Think very carefully before joining.
Pros
see my overall summary under the "cons" section.
Cons
All – and I mean ALL – decisions come back to the CEO. Unfortunately, whilst he is genuinely truly excellent in some areas, in others he is truly shocking; the problem is that I’m not sure he knows the difference. He is a genuinely nice guy, but will brook no dissent and, in fact, the more experience and successful a background you bring, the less respect you are given. He simply will not be challenged, and his debating style is generally to tell you why you’re wrong before he hears your ideas. He NEVER negotiates over anything with you; I think he considers it weakness. He often changes his mind, and likes to make all decisions with no written backup, so inconsistency is the company’s watchword. For these reasons, and many more, the company desperately underperforms. This is sad, as it has a great deal of potential and genuinely has a great offering but, having been CEO of a business that in five years grew to be bigger than this has grown in 20 years (mine was consistently profitable) I believe I am able to make that judgement. If you are considering joining, I think you need to be very careful – it’s not necessarily the wrong decision, but you need to be clear on why. For instance, if you are quite early in your career, it could be a very good choice: you will get exposure to large company c-suite executives that you are unlikely to get anywhere else; you should not underestimate this advantage relative to your peers who don’t. However, unless your career really does advance quickly, stay only until you’ve had one promotion and can leverage it for a job with real prospects elsewhere. If you’re nearing the end of your career (as I was) and have some experiences of which you’re proud and want an interesting job with reasonable money, it might be worth the change. But join knowing your wider experience WILL be ignored, and you WILL be frustrated. There are degrees to which this will apply, depending on which department you join, but it WILL apply. However, if you are mid-career, ambitious, have a good track record and think you have a contribution any wider than the purest definition of the job to which you are applying, I’d encourage you to be very cautious. They are all good, decent people (I saw one comment about unethical behaviour in a previous post and I didn’t see any of that). They are also generous is some ways: if you do salary sacrifice into your pension, they contribute the saved Employer’s NIC (they don’t have to, but it’s a generous gesture) and at company drinks and other events there is absolutely no penny pinching. However, your wider contribution will be ignored and they can be extraordinarily petty and small-minded (one or two directors seemed intent to get small “wins” over me, right to the end). If the CEO doesn’t want to debate something with you, he will offer a platitude and then simply ignore the subject. You will certainly see many decisions that make no sense and are not commercially driven. In addition to the above, specifically in BD there were several things that, cumulatively, became too much for me to tolerate. Note, these are made in the context of being the highest performing salesman the company ever had; I was the only one EVER to hit target and I occasionally came close to selling more than the rest of the team combined (it wasn’t a large team, but all the same…!) At one annual review, after several years with no pay rise (the last being some three years previous, at which I was told “there’s more to come”) I was told "salespeople don't get pay rises...and if you've got a problem with that, you've got a problem with that" [verbatim]. My departure was me fixing that problem; given my contribution, I’d suggest the problem is now theirs. The annual target is unreasonable. £500k in each of the last five years, and it’s only ever been hit twice (by me – and nearly three times). Most people get between 40% and 65% and your remuneration will suffer considerably. People aren't stupid - unrealistic targets build resentment. The team raised this on multiple occasions and it was NEVER discussed. Revenue splitting. If you bring in new revenue from an account where there was previously a member, (another part of the business looks after the members you bring in) you have to give half the revenue to them, even though you have no control over service delivery. Without that, I would have hit target a 3rd time. It’s illogical to be penalised by factors that far out of your control, particularly given the unreasonable target in the first place. A few final thoughts: Each BD has a researcher. A while ago, mine was moved to another department with no consultant or real notice. The response to my (in my mind, understandably frustrated) internal email to those involved was desperately disappointing. The co-founder to whose department the researcher was moving did not even respond (bear in mind this is a company with about 30 people). He was told by the CEO not to reply but – seriously?! IMHO, he should have said "no - this is a poor show from us; I will call him". Instead, he did nothing and I had a most unsatisfactory conversation with the CEO at which most of the conversation was justification for the poor decision and his usual deflection. Furthmore, if a Researcher is key to BD performance, my target should have reflected the absence of one for the best part of an entire year. If a Researcher is NOT key, then why have them? In my exit interview, one question was to describe the company culture. I wrote that it was encouraging, flexible, understanding and genuinely prioritising of family, and that the people were nice. However, on the negative side: it is patronising, stifling of genuine innovation, extraordinarily close-minded and pays FAR TOO MUCH attention to woke snowflakery. The company empowers the most junior ranks and seems almost deliberately to try to humiliate and ignore the few people who have any real business experience and/ or whose results contribute the most. In conclusions, the leaders are kind, understanding and patient and the CEO is someone whose insight into companies and management challenges is sometimes incredibly prescient. But there were still too many interactions and decisions that were unnecessary, short-sighted and, in my opinion as a former CEO of a considerably more successful company whose results I highlight above, wrong. For me, on balance, the rewards and job satisfaction on offer were outweighed by the negatives, which wore me down over time. By the way, to the only co-founder who wrote anything meaningful in my leaving card, thank you. I am well aware, and appreciate, the fact that for many years you went out of your way to accommodate me and my way of working and it made things much smoother between us. To the co-founder who wrote nothing, or even contacted after my resignation, you’re a decent guy too, but…really? Nothing, not even a note or a farewell? I had hope for slightly more and that was a genuine disappointment. Finally, the whole essence of what the company does is built upon "external advice, critique and support". However, they have no Chair nor any NEDs, independent or otherwise. Their lack shows; it would be good to fix that shortcoming.