I went to their new office, which is fairly massive; its half of an entire floor.
John talked to me for a while on what it’d look like if I joined; his understanding was that I wanted something which had a lot of correlation from engineering might to the business metrics, but also that I liked growth hacks and having a really short feedback cycle. These were things which were both true at Blowfish and at Pocket.
He proposed a role which was hybrid BD/Devrel/PM/EM. I’d start as an IC, but quickly lead a team to work on a particular part of the codebase.
I think what I convinced him by is that he asked me what I think a great PM does, and I said that they very effectively relay the feedback and segment into tasks from synthesizing the feedback. And that they’re competent at rallying the troops without being micromanage-y.
The rationale was that there are a lot of people who are really good at math and zk, but they tend to be “autistic” — most of them are happiest being IC’s and have no desire to be a PM. John said that at least in being interested in that aspect, I would probably make a good one.
Then, at this point, I’d only be doing hero coding. I’d do a lot of messaging stuff with Uma, I’d travel to conferences frequently, and manage integrations.
The main thing is that they don’t have a solid flow of customer requests → linear tickets, and nobody to herd the junior engineers.
My questions would be:
- Do I actually need management experience for being a founder? Is this something I can learn from first principles on my own?
- Does it make me too steadfast in that I wouldn’t want to be a founder
- Do I give up thiel by this? It compresses the timelines so hard if I actually want to be a founder
- TODO: look into how many years I have for thiel (and how many of that I would plan to spend at Succinct)
- On the opposite side, if I’m an EM at the “hottest” company in crypto, then doesn’t that by extension mean that I’m super in-demand? Succinct is the most consensus successful company in crypto at the moment.
- I really can’t fuck this up; if it doesn’t go as I expect, then the entire thing comes crashing down. I lose my reputation among Paradigm, etc. But on the other hand, if I’m the most visible part of a company that’s really OP, I can take an asymmetrical amount of clout from it
The signalling for each side is really strong. Either I become an EIR, or I become an engineering lead/third in command at Succinct. And even if I ditch either side, they probably just want me more for the future. They’ll remember me and want to keep in touch.
Things I would need
- O-1, I don’t really have any vacation days left so we need to derisk that ASAP.
- Can I get matt huang as my advisory opinion letter? Or someone of his tier
Questions
- Who would I be working with? What’s the org setup/who would I report to?
- What would be the process/expectations of scoping up?
- What would be the process of taking on more responsibility and how do you envision the timing/ordering? (I presume performance based, but curious as to expectations).
- Devrel/PM/marketing is a pretty encompassing role; what would the envisioned split between roles be? Is it majority one or is it depending on the timing?
- ^^ Pretty much “I understand this is super fluid, but can I get a more solidified job description”
- https://www.patkua.com/blog/5-engineering-manager-archetypes/
Reminders to myself
- Dio wouldn’t be upset if I chose EIR or to join Succinct; he’d be disappointed but at the end of the day if it’s what I want, it’s positive sum for me to pursue it.
- It’s not my responsibility to please or displease certain groups