- The CEO of Rewind AI made his own 360-degree performance reviews public to be transparent.
- Dan Siroker, who previously founded A/B testing firm Optimizely, said some of the feedback was "brutal."
The CEO of Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup Rewind AI has taken the unusual step of publicly sharing his own performance reviews in an effort to demonstrate the level of transparency at his company.
Dan Siroker, who previously founded A/B testing company Optimizely, posted his last five 360 reviews, which include feedback from colleagues, in a tweet on Thursday. Siroker described some of his qualitative feedback as "brutal."
One coworker said his communication style needed improvement and described it as "passive-aggressive." Another said that his desire to move fast has come at the expense of its flagship product.
The company, which also counts OpenAI's Sam Altman among its investors, has an app that lets users search through everything it has seen, said, or heard on their iPhone or Mac.
One of the Rewind AI chief's reviews suggested that he needed to change his tone when communicating with workers on Slack. It suggested that he stops saying words like "bummed" and "disappointed" when he gives them feedback.
Another said in their review that there's too much emphasis on "pushing at all costs to meet deadlines." They said it had knock-on effects such as "emotional and psychological aspects" as well as the feeling of "being depleted, worn out, and rundown from pushing and over-extending."
In one of the reviews, it claimed that employees were polled on whether they should work for 28 hours straight or to spend time on team activities when they went on a trip to New York.
"It felt tone-deaf and passive-aggressive," they said. "I felt it was ironic that the theme of the retreat was psychological safety and that no one was willing to speak up about the situation. I felt unsure about saying anything, but often in the times that something feels the most uncomfortable, it means that it's the most warranted."
They added that the expectation to give feedback was "tough" when they were working until 1 a.m. in order to meet a launch date deadline.
Other reviews praised Siroker's "great leadership" and "resourcefulness" and commended his vision.
"Super effective at pushing the team to do more, faster, and making us believe we can actually pull it off while keeping energy high and the work environment fun," one person listed as his greatest strength.
The company, valued at $350 million, was founded by Siroker and Brett Bejcek in 2020. It launched a feature called "ChatGPT For Me" in March, a chatbot that allows users to interact with the content it's recorded.
Siroker appears to have an unconventional style of leadership. He shared an online form and its pitch deck in April and asked investors to declare the highest amount of money they felt "comfortable" pouring into the company, The Information reported. That led to VC firm New Enterprise Association to commit $12 million in funding.
Dan Siroker didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.