Pros
Honesty there really aren't any unless you're willing to drink the kool aid or are an ex-frat boy that peaked in college, much like the CEO.
Cons
The CEO is an unrepentant sociopath and a terrible businessman. He's kinda like Trump in that he managed to take a very significant amount of money and somehow throw all of it away through hubris and a general lack of intellect. I will provide two examples (of many) of his sociopathy before I go into how badly he ran his business. 1) During an all company meeting, he explained how anyone that knows him knows that if he is conversing with someone and then just starts walking away, it means he has lost interest in the conversation and you should stop speaking. Not only is such a quality rude and boorish, but the fact that he thought it was a totally normal thing to say to a room of 150 people is just completely insane. 2) This is the thing that made me bother to write up this review. Prior to COVID the company had to layoff about 25% of the staff. Of course, layoffs sometimes happen. They're a part of business. However, he decided to go on vacation and leave the layoffs to the rest of his executive team. He is a weak, pathetic little boy with no respect for anyone that works for him. But on top of being a generally terrible human being in every respect, he also happens to be a horrendous businessman. Initially, he was somehow able to secure a significant amount of money from investor friends of his despite the fact that his startup "idea" was not novel in any way. It was just software applied to digital marketing, with no particular value add over anyone else's software. Despite this, they had very significant growth early on due to the sheer volume of starting capital as well as contacts among his executive team that brought in a lot of undeserved sales. Instead of recognizing that he hardly had a differentiating product and needed to invest capital primarily in engineering, he instead decided to hire almost nothing but marketers. This turned the company into a typical marketing agency that happened to have a little software on the side. Additionally, the rate at which they hired marketers resulted in completely unsustainable growth. It was like someone drinking coffee non-stop--it works for a while but the crash is inevitable. The product never really went anywhere but in circles. Partly this is because Dave has no idea how his product even works and couldn't himself suggest anything to differentiate it from competitors, largely because he isn't very bright. Mostly though, it's because he cannot lead his way out of a paper bag. The product team was completely dysfunctional and all over the place and every few months they'd completely switch gears. Their biggest failure was putting what little engineering capital there was into a SaaS product that almost no clients purchased or wanted any part of. It was an unmitigated disaster. The product team--and just about every other team other than creative--were led by ex-frat boys who peaked in college. Dave hired based on whether he liked a person personally rather than if they were actually capable employees. Given that Dave is a terrible person, the kind of people he hired were also terrible people. And since he was too much of a dolt to lead any of these teams himself, he instead left it to the terrible people he hired. The results were predictable. The lack of a decent product caught up with them, clients left, and he had to layoff 25% of the staff--and that's before COVID reduced advertising appetite. From what I've heard, more layoffs have happened during COVID and the company is more than likely in free fall. The employees left are likely too scared to quit since the economy is so terrible. I feel bad for them. I'm sure Dave doesn't. Should Dave start another company or join one, I look forward to sending either his employees or his superiors LinkedIn messages describing how he went on vacation to avoid personally laying people off. I genuinely wish Dave all the worst as far as business is concerned.
