When Dane Atkinson was just 18 years old he started his first company SenseNet. Not one to rest on his laurels, Dane went on to found over a dozen startups in the intervening years before co-founding\u00a0SumAll in 2011.<\/p>\n
With a lifetime of experience in the startup world, I talked to Dane about being an entrepreneur (Hint: it\u2019s a lot\u00a0like being a pirate) and what it\u2019s like running a company where employees can vote on every business decision.<\/p>\n
Is there something you know now that you wish you had known three years ago before starting SumAll?<\/strong><\/p>\n From a company standpoint, we\u2019ve learned a lot more about how people understand and use\u00a0data. Our perspective has been greatly broadened over the past three years. I\u2019ve also learned a lot about what people within the company actually want in terms of freedom and transparency. This has led to policies such as having transparent salaries. It has been a very educational three years \u2013 I\u2019ve learned more in these three than in most.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the biggest change you\u2019ve seen\u00a0at SumAll \u2013 product or otherwise?<\/strong><\/p>\n I advise people who are starting their own companies that you shouldn\u2019t be as obsessed with your idea in the beginning because ideas evolve very quickly in the startup community. It\u2019s rare for an idea not to evolve, but somehow our original view has persisted. We\u2019re still leveraging various datasets being interconnected. We haven\u2019t pivoted yet.<\/p>\n What\u2019s a bigger motivator for you: better people or better product?<\/strong><\/p>\n Better people all the way. It\u2019s always people. People make the product.<\/p>\n What are some of the upsides and downsides of being an entrepreneur?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s been a trend lately where being an entrepreneur is cool. I\u2019m a lifelong addict of the entrepreneur lifestyle. I think that it\u2019s one of the best ways to grow yourself as a human. When you\u2019re an entrepreneur, the company or idea either works or it doesn\u2019t. When you make mistakes you can\u2019t hide from them. If the most important thing for you is personal growth, an entrepreneurial route is excellent for you.<\/p>\n There are very few downsides, but it depends on your personality. It\u2019s like having a child \u2013 it\u2019s very consuming in the beginning, but it does continue to give you more and more rewards throughout life. Caution though, if you can\u2019t draw fuel from the chaos, then entrepreneurship can be a rough path.<\/p>\n What is it like being CEO of a company that doesn\u2019t have a traditional management structure?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hard.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t cheat. I still make plenty of mistakes, but I can\u2019t hide from them in the same way. So I\u2019m forced to be at another level of transparency. I\u2019ve always attempted to run a democratic kind of organization. If I had to do it again I absolutely would because of how rewarding it is but all of us have had to adjust to this ecosystem.<\/p>\n A big problem for me is it\u2019s extremely hard to know where to inject\u00a0myself and where not to. I\u2019ve struggled with understanding what the team really wants from me in this kind of structure and when they want more direct guidance or when I should get out of the way. This is easier in a more conventional company.<\/p>\n What are the pros and cons of transparent employee salary?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have very little churn in employment for compensation reasons.\u00a0SumAll has a more honest, less political, more meritocratic environment. And\u2026people don\u2019t kiss my ass as much anymore.<\/p>\n At other companies, salaries are eventually uncovered by employees and that discovery tends to causes great pain that can\u2019t be talked through resulting in unhappy employees.\u00a0At least the conversation here at SumAll is open and, if people have issues with compensation, they can talk about it. That\u2019s a con as well because you have about four to five times more conversations than you normally would have.<\/p>\n