Pros
Viewpost is the definition of an outlier for the Orlando market. Want a West Coast start-up experience? If so, this place is for you. If you want a 9-5 job, clarity in execution path and no risk, you should look elsewhere. Viewpost is attempting to solve for friction and inefficiency felt by nearly every business on Earth. It still amazes me that it is so easy to connect and share information with friends, family and co-workers, but not customers or vendors. I have been here for almost three years and I have seen the company execute on every promise it has made to investors, employees and most importantly, customers. It has definitely taken longer than everyone expected. Of course, when you are trying to solve for A/R, A/P and payment friction while also entering into business relationships and partnerships with large banks and enterprises, that really isn't a surprise. That said, we are doing it and participating in it has been the best experience of my career. Like all enormous projects, we made some initial mistakes that have been difficult to correct. Refactor anyone? Some of us definitely didn't fully understand the bigness of CEO's vision, nor understand what it was really going to be like working with F100 users and banks. Fortunately, support for our vision, adoption by brand name customers and banks and an ability to access capital has given us the time we needed to get it right. Good call on the new CTO. It was a challenge adapting to his style and expectations, but his talent is unmistakable.
Cons
Let's just get this out on the table. What we are doing is hard. It has been tried before and in every case it has failed. There are lots of reasons for that, but most have to do with pursuing the wrong strategy and an inability to rally the right kind of support from the right audiences. If anything, those are our key differentiators. Our vision, approach and support is dead on and defensible. That doesn't make execution any easier though. We are solving a very complex problem and initial engineering choices (now being fixed) made it harder than it should have been to execute on our vision. I have read some of the negative posts on Glassdoor, and honestly, they range from untrue (as in maybe not written by employees) to misguided. This is a startup going after a huge problem. It isn't easy. Making mistakes, adapting and even downsizing are all normal aspects of startup life. What is ironic is that the things that others posters seem to complain about (when saying things that are accurate) actually embody the best aspects of the organization. Make mistakes? Fix them. Hire to fast, react. Need to be in the data center business to land major banks, figure out how to raise the money to do so, then adapt when the time is right. Does anyone really think we wanted to open data centers? Of course not. But it was a necessary aspect of our execution path. This place and its vision are amazing. The attitude of the negative posters actually embody the worst of the Orlando engineering community. I feel lucky to be part of this company and I think we can all thank the CEO's other business for Viewpost being an Orlando opportunity. There just aren't enough startups here, and that means there aren't as many people who understand the drive, passion and risk taking nature needed to pull something like this off. The team that is here, both on the East Coast and West Coast are rock solid.