A response to Sam Altman’s article — Read the comments

I’ve talked to some of you who are really bummed about negative press coverage or online comments about your company. Often this takes the general form of “ugh, all these new startups suck, everything good has already been started.” — Sam Altman, in Don’t Read The Comments

When you’re leading any kind of organisation, you will be an easy target for criticism. People will criticise your idea, your work, your decisions, and sometimes even your lifestyle.

And this does not only happen in startups — look to sports, where coaches are being criticised for the plays they choose, or the players they put on the field, all the time.

I often say that everyone should be the CEO of something at least once in their life — when you do, your perspective about that and other roles change dramatically.

You start understanding why some decisions where made and, when you don’t, you assume there’s information that person must know that hasn’t reached you.

That’s because you know that very rarely are these a “A or B” type of decisions. Instead, they tend to be long chains that deal with complex variables. And people are often the most complex variable of all.

That’s the Hard Thing About Hard Things that Ben Horowitz mentions throughout his book:

“There’s no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations. There’s no recipe for building a high-tech company; there’s no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble; there’s no recipe for making a series of hit songs; […] That’s the hard thing about hard things — there is no formula for dealing with them.” — Ben Horowitz

We all, some more than others, tend to forget or not understand this, thus criticising for any step made. And of course, then there’s the trolls, that do it for the pleasure of it.

Criticism is part of building great things, and will not end when you turn from a startup to grownup. It keeps growing as you do, and this can be hard for some.

You need to assume that’s going to happen, and develop a thick skin on the way. And a great way to develop one, is by actually reading the comments. Read them assuming that you’re going to be shot in the chest, and take that as something normal.

Of course, don’t overdue it, don’t lose your focus. Use it just to develop a thick skin, because that’s going to be useful in the future. Take harsh criticism as something normal.

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Whitesmith is a web and mobile product development studio.

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