Dennis: Startups Often Implode Due to Poor People and Conflict Management
Kalam Dennis · Starting a Startup After Business School - Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis of AptDeco · Y Combinator · Dec 14, 2018 · at 19:24
AptDeco co-founder Kalam Dennis discusses why traditional management skills acquired in corporate careers are critical for startup founders.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And that's a huge pitfall for startups is that they don't know how to manage people. They have a lot, you know, they implode because You know, because they don't know how to deal with conflict.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Kalam Dennis
Dennis: Warehousing inventory breaks the used furniture marketplace business model
“You can't, in our opinion, build a business model A sustainable business model by having, by warehousing everything, because you're going to always going to be capped by the space. The cost to cover it, someone is going to have to pay for it, and ultimately to…”
Dennis: The focus on profitability easily gets lost in Silicon Valley
“There's this concept of building a real business, an idea, which means that it's a business that's profitable, it makes money, and that can surprisingly get lost, ah, in this Silicon Valley VC world”
Dennis: Early startups should scrap paid ads for free validation
“When you're starting a business, first of all, let's just scrap the advertising on Facebook and advertising on Twitter or wherever, and you really need to find out those scrappy free ways in order to see if your product is something that customers are respondi…”
Dennis: Corporate Experience Does Not Translate to Early-Stage Startup Skills
“When we started as we said, listen, we have a lot of business experience. We work at great companies. We've worked at great companies. We can just apply that knowledge and start this company. And it's the furthest thing from the truth. I mean, we, you know, ju…”
Dennis: Operational execution reveals costs that financial models always miss
“I don't care how many amazing models you have, how much experience you have, there's, when you do it for the first time, there's gonna be some things that you're gonna uncover that you weren't expecting. And you gotta be able to, you know, modify and change fo…”