The half-life of a VP of Sales in Silicon Valley was 13mo. Have this changed?

This is an article-challenge — not completed. Now gathering input. d52a302e-b302–43d2-b183-a7d2fd671e30

The following is Steve Blank’s assertion about the problem that startups used to have a longer plan, instead shorted iteration-learning plan, and under that theoretical plan they end up in a typical path of growth with the presence of a VP of sales:

“We always assumed, that because you wrote it down in a plan and put in a spreadsheet somehow customers would behave like your plan. And when they didn’t we would have a crisis in the board room. You know how they fixed, the you didn’t make the revenue plan crisis? [..] Who would you fire? [..] Fire the VP of sales. You know what is the half-life of a VP of sales person in a Silicon Valley startup? 13 months. “ Steve Blank @ (Allan Lundell. (Oct 28th 2011), 47min59sec)

This article does not have the answer at this point. But I think it’s worth the organization of what is going on.

• Is it that the early stage learning phase, or discovery phase, is now executed before formal VC investments, like under self funding or with the support from seed or angel rounds?
• Is it that the series A was used for discovery more like a bet — if things didn’t work investors would consider a low chance to pivot or would stop the deal and pivot to investing to another company (doing the same thing) however one that by chance found traction?

Interpretation of distribution

Perhaps a point to consider is the interpretation of data, starting with the idea of average. This because perhaps Silicon Valley can’t be averaged. Within the whole distribution of the startups in the valley, and taking in consideration the period of analysis, one could wonder if, for example, the top SV investment firms had different models in contrast with more average ones.

References

Allan Lundell. (Oct 28th 2011). Failure, Customer Discovery & Development by Steve Blank, VC, UC Berkeley Professor [video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkiHbRmKR4o