Thread by @justinkan

1/ Many startups go through a phase where good people at the company start deciding to go to business school, “realizing that they don’t want to work at a startup”, or going back to their old job at Facebook.

2/ This might mean you need to fix one of the following:

- You haven’t created clear career paths for people
- You haven’t defined the purpose of the company (aka Mission)
- Your culture sucks or you aren’t working as a team

3/ Career paths: Founders often don’t realize this: people give a shit about their careers. It is easy to forget about that when it feels like there are existential things on the line every day.

4/ When you get to a certain size, people will really start to care about their opportunities and where working at your company gets them career-wise.

Create a leveling and performance review system to let people know how to advance in your org.

5/ Mission: People need a reason to get out of bed and show up at work every day. Paying rent is an ok reason, but if that’s the only reason then as soon as someone shows up with a bigger bag of money they will leave you to secure the bag.

6/ Make sure you define a mission and make doubly sure to communicate it regularly. Talk about it at all hands, and tie back what rank and file team members are doing to support the mission through their work.

7/ Culture / Team: Read more about how to address culture or team problems at our Atrium blog: atrium.co/blog/debugging…