I got some great advice from a startup guru when I was first applying to tech startups: Look at how many people have left the company in the last year. If there are a lot of former employees, you know it's a bad sign and there's a problem internally - stay away.
This could not be more true than at Paperless Post. LinkedIn doesn't lie, go look at the number of ex-employees, there has been a mass exodus in the last year of great talent getting out of this company for good reason:
No strategic leadership at the company: The CEOs, the COO, the CPO all have no prior experience at proper tech companies (again, look this up on LinkedIn). This is a catastrophic weakness for a tech startup at a stage in need of growth. Think back to the last time you remember something innovative coming out of Paperless Post since they first began. Coming up short on examples? That's because there is no innovation coming from this company since their start in 2008. That's right. 2008 and no real innovation on the tech and product side. It is the blind leading the blind at the C level, and when smart individuals at the company try to push for innovation, it gets lost in a sea of fear of risk as there is poor understanding of what proper and healthy business risk looks like. This is due in major part to the team’s weak handle, at a basic level, of what the business drivers should be as the company grows. Top down goals of the company are non existent and no teams, let alone individuals, had clear goals to work toward. It is an utter mess.
Culture of cliques: This company thrives on a clique culture where those that have been at the company the longest are allowed to push ideas through, jockey for promotions, and game politics in a way that many would consider unethical.
Lack of management skill: This comes top down. Because the C team is green on tech industry depth of knowledge and has never managed teams outside of Paperless Post as this was many of their first ever jobs out of college, there is no rigor around management skill. Management has no reasonable and objective promotion benchmarks and can use the so-called existing framework ambiguity to their advantage on an extremely subjective curve - which in multiple instances I witnessed while there included cases where implicit bias and sexism were factors. I back this up by the fact that on paper, those that were getting overlooked for promotions had great track records at the company of executing and driving results. Those that did get promoted were those that had been there longest and were very close with management and the C team on a personal level. The mass exodus I mentioned is due in large part to promises of promotions with no action for months to YEARS. Yes, years. Plenty of individuals waited years for promised promotions and after getting burned over and over, they left.
Conclusion: Stay away. This place is toxic.
