improve the app internally, it appears this CEO decided at the bar that his own staff wasn't good enough and needed to be replaced with external consultants without considering other root causes (including himself).

Executives that are easily persuaded by the sales pitches of external consultants and don't listen to their own people are a dime a dozen.

The questions you want answers to are valid (and I'd be curious also) but I think that most likely the answers to this are n=1 and we don't have any knowledge of others who might do the exact same thing and have a different outcome.

Not to mention the fact that whatever his answers are they are specific to his organization, what he sells and who he is surrounded by.

Once again, interesting questions but I'm not sure either way the answers matter that much. I don't think how he handled this particular case (noting though that you did want to know if he had done these things before) you can draw any clear conclusions.

Separately I wonder if the person who pitched him were not an attractive woman but say an unattractive woman or man what the results would have been and what would have happened. (That said I've had great results pitching people by email which is more or less a neutral.)

The thing that is most fascinating, is that she basically said, "I like your idea, but your execution sucks". That is the pinnacle of the most painful thing to hear, but the CEO took it in stride and made his product better.

That is the lesson I am going to take away. Ideas matter, but if execution is the thing you can change, then embrace the people that tell you your execution sucks and have ideas.

I'm embarrassed that I even know this, but she used a standard pickup tactic[1,2], popularized by the book "the game".

[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=neg

[2] http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/voices/2012/05/negging-lat...

I can see the analogy, although I'm not convinced it holds up. But the flip-side is, and I think this is important to understand, a lot of the "techniques" used by PUAs aren't things they invented, but rather things they borrowed from material on salesmanship and persuasion.

Robert Cialdini, for example, is heavily cited as an influence within the PUA community. So calling a "neg" a "pickup technique" might not even be accurate. I imagine the idea of "lower the value of a high-value target to penetrate their shield" probably predates the term PUA by quite some time.

Not really. She qualified herself by saying: 1. she uses it all the time. 2. she hates it.

As a founder, I am always looking for that combination in my users.

The bonus was offering herself as the solution. I'll venture that his decision was made even before she finished the sentence.

But I don't want to fix Air BnB's problems, I want to see them die in fire. I use it all the time, but I can't resist the urge to work there and burn the place to ground.

Why?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6507718 will suffice. If I think about it, I will start to get sick to my stomach.

It appears that so far you have, in fact, resisted that urge.

(Or maybe you haven't, but they wouldn't hire you. That would have been an interesting interview. "So, Mr X, where do you see yourself in this business in five years time?" "In a prison cell nearby, looking out through the bars at the smoking ruins and laughing.")

Agreed. In a way, this could mean the CEO was already aware of a need to change, but needed people caring enough to try a different approach and this woman did the right thing at the right time. Another way to put it: if she didn't walk to hime he could have gone to some independant product guy/girl the next week or month to rethink the design. [1]

When asking to work for a company, there is always the tension between the company needing one's input (in other words, their product really suck in some way) and the company willing and being able to act on the input. The OP's story flashed back the other stories of the designer that went to Google to bring some design expertise and just dropped the ball because it was an endless uphill battle.

[1] Of course, the other way round, if she's a freelance designer invited to award ceremonies and walks at CEOs pitching ideas to improve their companies, she'll eventually find work I think.

The 'three things' she suggested aren't exactly ones that inspire confidence in her abilities either. "What are three things you'd fix?" "Oh...the logo and, uh, all of it, really. And the ratings system".

I agree

That could have killed the thing. "Logo, All the app and ratings" is not three things. Still, some alcohol may have been involved so this could have made sense at the time.

It was more probably the nerve and familiarity with the product that convinced him.

I like both people in this story a LOT

When you are the CEO, you are both empowered and bound. Empowered to take risks, because the buck stops with you, but bound by the outcomes because there is nobody else to blame.

So yes he took a risk. This was one of many. If it didn't pay off, he could take others.

I think he hedged that risk by asking 'what are the top three things that you'd fix in the app' or something like that. Don't remember the exact words.

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