Patreon CPO Julian Gutman a mistake
Patreon was a company on a clear path before Julian was hired from Meta in 2021. The biggest mistake of CEO was to blindly trust and enthrone him responsibility of both Product and Engineering. When Julian had no background or strong experience leading engineering . Potentially giving him responsibility of CEO. All this was done because of the exaggerated value of Instagram (Julian was mere Director) and not founder of Instagram. Essentially Julian got a free ride to experiment his own startup by leveraging a fully funded startup Patreon. He was always a product guy and never engineering . And with background from huge company Meta , he tried to fit large company mold to a small startup Patreon. These are his immature and costly actions. Which I am surprised the CEO didn’t foresee: 1. Scrap the entire engineering and even brand new talented hires were laid off. Why? Julian thinks with his Meta (supremacy IQ), everyone and even engineers and leaders hired in during the month he joined are DUMB and needs to be fired. ( This didn’t age well :), considering Patreon IPO screwed and literally nothing changed in Product). Ego lesson 101. 2. Immediately scrapped entire Product roadmap. And went into this expensive Google Design Strategy to brainstorm completely new Patreon . This is what happens when you let a vision less person kill the company who has no successful startup founding experience . This exercise cost the company millions and also it’s IPO. After 2 years , the product is the same as before Julian joined 😝. But Julian still keeps his job. Definitely fishy . 3. Bloated entire engineering org. This is exactly what happens when you give keys of engineering to a ego headed Product guy from a large enterprise. Julian thought he has 200 million to spend. Let’s create thousands of work streams , Spotify model etc etc . Hire Products for each stream etc. Immediately after laying off 200 people in June 2020, this shameless CEO and CTO raised 200 million and posted “300 +” job postings for the same job technical skills. The engineering Hiring was 2x to 3x due to bloated hiring. AFTER 2 years the Product is SAME, IPO lost and investor money in drain. Investors need to investigate this. Patreon is perfect example of how to ground a successful startup due bad hiring decision and favoritism . #tech #patreon
Yea looks like he's on over his head
I swear I need to read more and drink less alcohol. I legit thought OP was referencing Patron (the tequila)🤣🤣🤣then I went back and re-read the post.
Fuck drinking less brah! You need few hits of patron right now
Lucio that u?
Entire executive team has 0 experience building start ups.
Most people building startups don't have any experience building startups tho
Says the executive with no start up experience
They've reached out to be about a role (non-tech). It sounds like you don't recommend that? I think they will struggle during these tougher economical times when consumers cut their spending.
Patreon prides itself on being a company with strong values (mission driven / creators first) while only hiring from tech giants. Julian is a great example of big rift at Patreon - the kind of rift that results in little internal trust and consistently poor leadership favorability with staff. Tons of leaks, little internal trust, few exciting product improvements, inconsistent remote work policy, app is jank, exec team has little experience
The mistake has been corrected.
Took very long
What’s the sentiment internally like?
Always thought the hire of Julian was a big mistake. Thoughts and prayers for employee ISO + RSU