A seasoned founder discussing how to attract top talent, build a winning startup, and navigate the differences between private and public companies.
This video features a seasoned founder discussing how to attract top talent, build a winning startup, and navigate the differences between private and public companies.
Or if you're a founder worth your salt, you've got to be able to convince the best people in the world, people who have great jobs working at the best companies in the world to leave those great jobs at great companies and come join you in your vision. And how do you do that? Well, there's no one formula. It's a mix of using, you know, the power of the vision, using your personal charm, using, you know, fear, uh greed, right? I mean, basically, whatever whatever is required. In the end, you know, you need to be able to convince these, you know, incredible people who are very well taken care of wherever they are cuz they're so good to to leave what they're doing and and you know, and you know, drop the opportunity cost of second best opportunity to come join you in pursuing this. And and you know, if you can do that, you you're cut out to be a great entrepreneur. If you can't do that,
then, you know, then you're not an entrepreneur and you need to keep working on on on improving those skills. And there is one thing in common that I think great investors and and great members have in common or have to have, which is they both have to have, you know, complete belief in the vision of what you're doing, right? They have to have complete buy-in and have to be super excited about about the idea and and and and the potential, you know, impact to society if you succeed. So when I say people who are bought in, I don't mean people who are just yes-men, right? I mean, you can have people who believe in the vision, but there has to be that tension where they have, you know, once you buy into the vision, then it all becomes about what what are the risks in executing this vision. And you've got to have people who, along with you, are willing to brainstorm everything that can go
wrong, right? And then you can systematically say, "Okay, which of these risks is the biggest risk in terms of both probability and and magnitude of impact?" And you can start you can literally rank order the lists and start addressing them one by one, and that becomes your execution plan. And and you know to to think about the risks you need people who are not just yes men but who can who can really you know think about you know can we can almost be paranoid about what can go wrong. That's one of the actually another key things that you need as an entrepreneur is a sense of paranoia. Right? You you have to be you have to be your job as CEO or or co-founder is to be the chief risk officer of the company which means you got to be thinking about you know how many ways can this go wrong and then for every one of those different ways it can go wrong you know you need a you need someone who's
worrying about it more than you are and you need a plan for how to address those risks. My personal experience has been usually it's not the risks you worry about that come back to bite you. It's the risks that you aren't worrying about that actually cause a problem. And so the more you think about the risks up front the more likely you are to be able to deal with them preemptively and and not let them come back and bite you.