125: Seth Levine on Rebuilding Your Company for the AI Era From Scratch

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I wish I'd known it was gonna be okay.
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I spent a lot of time sacrificing things in my personal life and with my family because I thought I needed to be everything everywhere all at once.
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And I didn't need to be.
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One of the things that I have realized as I've gotten older is that you don't need to say yes to everything.
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I understand there's maybe a pushback on that, which is like, well, you're successful because you did those things, but I actually think I could have done 60% of the things that I did and still been just as successful, right?
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Getting on an airplane and going to New York 13 times a year for the first three years of Foundry, and it was before New York was like a big startup thing, and that's part of why I did it.
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But I think I could have gone six times a year and been just as effective.
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Welcome back.
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This is From Startup Your Grown Up.
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My name is Alyssa Cohn, and today I'm thrilled to welcome Seth Levine to the podcast.
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Seth is a founder, investor, and author, and one of the co-founders of Foundry, the venture firm he built alongside Bradfeld and their partners.
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Seth has spent decades working with founders and leadership teams, and in this conversation, he brings a lot of candor about what it really takes to build something in Durant.
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As you'll hear, Seth and I jump right into our own version of a cold open, talking about how meaningful his relationship with Brad has been.
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Brad, also a past guest on From Sharp to Chrono.
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We then talked about how bored should be thinking about AI right now and why leaders need to stop asking how to make the current organization a little more efficient and start asking how they would build the company from scratch today.
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We also talked about the long road of building the foundry itself, including what it felt like to keep getting rejected while trying to raise the firm's first fund, and the little known fact that initially they had a fifth partner and why and how they didn't work out.
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Seth also talked about productivity, the systems he uses to stay intentional about his time, what he wishes he had known earlier in his career, and the qualities he believes matter most in successful founders.
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This was a great conversation, super practical, and super fun.
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So please enjoy my great conversation with Seth Levine.
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Brad and I have worked together for twenty five years now, and we call each other on our BS all the time.
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And he's one of my absolute closest friends in the world, right?
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And probably outside of my family, the most important person in my entire life in terms of like the trajectory that my life has taken.
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Wow, I love that.
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Well, I'm not even gonna cut this out.
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I'm excited to start the podcast this way, and let me introduce you to everybody.
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Did we just do the cold open and without even realizing?
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We just did the cold open.
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Exactly.
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This is Seth Levine, and you're a founder, an investor, and an author.
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And as you were just mentioning, you and Bradfeld, the famous Bradfeld, along with two other co-founders, co-founded Foundry, a very well-known VC firm, which made news in 2022 when you said you were not gonna be raising a new fund.
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But I really want to jump right into the boardroom and right into AI because that's something we're all talking about now.
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It's a never-ending drumbeat.
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How should boards be talking about AI with founders right now?
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Yeah, I love that question.
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And by the way, thank you for having me on.
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Jump right in.
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I love that.
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I disagree with you.
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We're very action-oriented here at Foundries, so that's great.
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Obviously, every board is talking about AI, and I think it's maybe the first question to ask like AI will never be worse than it is today.
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So as AI gets better and better, how does that help our business?
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And what is the threat to our business, right?
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And both those two things can be true.
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But I think that sometimes people like jump straight into here's how we're using AI to whatever, you know, juice development, which is sort of the obvious thing, everyone's using it in engineering.
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But they're not like taking a step back and saying, hey, as AI gets better and better, how does that help our business?
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And what is the threat to our business?
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So we're having that conversation.
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And by the way, that's a continual conversation, right?
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Because as we use the tools more and more, we get better ideas for actually what it can do.
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And by the way, as new models come out, I mean the last set of models that came out, you know, a month ago or so as we were recording this, you know, they are way better, like maybe not quite an order of magnitude better, but like close to that than the last ones.
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And so it's important to revisit those questions on a continual basis and say, what is the opportunity for AI, but how does this threaten our business?
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And we we have companies on both ends of that, right?
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We have a couple where AI is a huge threat to what they're actually doing, and others where it's a huge opportunity, and many sort of have a little bit of both, right?
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Right.
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Can you give us an example?
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You don't have to name names obviously, but give us an example of a company of yours or a company that you know about, which is not pushing itself hard enough about AI.
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They're like, we're using indigenous development, it's fantastic.
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We're adding this AI, you know, plug-in or something, but that you realize, wait a minute, it's literally reshaping the way people are buying.
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And a year from now, you're gonna be out of business unless you rethink how you're doing something.
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I mean, I I will generalize to a lot of businesses because what I would describe is I think there's probably 10 to 15% of companies, just generally, and I think this is true in the foundry portfolio, so it'll be a little bit self-critical as we push our portfolio on this, and we actually have a working group inside our portfolio that's led by one of our portfolio CEOs that's an AI working group, because I think people want to move themselves from what I'm about to describe as the middle group to the sort of the upper tier.
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But I think this applies generally pretty globally.
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There's probably 15 to 20% of companies that are really leaning into AI.
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They're using it to do more than just sort of be a co-pilot on engineering and make, you know, make their engineering teams go faster.
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Um, they're using it in ways that are a bit more fundamental.
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They're creating programs inside of their businesses, they're using it in whatever they expose to their customers to give them a better experience, to allow them to customize reports and data and you know, whatever it is that they're getting from their platform.
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So that's probably 20%.
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Then in our world, probably most of the rest are sort of like dabbling in it, but mostly using it as this sort of co-working tool, right?
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As something that enhances productivity and makes everyone, whatever, 30% better or whatever it is.
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And that's great.
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I mean, that can be helpful from an operating expense standpoint, et cetera.
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But they're not really thinking about how does it fundamentally affect our business.
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And then I think in the broader world, there's probably another, let's say, 15 to 20% of businesses at the very bottom who kind of have blinders on and they're just like, no, no, no, no, I want to keep doing it, you know, the way that I've been doing.
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And I, yeah, I use it for sort of like search, enhanced search, essentially, right?
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By the way, I think how a lot of consumers use AI.
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And look, all of this is okay, right?
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I mean, I I'm sure you do as well.
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I get questions from friends and family about like I'm using it wrong, and everyone talks about it being so powerful, but like I'm not really doing anything with it.
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And I usually start by just saying, like, we're not even in the I don't love sports analogies, which is what you say right before you use one.
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Um but like we're in the first inning, but we're like, it's like the first batter, right?
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Like it's really early and it's okay.
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And I try to give people a little bit of grace around just like however you're using it now is fine, but let's talk about how you might use some of these tools to be even more effective, right?
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And so I think it's okay.
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Now, when you're building a venture back company, I don't think that that's okay.
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I think you need to be moving into that top 20% and that needs to grow.
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Um, and so we are pushing hard on our portfolio to be thoughtful about using it in much more fundamental ways.
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And by the way, we're doing the same thing at Foundry.
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I don't know if you want to go do a deep dive on what Brad's building with this sort of company operating system, but like I spend my days in the terminal window now on my laptop, like kicking off processes that you know Cloud Code is working on, right?
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Yeah, that's amazing.
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And I want to hear what you guys are working on and what you Brad are working on, but I would say that I just had on the podcast the CEO of Whisper, Whisper.ai, yeah, and also the CEO of Harness.
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And obviously, whisper.ai was actually born in the AI age, right?
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So it was born like a year or two ago-ish.
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And so I would just say the way he's thinking about their business is very much with an AI mindset.
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So AI native.
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And doesn't just mean the product, it means, for example, what he said was we are never gonna hire another customer service person.
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We have five people, they're all managing all these agents.
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We're gonna scale infinitely because we can scale agents infinitely.
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That's a completely different way to think about customer service in any kind of company.
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The harness CEO, Jyoti talked a lot about how they're thinking about pivoting, or I wouldn't say pivoting, but you know, because they were AI first anyway, but like evolving in this AI moment.
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So I'm just curious to ask you, how are you pushing your founders to really be methodical and tinker their way into what they need to do and really dive into using the tools?
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Like, what are you actually saying to them and what is your response?
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So a couple things.
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First, love Whisper, use it all the time.
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And as someone who, and I'm sure you're the same way, like I, you know, as an author, right?
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I write, I have a blog, I've written a couple books.
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Like I like typing, but Whisper is like completely changed.
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I mean, it's funny to watch me work sometimes because I'm in a terminal window, I'm talking to my machine, which is really just talking to this AI, you know, Cloud Code, and then it's kicking off all these processes.
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If you teleported in from, you know, 10 years ago, you'd be like, what is going on here?
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So love that product, and I think it's absolutely fantastic.
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And products like it.
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And I also, by the way, it's so much better.
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I'm sure you've had this experience with just like the built-in voice to text, particularly on the Apple products, where it's like, if there's a weird way to spell something, it will find it, right?
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You'll be like, Hi, Susan, you know, thanks for coming over, and it's like S-I-O-U-X-I-O-N.
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And you're like, it's never spelled that way.
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But Whisper, of course, can see if I say Alyssa and I'm responding to something of yours, it'll actually see, oh, that's A-L-I-S-A, not E-L-I-S-A or whatever, right?
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So it also formats it for you.
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I mean, it's it's shockingly good.
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This is a big RISP commercial.
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Okay, good.
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Yeah, and it means as you make adjustments, it'll say, Oh, I'm saving this as a preference.
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Anyway, so that is awesome.
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And I've already talked so much about it.
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I barely remember what you asked, but I think I can get back to the actual question.
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How you're pushing your founders right now, I would just say, in a rigorous way, to think about how they're evolving into being quote unquote so-called AI native.
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So you framed this question perfectly because you gave this example of like a company that was born during the AI age, right?
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And it's funny, I just had this conversation with a company, with a board, and it's a company that's been around for a while and it's large.
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It's a$70 million top line business, and at one point had, you know, two, three hundred people working for it.
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And we were saying there's a fundamental difference between companies that were started, let's say in the last three years and companies that were started before that.
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And that's what you're describing.
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And the behavior that I think is the most important behavior to drive is if you were starting this company today, how would you actually do this function?
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Because I think what businesses tend to do is say, how do we make our customer service, and do you keep with your example, more efficient?
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Okay, well, we've got 10 people that work on customer service.
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How do we add AI on top of that and make them a little bit more efficient?
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As opposed to saying, hey, if we were starting this business today, how would we think about customer service?
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Okay, well, we'd have two really good people in customer service who managed 15 agents of some kind to do it.
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I'm making that example up, but that is probably not that far off from the truth.
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And so instead of saying, actually, this is how we're gonna revamp customer service, they instead say, how do we make our 10 people 30% more efficient?
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And I think those are two fundamentally different questions, right?
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I mean, it's sort of like the old HR question that we were all taught to ask, you know, at the 90-day review, like knowing what you know about this person and this role, would you hire them again?
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But we tend not to do that, right?
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Companies like to make incremental change because it feels uncomfortable, I guess, to make more radical change.
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And this is the conversation we had in this boardroom because the CEO is very, very AI focused, in part because their business got pretty disrupted by AI.
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They're it's a market research firm.
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And he was basically saying, I don't want to be incremental.
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I actually want to ask the question, how would I do things fundamentally differently?
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In his case, and I'm not saying AI needs to mean that, you know, take 50% of the people out of your business, but he basically took the business down to like half of its employee size, including firing his head of engineering and his head of product because they just could not wrap their hands around these AI tools.
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And again, he was deep in this and he was vibe coding himself and things like that, because he was like, this is how I'd build the business today from the ground up.
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I mean, obviously, again, in this case, we're, you know, like rebuilding the plane a little bit as we're flying because it's a big business, as I mentioned, and it's growing.
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But he asked that question.
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I think that's really hard for people.
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And by the way, it was difficult.
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Obviously, for the people that ended up leaving, they just did an offsite.
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He sent me a couple videos from the offsite.
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The energy of the people in that room, the people that are really embracing this new way of work, it was infectious.
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Like I got excited just, you know, watching these videos that he sent me over text yesterday.
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Um that's how I think about it.
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That's powerful.
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It sounds like he didn't fire his head of engineering because the head of engineering was superfluous.
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It was more like the head of engineering was dragging his feet in making this change.
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100%.
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And he's replacing the head of engineering, but the head of engineering was like, hey, how do we add co-working tools to make it each engineer 30% more effective, as opposed to saying, if I was going to build an engineering team that needed to both support this existing product but then also work on these new tools, how would we do that?
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And how can we actually create these new tools?
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And the experience the CEO was having was he was off on the weekends coding up new things that ended up getting put into production.
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He's like, why can I do this in a weekend and you guys can't, you know, do this in three months?
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And he needed to find someone else who like really embraced that.
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And look, I get how challenging it can be for people to embrace AI.
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And I'm sure you and I could think of examples where we were slow to adopt some of the new tools because it's just like I'm just used to doing some the things.
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
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Workflow is um just your normal workflow habits are very insidious, actually.
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And they really keep you stuck in a way.
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And I imagine as a CEO coach, that comes up all the time, right?
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People get stuck in how they do something, and it's just hard.
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I mean, I think that's the power of coaching, right?
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Is you get someone from the outside saying, Why why are you doing it this way?
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Like that you just told me that it doesn't make any sense.
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So, you know, you push them on that, right?
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I'm sure that's a huge part of your practice.
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Right, totally.
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And it sounds like to me that one of your biggest pieces of advice for CEOs right now would be to ask the question if I was starting the company from scratch, what would I do differently?
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And probably who would I hire differently?
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Is that right?
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Is there more advice you would give CEOs right now?
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I would change that statement slightly, Alyssa, because I think this is important.
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When you ask someone what they would do differently, they anchor on how it is now.
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Yeah, great point.
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So I would actually, when I have this conversation with CEOs, like, no, if you were building this from the ground up, how would you build this, right?
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What would this organization look like?
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It's funny because we often would ask CEOs to do an exercise.
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I'm sure, again, I'm sure you do this in your practice as well, which is like, hey, 18 months from now, give me your org chart, right?
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What will it look like as you scale and get bigger?
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And that was to put people in a mindset of like, okay, do I have the right people in the right boxes?
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Suddenly you've got someone and they've got 20 people in their organization and spurs a conversation about, hey, can that person actually scale to that?
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What we're talking about is like fundamentally different, even more radical than that, which is sort of saying, hey, I'm just gonna build a business from scratch that does the thing that we do and at our size, 10 million, 20 million, whatever it is, how do I actually orchestrate and how do I think about that org structure?
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And that I think is a really powerful exercise.
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Yep, I love that.
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It sounds like what also you might advise CEOs, and tell me what you think about this, like the founder you were talking about does, get your hands dirty with the tools.
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That's something that I really encourage people to do so they understand themselves, the power, the use cases, but also limitations right now, today of what's going on out there.
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Do you agree?
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I think you have to, right?
00:14:43.679 --> 00:14:46.240
I mean, I think and look, I get the fear of it.
00:14:46.320 --> 00:14:53.279
Like I was not thinking about jumping into claw code because I'm not really a coder, and I was like, I don't know, maybe that's a bit too much.
00:14:53.360 --> 00:14:55.360
Now, one, I think that was a mistake anyway, right?
00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:57.519
Like I should probably have been using it before.
00:14:57.759 --> 00:15:00.480
Anyway, I decided to do it, and it's been a really powerful experience.
00:15:00.559 --> 00:15:03.440
And now I have a better sense for like, what does it mean to vibe code?
00:15:03.519 --> 00:15:04.720
Like, what does that actually look like?
00:15:04.879 --> 00:15:07.759
How do I architect, you know, how do I connect Claude code?
00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:15.519
The f the amazing thing about these tools, by the way, and I'll pick on Claude just because I know it the best, is when you get stuck, you just ask it what to do, right?
00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:21.360
Like I'm trying to update something, or you know, I'm trying to like whatever, figure out how to connect to a sauna, let's say, right?
00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:24.559
That was something I did early on because I like to manage my tasks to a sauna.
00:15:24.639 --> 00:15:30.639
And it turns out I can both push tasks to a sauna from Claude, but I can also ask it to go grab a task from Asana and then do it.
00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.840
And I didn't know, I just was like, I don't know how to like get this set up.
00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:37.200
And I was starting to uh like do some web, you know, like what do you do?
00:15:37.279 --> 00:15:38.480
You go to the web and you research it.
00:15:38.639 --> 00:15:43.279
And I was mentioning this to Brad, and he was like, don't go to the web, just ask Claude how to do it.
00:15:43.360 --> 00:15:45.200
And so I went in and I asked Claude how to do it.
00:15:45.279 --> 00:15:46.399
It's like, oh, here's what you need.
00:15:46.480 --> 00:15:49.440
And it walked me through it step by step, you know, and it was like, Do you want me to do this?
00:15:49.519 --> 00:15:50.080
Do you want me to do this?
00:15:50.159 --> 00:15:51.440
And I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:15:51.519 --> 00:15:54.720
And like, I don't know, two minutes later I had a sauna connected through Claude.
00:15:54.960 --> 00:15:56.240
Remarkable, remarkable.
00:15:56.399 --> 00:15:57.200
It's really incredible.
00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:01.039
We are definitely gonna move away from AI and talk more uh largely about themes.
00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:06.399
But before I leave this topic, I want to ask you, what are you advising your kids to do now?
00:16:06.559 --> 00:16:09.519
Because you have two what high school age kids, is that right?
00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:11.039
I have three kids.
00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:14.080
One is still in high school, two are graduating from college this year.
00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:14.559
Okay.
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:18.080
So yeah, I mean it's interesting too, because one of them is an artist.
00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:25.840
So, you know, some of her classes, I mean, she's taking non-art classes as well, but some of her classes, you know, she's literally creating things with her hands, which I love.
00:16:25.919 --> 00:16:28.399
And I think it's maybe a little bit AI resistant as well.
00:16:28.480 --> 00:16:33.200
Like good, you know, art, especially sort of 3D art, is not easily replicable with AI.
00:16:33.279 --> 00:16:36.720
But, you know, I think, and this is the advice I'm giving everyone, like, lean into AI.
00:16:36.799 --> 00:16:38.240
You know, I show them what I'm doing.
00:16:38.399 --> 00:16:43.039
This is what you can do with AI, and I'm happy to set you up on some of these tools that are a bit more advanced.
00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:49.759
It's funny, when the girls were first years in college, one of them, their school said, you can't use AI.
00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:54.000
And I sent a note to them basically saying, like, this is completely effed up.
00:16:54.159 --> 00:16:55.440
Like, this is not okay.
00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:59.360
And I want you to know, I'm telling my kid they should be using AI.
00:16:59.440 --> 00:17:02.159
And if that's your policy, then we should find a different school.
00:17:02.320 --> 00:17:07.440
Because you're not training people to be prepared for the world if you're not teaching them how to use AI.
00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:08.640
I think it's incredibly important.
00:17:08.799 --> 00:17:11.680
I'm a trustee of my college where I went to McAllister in St.
00:17:11.839 --> 00:17:16.720
Paul, and one of the other trustees and I have been really leaning into AI for this exact reason.
00:17:16.799 --> 00:17:24.960
We actually had a group of professors from school go out to Palo Alto with us and really like have a three-day retreat on how to use AI.
00:17:25.119 --> 00:17:30.880
We had executives from LinkedIn and Google and Microsoft, a bunch of other places come in and present and just show them the tools.
00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:52.160
And then we had lots of discussions about how do we integrate AI, not just into the classroom, but also in their own work in ways that are correct and authentic and things like that, that aren't like replacing feedback, let's say, that a professor might give a student, but augmenting it in ways that are, you know, are powerful and help them scale the work that they're doing and have more impact with their students and their teaching outcomes, right?
00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:53.119
Which is what they care about.
00:17:53.519 --> 00:17:56.799
And so like that's how I think about everyone using AI, right?
00:17:56.880 --> 00:17:58.480
And so that's the advice I give my kids.
00:17:58.720 --> 00:17:59.759
So lean into the tools.
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:00.319
100%.
00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:04.319
And like the hardest thing is getting them to use it beyond search, right?
00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:08.000
Because I think that's where most people stop using it.
00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:25.279
And it's a more powerful search tool, and that's great, but I really am trying to encourage them to figure out how do you actually give it tasks to do and offload some things, even if it's 90%, you know, you could do the the thing in 90% of the time or whatever it is, you still want to just play with it and understand what the capabilities are.
00:18:25.519 --> 00:18:25.680
Right.
00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:28.240
And also to begin to ease it into your workflow, which is the whole point, right?
00:18:28.559 --> 00:18:29.119
Yeah, 100%.
00:18:29.759 --> 00:18:30.160
I love that.
00:18:30.319 --> 00:18:31.920
So I want to go back to the beginning.
00:18:32.079 --> 00:18:34.559
When you guys founded I love saying that, founded Foundry.
00:18:34.720 --> 00:18:40.000
When you guys founded Foundry, you hired an organizational consultant and she helped you pre-founding.
00:18:40.079 --> 00:18:42.480
And as far as I can tell, she still works with you.
00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:43.759
Tell us more about that.
00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:45.119
Why did you decide to do that?
00:18:45.279 --> 00:18:49.599
What were the characteristics of these four people that said, I know, let's hire a coach, right?
00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:51.279
And that that kind of led you that way.
00:18:51.519 --> 00:18:59.200
Yeah, Nancy has been with us since we started, and I think we recognized coming together that we needed maybe a little bit of help.
00:18:59.359 --> 00:19:02.319
We wanted to be thoughtful in organizational structure.
00:19:02.480 --> 00:19:05.359
We were all pretty close, but we'd had some different dynamics, right?
00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:07.519
I mean, think about sort of like the transition I made.
00:19:07.680 --> 00:19:12.079
I had worked for four, like I was an employee of Brad, right?
00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:17.119
For whatever it was, five years before we started Foundry, really six before we had raised the fund.
00:19:17.279 --> 00:19:20.400
That's a very different dynamic than being a partner of someone.
00:19:20.559 --> 00:19:24.319
And we wanted to be really thoughtful in terms of like how we built that organization.
00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:27.519
So Nancy helped us do a lot of pre-work before we even had a name.
00:19:27.599 --> 00:19:28.400
We weren't even Foundry.
00:19:28.799 --> 00:19:29.839
Like what kind of pre-work?
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:33.519
It was a lot around how do each of us like to work, what's our work style?
00:19:33.759 --> 00:19:37.759
It wasn't Enneagram at the time, although we've since done that, but we use this thing called the disc.
00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:49.519
And that spurred then a facilitated conversation that Nancy facilitated, where we talked about our different work styles and how that might cause friction, how that might come together, show up in different ways.
00:19:49.599 --> 00:19:51.519
Um, so that was really, really helpful.
00:19:51.680 --> 00:19:57.839
We used it to create a cadence of both feedback to each other and also a cadence of how we were gonna work on our business.
00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:04.880
We had all been at a very large Silicon Valley-based venture firm, SoftBank Venture Capital, which eventually became Mobius Venture Capital.
00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:11.680
And that had been a very traditional, stovepiped, hierarchical, you know, at one point when I was there, it was like 80 people.
00:20:11.759 --> 00:20:16.400
Like I was a cog in the machine of Mobius, and we wanted to build a very different firm that was gonna be much flatter.
00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:21.440
We were equal partners, just very different than the way that or the environment that we'd come from.
00:20:21.519 --> 00:20:22.880
And we just felt like we needed help.
00:20:23.039 --> 00:20:24.079
So Nancy was with us.
00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:24.880
I mean, she still is.
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:29.359
I like truly like most recently talked or emailed with Nancy yesterday, right?
00:20:29.519 --> 00:20:31.839
So she's still around and helping us a lot.
00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:34.720
And by the way, it's helped a number of our portfolio companies as well.
00:20:34.799 --> 00:20:37.039
But we felt like it was important to set that cadence up.
00:20:37.119 --> 00:20:43.440
So for us, that looked like quarterly offsites where we would spend time together working not just on the portfolio, but on our firm itself.
00:20:43.599 --> 00:20:45.920
And then, you know, lots of sort of social time together.
00:20:46.079 --> 00:20:47.359
That dynamic has changed, right?
00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:49.359
When it was the four of us, it looked one way.
00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:52.000
Now Jason's retired, and so now there's a new partner.
00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:55.279
So that dynamic has changed and we're at a different point in our lives as well, right?
00:20:55.359 --> 00:20:58.240
We're not like vacationing together in the same way that we used to and things like that.
00:20:58.400 --> 00:21:09.359
And of course, we came into the new partners with existing relationships, and that probably made it even more important to have Nancy involved because we, you know, we had several of us that had been very close friends for a really long period of time, and then we're bringing in some new people.
00:21:09.519 --> 00:21:10.880
I think coaching is really important.
00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:16.880
And I've, I mean, just personally have used coaching several times in my life to help me be a better version of myself.
00:21:17.039 --> 00:21:19.599
One was organizationally with Nancy, which is ongoing.
00:21:19.759 --> 00:21:24.319
Another was, and we could talk about it more if you want, but I like broke, like, I don't know, 15 years ago.
00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:26.880
I was like, I cannot scale, like this is not working.
00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:32.720
And I hired a productivity coach, and he really changed a bunch of fundamental things that I was doing in my workflow.
00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:34.240
And then the last is what's that?
00:21:34.559 --> 00:21:35.440
Sorry, I didn't interrupt you.
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:37.200
I want to hear the last, but what did you change?
00:21:37.440 --> 00:21:38.400
The last is now.
00:21:38.559 --> 00:21:38.799
Yeah.
00:21:39.039 --> 00:21:40.960
Because Foundry's going through this transition.
00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:43.759
You mentioned it earlier, but we're not gonna raise another fund.
00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:46.079
You know, I'm like, I'm old, but not that old, right?
00:21:46.160 --> 00:21:47.279
I'm in my early 50s.
00:21:47.359 --> 00:21:49.599
Like, I've got a lot of energy, as people can probably already tell.
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:53.440
Like, I just, you know, I'm not ready to like just sort of walk off and be done.
00:21:53.599 --> 00:21:55.440
And I feel like I've got a lot more to give back.
00:21:55.599 --> 00:21:58.960
And so I want to be thoughtful about that transition and kind of the next phase.
00:21:59.119 --> 00:21:59.759
I have a couple of ideas.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:01.200
Of things I might do.
00:22:01.279 --> 00:22:05.119
It occurred to me that maybe it would be helpful to have someone kind of help me do that.
00:22:05.200 --> 00:22:09.519
But I'm also trying to be thoughtful about like how do I want to spend my time and what are my priorities.
00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:14.799
And like a lot of people, I sometimes feel like my calendar and my life, because of that, kind of gets out of my control.
00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:16.559
And I felt like I needed some help with that.
00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:19.920
And so anyway, those are the three times that I've spent time in coaching.
00:22:20.079 --> 00:22:24.160
Specific to productivity though, I mean, boy, did I change a lot of things, right?
00:22:24.240 --> 00:22:30.880
I think my next book is gonna be about productivity, but I'm much more deliberate about my morning routine and setting my day up.
00:22:31.039 --> 00:22:33.039
And so I am very thoughtful about that.
00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:34.240
I do the same thing every day.
00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:35.680
So what are your practices?
00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:43.039
I the second thing I was gonna say, and this is important relative to the morning routine, is that I don't use email as my like control center.
00:22:43.279 --> 00:22:47.599
I work in email when I need to work in email, but I don't just go back to email and default.
00:22:47.680 --> 00:22:50.079
I use Asana, there's lots of task management tools.
00:22:50.160 --> 00:22:58.160
But that became an important part of my morning routine because what I would typically do is look at my email and try to get through that before I took a shower or worked out or whatever I was gonna do in the morning.
00:22:58.240 --> 00:22:59.359
And I think a lot of people do that.
00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:00.240
And now I don't.
00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:06.720
Now I start my day by going to my calendar and seeing what I have to do really that day and then sort of the next couple of days.
00:23:06.799 --> 00:23:14.240
And then I go to Asana and I look at the tasks that I didn't get done yesterday in the context of the calendar that I have both today and upcoming.
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:17.839
I write down kind of the key to-dos, like what do I need to get done today?
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:18.799
And that's the next thing.
00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:22.559
Then I order those things so I know kind of what order I need to do things in.
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:29.599
Then I scan my email just to see if anything's come up, but I don't respond to anything and I don't like move things around.
00:23:29.759 --> 00:23:30.880
And that's my morning routine.
00:23:31.039 --> 00:23:37.200
None of that involves actually doing any email, and all of that involves like setting up the day for how my day is, right?
00:23:37.279 --> 00:23:41.680
I do separately twice a week, I look at my calendar and just say, do I have the meetings correct?
00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:43.119
Do I need to adjust something?
00:23:43.279 --> 00:23:47.200
Do I have a day where I've got too many back-to-back meetings where I need to create some space?
00:23:47.359 --> 00:23:54.400
Um, I have some pretty specific rules that my productivity coach helped me put into place about what meetings I'm willing to take, because I have a lot of people reaching out to me.
00:23:54.480 --> 00:24:02.240
And one of the things I was actually able to do very successfully was create a heuristic for what meetings I was willing to take, but then also create really two things.
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:05.599
One was pushing people to asynchronous calls, right?
00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:09.920
Meaning where we don't schedule time, but I just say, hey, I'm gonna reach out, here's my number, it'll be me.
00:24:10.079 --> 00:24:14.000
And that helped a ton because now I do things when I'm driving and things like that.
00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:20.720
I also push people, I use this platform called Voxer, which is like a voice-to-text thing or a voice thing, uh, but I push people to that, and that's also helped.
00:24:20.799 --> 00:24:22.160
So that's gotten rid of a bunch of meetings.
00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:29.039
And then the other thing I did was I do get some very common requests, hey, I just moved to Boulder, or hey, I'm looking to get into venture capital.
00:24:29.279 --> 00:24:34.960
And I created pretty lengthy uh email responses to that that I can reuse over and over again.
00:24:35.039 --> 00:24:46.799
So I'm trying to provide value back to people that I'm not able to meet with, but in a way that feels to them like I took some time and was thoughtful about it, even though the truth is I took some time once and now I can repeat it over and over again.
00:24:46.960 --> 00:24:55.759
So he had me do those things, and that really helped kind of free up my calendar a little bit and be a bit more thoughtful about the types of how and where I spend my time.
00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:56.240
Wow.
00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:57.440
I think that's so powerful.
00:24:57.519 --> 00:25:01.279
I especially love, you know, sort of I get asked these questions over and over again.
00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:05.680
And so now I have this like sort of canned response because it's actually useful and valuable to people.
00:25:05.839 --> 00:25:12.000
And then also the notion of async, I think that people need permission to do those kinds of things.
00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:15.920
Otherwise, they just feel well, I think what people do is they're like hi, oh no, I don't want to talk to this person.
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:22.480
They kind of ghost them, or they don't make good decisions about their meeting, so that takes up a lot of time, or then they feel bad about not meeting with people.
00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:26.400
And so I love the permission that somehow you got to handle it in this way.
00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:28.000
It felt like a middle ground to me.
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:30.400
And it's funny that I had never thought about this before.
00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:34.160
I definitely felt like I needed to be responsive to people, right?
00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:39.759
And I felt like very core to the story I tell myself about who I am, especially back then, right?
00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:40.640
15 years ago.
00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:46.240
So I was like a relatively newly minted partner and I was scrapping basically and and you know, striving, if you will.
00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:48.400
And I felt like I've gotta be available.
00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:53.839
Like I don't want to be seen as this VC that, you know, would never take meetings and won't respond and things like that.
00:25:53.920 --> 00:25:56.400
So I respond to every real email that I get, right?
00:25:56.480 --> 00:25:58.559
Not blind copy stuff, but like an actual email.
00:25:58.640 --> 00:25:59.680
Everyone gets a response.
00:25:59.759 --> 00:26:10.559
Um, and I'm still able to do that, but I felt like I needed to take meetings, and it was hard to tell people, oh, here's a 15-minute slot, you know, like that's what I started is like, oh, okay, I'll go from 30 minutes to, you know, 15 minutes.
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:18.960
And it turns out it actually works great to tell people, hey, I'm not scheduling, you know, sort of non-portfolio meetings right now, but give me your number, I'll give you a call.
00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:20.640
And I use the simplest app in the world.
00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:25.440
I actually should probably provide code a new version of this, but um, I use something that manages my call log.
00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:26.960
And when I'm dry, I did it this morning.
00:26:27.039 --> 00:26:28.799
I had to drive to Boulder to have an appointment.
00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:30.799
I was like, okay, what's who's next on my list?
00:26:30.960 --> 00:26:35.279
I call the guy, we talk for you know 15, 20 minutes, and and that was checked off my list, right?
00:26:35.359 --> 00:26:36.960
I drove back, called someone else.
00:26:37.119 --> 00:26:39.839
And you know, you over time that gets kind of gets through it.
00:26:39.920 --> 00:26:43.599
And sometimes I don't reach people and I usually leave it on them to call me back, right?
00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:46.480
Like I leave the message, I was trying to be responsive.
00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:48.640
And if I don't hear back from them, then I didn't hear back.
00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:49.039
It's okay.
00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:49.839
Yeah, 100%.
00:26:50.079 --> 00:26:50.480
I love that.
00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:57.200
Going back to Nancy and when you guys started the firm and her help, sounds like she really set up some great dynamics with you all.
00:26:57.359 --> 00:27:05.440
And also I assume she was helpful in getting you guys to talk about things that were uncomfortable, having difficult conversations, talking about things you disagreed about.
00:27:05.599 --> 00:27:06.400
Is that accurate?
00:27:06.480 --> 00:27:10.079
And if so, how did you guys kind of learn to approach having tough conversations?
00:27:10.319 --> 00:27:14.880
Yeah, so let me tell you the untold story about the founding of Foundry.
00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:21.440
We don't really talk about this that much, and I I don't think I've talked about it in a, you know, this kind of this kind of public setting.
00:27:21.599 --> 00:27:24.160
But when we started Foundry, we were five partners.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:25.599
And that is sort of around.
00:27:25.680 --> 00:27:28.079
Like if you look it up, people, you know, sort of acknowledge that.
00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:29.440
We don't talk about that much.
00:27:29.599 --> 00:27:34.960
We talk about Foundry really being founded by the four of us, really because founding isn't like a one-time event, right?
00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:37.839
It's not like a point-in-time thing, even though we think about it that way.
00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:42.400
But like the Foundry evolved over a period of time, and it was the four of us that evolved that.
00:27:42.559 --> 00:27:45.359
But of course, we started with five and we became four.
00:27:45.519 --> 00:27:51.599
That means that someone ended up leaving, and Nancy was very impactful in helping us through that process.
00:27:51.759 --> 00:27:52.960
We had a fifth partner.
00:27:53.119 --> 00:27:55.200
He was someone we'd worked with for a long time.
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:56.799
Like me, he had worked for Brad.
00:27:56.880 --> 00:27:58.559
He'd worked for Brad longer than I had.
00:27:58.799 --> 00:28:10.960
And he struggled to take the jump from being an associate sort of junior partner at the direction of Brad to being a partner in a venture firm, which is a very different style of job and working.
00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:22.079
And Nancy really helped us as a group come to terms with the fact that it wasn't gonna work out, have an initial conversation with him about here's what's not working and here's what we want to help you get better at.
00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:27.200
Um, and then ultimately have the difficult conversation with him that this wasn't working and it was time to leave.
00:28:27.279 --> 00:28:35.680
So, I mean, that's a highly personal story around working with her, but I think it would have been much more difficult to have navigated that conversation without Nancy.
00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:39.519
And then, of course, on the back side of that, we've just come through this relatively traumatic event.
00:28:39.599 --> 00:28:49.200
It was like a year, 15 months into the founding of Foundry, and that made us tighter on the back side, but everything all of a sudden got more important because then we were all key persons and you know, things like that.
00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:51.440
And we were like, hey, we really need this to work out.
00:28:51.599 --> 00:28:56.240
And so that was, you know, I think again, having her along for those difficult conversations was really important.
00:28:56.480 --> 00:28:57.119
That's powerful.
00:28:57.279 --> 00:29:04.240
If we were in the room watching you have this conversation, the first conversation with this person saying, Hey, it's not working, what would we have heard?
00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:04.720
Yeah.
00:29:05.039 --> 00:29:06.319
We prepared for it.
00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:12.000
So the actual first conversation was just me to him, because I was the least threatening, I think, to him.
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:12.799
And I don't know.
00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:14.720
I'm actually happy to have difficult conversations.
00:29:14.799 --> 00:29:16.400
I feel like that's part of my superpowers.
00:29:16.559 --> 00:29:17.119
I'm okay with that.
00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:19.839
And so I often end up having to do that on boards, I'm on and things like that.
00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:31.599
But she helped us prepare for the way in which you describe that, as you know, as a coach, is really important because it can't seem like we are we needed to talk about the job and what was expected and not about the person, right?
00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:34.240
It wasn't a personal failing that it wasn't working.
00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:39.680
It was these are things that we need or that we want from you and that we think are part of being a partner.
00:29:39.839 --> 00:29:41.279
I still have that file, by the way.
00:29:41.359 --> 00:29:43.599
I did to sort of like is still on my Dropbox.
00:29:43.680 --> 00:29:44.720
So that's what that looked like.
00:29:44.880 --> 00:29:51.759
And then there were some interim conversations because we used to do, like at the end of the year in a venture firm, you've got, you know, sort of an unused pile of cash, right?
00:29:51.839 --> 00:29:53.920
Depending on where you were against budget and things like that.
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:58.799
And we used to have a very deliberate, Nancy facilitated method for doling that out.
00:29:58.880 --> 00:30:04.799
And for the first funds, we allocated a very small portion of our carry and then we allocated more over time annually.
00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:06.240
And so she helped us work through that.
00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:13.920
And that one year that he was still a part of the partnership, that was a pretty difficult conversation because we were like, well, you're not doing the things that we feel like you need to be doing.
00:30:14.079 --> 00:30:18.079
And so we we had a very difficult conversation around his allocation to that.
00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:23.920
And again, I think Nancy helped us frankly have the guts, if you will, because I think we could have easily defaulted.
00:30:24.079 --> 00:30:25.519
By the way, there wasn't much money left over.
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:26.640
It wasn't like a big number.
00:30:26.799 --> 00:30:29.039
It was the symbolism that was more important than anything else.
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:33.200
And I think we could have easily just defaulted to like, look, it's early, let's just split it, whatever.
00:30:33.359 --> 00:30:36.559
And she really helped push us on, like, no, that's not what you're saying.
00:30:36.640 --> 00:30:41.039
That's not the she helped design the exercise we went through to like sort of figure out what that was going to be.
00:30:41.119 --> 00:30:44.480
Um, and then kind of forced us to like have the conversation in the first place.
00:30:44.559 --> 00:30:46.960
So by the way, I think this is true for lots of teams, right?
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:54.559
I mean, it's the reason why when many teams have an off site, they should hire someone like you to like come in because it's hard to be in the meeting and be facilitating the meeting, right?
00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:56.000
It is really, really challenging.
00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:02.799
And it also creates a different dynamic because there's someone who's like in charge of the meeting, but is also supposed to be an equal participant in the meeting.
00:31:02.880 --> 00:31:10.319
And I just find it so helpful to have someone else there to play that role of being in charge of the meeting and facilitating and all those sorts of things.
00:31:10.480 --> 00:31:11.519
And Nancy is amazing.
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:14.400
I mean, Nancy at perspective too, and Nancy Ralston.
00:31:14.480 --> 00:31:17.920
So for people that are listening who are like, I need some of that, uh, Nancy is great.
00:31:18.160 --> 00:31:18.720
That's amazing.
00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:21.680
Plus one for the power of coaching and facilitation.
00:31:21.759 --> 00:31:22.079
It's amazing.
00:31:22.240 --> 00:31:23.759
But Seth, I want to push you a little bit.
00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:25.920
What words did you actually say?
00:31:26.079 --> 00:31:30.960
I think that people, you know, are willing and able to like, okay, I know I have to have a hard conversation, but like, what do I say?
00:31:31.119 --> 00:31:37.359
And in my book, From Start Up to Grown Up, I have 11 scripts in the back of the book to help people have these difficult conversations.
00:31:37.519 --> 00:31:40.480
And I think it's so important to be able to get your mouth around the words.
00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:43.680
So, like, can you role play for us actually that conversation?
00:31:43.920 --> 00:31:47.359
Yeah, I started with, hey, we need to have a hard conversation.
00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:49.680
And I want to acknowledge that it's gonna be hard.
00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:53.279
Um, I'm not asking you to react in real time because I'm not looking for that.
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:56.319
I think it's important that you have a chance to think about what we're saying.
00:31:56.400 --> 00:31:58.640
I've written it out and I have a copy of that.
00:31:58.799 --> 00:32:00.160
I'm gonna give it to you when we're done.
00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:01.440
So it started with that.
00:32:01.599 --> 00:32:03.680
And I as a general rule, I think that's helpful, right?
00:32:03.839 --> 00:32:07.920
Like if you ask people to respond in real time, like the first thing they're gonna do is defend what they've been doing.
00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:14.319
And I that's generally not productive, although it's not that I wasn't willing to hear pushback on it, but I wanted him to like really think about it first.
00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:15.599
So that's how I started it.
00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:22.319
And then I said, look, I wanna be clear, we are invested in making this partnership work and having you as a partner.
00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:25.200
But there's some things that aren't working for us as a group.
00:32:25.359 --> 00:32:30.400
I'm the one who's in here to talk about it because you and I have this good and close working relationship.
00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:36.160
And I want you to know that I'm personally, we are invested in, I'm personally very invested in this.
00:32:36.319 --> 00:32:42.079
Um, but here's some things I want to talk to you about that we feel like are not working in the way that we'd like them to be working.
00:32:42.160 --> 00:32:43.359
And then I went through what that was.
00:32:43.519 --> 00:32:43.920
What were they?
00:32:44.079 --> 00:32:44.880
Gosh, I'd have to pull it up.
00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:45.519
But it was a lot of.
00:32:46.960 --> 00:32:54.240
I mean, to be a partner at a venture firm, you need to be self-directed, decisive, thoughtful, responsive, a bunch of things like that.
00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:59.599
And in our case, we were in equal partnership and there were some things he was doing that was weird, right?
00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:08.880
And a lot of it related to me because he saw himself as sort of senior to me in the sense that he had been around for longer and that weren't part of what we were trying to put together and that we and I needed to call him out on.
00:33:09.039 --> 00:33:10.880
And so they're all related to those things, right?
00:33:10.960 --> 00:33:12.720
He was struggling to make decisions.
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:14.240
He was not being responsive.
00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:21.039
He was coming across as very um know it all or sort of full of himself, and that was not the foundry ethos.
00:33:21.200 --> 00:33:24.960
Um, he was treating me like a junior partner when I was a full partner.
00:33:25.279 --> 00:33:27.039
Those were the types of things that were on the list.
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:28.480
And he wasn't making any decisions.
00:33:28.559 --> 00:33:33.839
He wasn't making any investments because he was afraid, you know, he kept sort of analyzing, oh, I need more data, I don't know.
00:33:34.079 --> 00:33:35.920
He just sort of struggled with all of those things.
00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:40.559
And I watched that live because at one point I said, Hey, I know you've been looking at a bunch of things in Seattle.
00:33:40.720 --> 00:33:41.920
Let's go there together.
00:33:42.079 --> 00:33:45.839
Let's look at some of the companies you're looking at and let's make some decisions on what you want to do here.
00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:50.480
And he and I went up to Seattle and he hemmed and hawed about, you know, a bunch of companies that he was interested in.
00:33:50.559 --> 00:33:52.720
And so I also want to be real here, Alyssa.
00:33:52.799 --> 00:33:54.240
Like, I want to tell you how this ended.
00:33:54.319 --> 00:33:56.079
I mean, obviously, it ended with him leaving.
00:33:56.240 --> 00:33:57.759
It also ended with the end of our friendship.
00:33:58.240 --> 00:34:03.519
I mean, I believe that I did the best that I could do to preserve that friendship.
00:34:03.599 --> 00:34:07.440
And by the way, he was very close friends with my wife, and we had one kid at the time, knew my daughter.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:08.960
We did a lot of things together.
00:34:09.199 --> 00:34:18.639
And when we finally had the conversation where we told him he was leaving, I took him out to, I guess it was dinner after that, and I said, Look, I know this has been hard.
00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:24.320
I just want you to know, like, I would like to stay friends, but I'm gonna give you some space because I know you're mad.
00:34:24.400 --> 00:34:28.159
And I'm hopeful that we'll get through this together because we've been friends, we'd been working together.
00:34:28.320 --> 00:34:33.920
I mean, he until we moved to the foundry office, when we were in the old softbank, Mobius office, he and I essentially shared an office.
00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:36.480
There was like a sliding door between us, but it was mostly open.
00:34:36.559 --> 00:34:38.880
Um, so we basically had this one big office, and it was the two of us.
00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:40.400
We're constantly, hey, can you check this?
00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:41.280
Hey, can you look at this?
00:34:41.360 --> 00:34:43.840
Um, he taught me how to like create a cap table, things like that.
00:34:43.920 --> 00:34:45.599
Like when I first got into the soft bank.
00:34:45.679 --> 00:34:46.480
And it didn't work.
00:34:46.639 --> 00:34:54.800
He stayed friends with my wife for a little while, and then finally she was like, Hey, I can't have this relationship outside of my partner, you know, my husband.
00:34:54.960 --> 00:35:00.480
And I understand that's hard, but like you keep calling me when you know he's out of town because you can see on Twitter that he's gone.
00:35:00.639 --> 00:35:06.880
And I'd love to stay friends and get together with you, but like that has to be in the context of all of us being friends, and then it just fell away.
00:35:07.199 --> 00:35:12.159
But I want to say that because I don't want it to be this sort of kumbaya, like we managed this thing and it was amazing or whatever.
00:35:12.239 --> 00:35:13.119
Like it was really hard.
00:35:13.280 --> 00:35:17.280
Those conversations were awkward, it was the right thing to do, and it cost me a close friend.
00:35:17.440 --> 00:35:17.679
Yeah.
00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:18.800
Thank you for sharing that.
00:35:18.960 --> 00:35:24.079
I really appreciate that because as you well know, it's hard to always see the kind of underside of what's really going on.
00:35:24.400 --> 00:35:34.000
And that's also why I was asking you a kind of the details of that, because people don't know, and you've been so successful, and Foundry's been so successful, there's like a ta-da, you know, with a bow on it.
00:35:34.159 --> 00:35:40.239
And I think it is so important to expose, you know, what actually goes on, the all the joys and all the sorrows that the Buddhists say.
00:35:40.400 --> 00:35:47.679
I wrote a post once, sort of semi-related to this, not about Foundry, but I it was like the tenure, overnight success or tenure entrepreneur, I can't remember what I called it.
00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:57.760
And it was one of the things, and I talked about how like you just you read the VC press or whatever, you start up press, and it looks like everyone's successful and companies are like overnight, you know, this, that.
00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:01.920
And it talked about how like that's not really how companies are created and how hard it is.
00:36:02.079 --> 00:36:08.880
And I don't know that I've ever gotten as much feedback on something I've written, particular emails and private notes from people saying, Oh my god, I thought I was like the only one.
00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:14.320
Like I've been struggling for years on this, and it finally feels like it's working, but like, boy, it took me seven years to get here.
00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:16.800
And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of how it works, right?
00:36:17.199 --> 00:36:17.519
Totally.
00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:21.119
And even some of the companies that people think, I mean, we just talked about Anthropic earlier.
00:36:21.280 --> 00:36:27.440
I mean, Dario left Open AI in 2020, I think, maybe even 2019, like a while ago, right?
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:28.960
And so it takes time.
00:36:29.199 --> 00:36:35.199
It takes time, it takes time, and also really great companies are actually really terrible companies for quite a long time.
00:36:35.440 --> 00:36:38.239
And I think people don't understand that's the trajectory, it's all up and to the right.
00:36:38.400 --> 00:36:41.920
It's you know, definitely like it's not working, it's not working, it's not working, it starts to work.
00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:50.079
And that brings me back to actually the founding of Foundry, which is that I think that you guys were trying to raise money for quite a while and it wasn't working for quite a while.
00:36:50.239 --> 00:36:56.960
And I'm curious if you can walk us through that process as you were forming your venture firm and what you told yourself as you kept getting rejected.
00:36:57.199 --> 00:37:01.440
Yeah, I love that you know that because I feel like you referenced this earlier.
00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:11.280
I think now here we are 20 years after the founding of Foundry, and everyone's just sort of like, oh yeah, you guys came together and you had this big fund, and your first deals were incredibly successful, and you know, now you've got four billion dollars.
00:37:11.440 --> 00:37:14.079
And the truth is, it was actually much harder than that.
00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:15.280
We really struggled.
00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:17.440
We came together in two in 2006.
00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:21.760
Jason and Ryan, our two partners who had lived in California, moved out in the middle of that year.
00:37:21.920 --> 00:37:23.039
We did a bunch of prep work.
00:37:23.119 --> 00:37:23.920
It was very expensive.
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:25.920
Back then, you need to write an offering memorandum.
00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:27.280
We were equal partners in that.
00:37:27.440 --> 00:37:32.079
I put in what at the time was my entire life savings, our entire life savings, my wife and mine.
00:37:32.239 --> 00:37:36.239
And we started fundraising in January of 2007.
00:37:36.400 --> 00:37:39.360
And by May, it was clear it was not working.
00:37:39.519 --> 00:37:39.599
Right.
00:37:39.920 --> 00:37:41.599
We were getting reject, not working.
00:37:41.679 --> 00:37:43.280
We were not gonna be able to raise the fund.
00:37:43.440 --> 00:37:49.119
So much so that I actually had a conversation with my wife where I said, Hey, I don't think this is gonna work.
00:37:49.280 --> 00:37:51.199
I think I've lost our life savings.
00:37:51.360 --> 00:37:55.280
I don't want to over like dramatize that we weren't gonna like lose our house and things like that.
00:37:55.360 --> 00:38:01.760
But I thought we've lost, you know, relatively little money I had saved at that point, but it was six figures and it was everything I had, uh, everything we had.
00:38:01.920 --> 00:38:04.880
And I'm just gonna like have to go find a job of some kind, right?
00:38:04.960 --> 00:38:07.599
Like, you know, we had a kid, you know, it was time that we had two kids, sorry.
00:38:07.679 --> 00:38:09.519
And it was just like time for me to think about something else.
00:38:09.679 --> 00:38:11.840
And she was like, hey, I think this is gonna happen.
00:38:11.920 --> 00:38:12.880
Like, don't worry about it.
00:38:13.039 --> 00:38:16.480
Not don't worry about it, like blowing it off, but like, I believe in you guys, essentially.
00:38:16.639 --> 00:38:19.199
And we weren't gonna give up right then, but we kept at it.
00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:21.440
And then we got a really big yes, right?
00:38:21.519 --> 00:38:27.760
Lindell, who's now my partner, was at UTIMCO, the University of Texas, and he said, yes, and I'll take 20% of the fund.
00:38:28.079 --> 00:38:29.280
And that's what put us in business.
00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:31.280
And founders who are listening to this will appreciate it.
00:38:31.360 --> 00:38:35.599
Like, once we got that one big yes, all of a sudden we had a whole bunch of other people say yes.
00:38:35.679 --> 00:38:41.119
And we had, I want to give credit, AMG Chris Jacoby had said yes early on, which was amazing, right?
00:38:41.199 --> 00:38:42.719
But it was a two and a half million dollar check.
00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:44.719
It just wasn't gonna catalyze the whole fund.
00:38:44.800 --> 00:38:48.079
But I give credit to Chris always because he was absolute first yes that we had.
00:38:48.159 --> 00:38:51.039
And Fred Wilson put a million dollars in from uh USV.
00:38:51.119 --> 00:38:54.400
And those guys had said yes early on, which I and we really appreciate.
00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:58.239
But it was Lindell and UTIMCO saying yes that actually ended up putting us in business.
00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:03.039
And then not only did we raise the fund, but we actually we ended up closing on 225 million.
00:39:03.199 --> 00:39:07.519
We probably could have gone even more than that, and the original target had been 175 million, right?
00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:09.440
So it ended up being incredibly successful.
00:39:09.599 --> 00:39:15.840
And then, of course, you know, our first investments were, you know, Zynga and AdMeld and Fitbit, and you know, things did pretty well in that fund.
00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:18.960
And then all of a sudden we were like, okay, we can raise, it's not not too hard.
00:39:19.119 --> 00:39:20.000
That story is important.
00:39:20.159 --> 00:39:20.559
Totally.
00:39:20.719 --> 00:39:21.840
What did you tell yourself?
00:39:21.920 --> 00:39:29.440
So, first of all, you get your first no, uh, that's too bad, but like then you're kind of realizing it's a stream of no's to the point where you actually tell your wife, I don't think this is gonna work.
00:39:29.599 --> 00:39:31.039
By the way, nice for her to believe in you.
00:39:31.119 --> 00:39:32.800
I'd love to hear what that meant to you, too.
00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:36.800
But what did you tell yourself that allowed you to keep going?
00:39:37.039 --> 00:39:41.599
Yeah, I mean, I think this is where it's been helpful to be very close, to have had some context, right?
00:39:41.679 --> 00:39:45.280
We didn't just start working with Nancy, we had already been working with her for probably a year at that point.
00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:50.719
And we basically said, we believe in ourselves and we believe we can do this, and you know, we're gonna give it more time.
00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:56.000
And I can't remember exactly how we said it, but I I want to say we said, look, we're gonna keep, and this is very brad, right?
00:39:56.079 --> 00:39:59.039
Like, one, being optimistic, but also like, hey, let's be realistic about it.
00:39:59.119 --> 00:40:00.480
We're gonna give it until X.
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:07.280
And if we still don't have momentum by X, it was probably early fall, then yeah, maybe it's time to say, okay, this isn't gonna come together.
00:40:07.519 --> 00:40:08.639
I think that's kind of how we dealt with it.
00:40:08.719 --> 00:40:13.599
Like, and by the way, I think that's not a bad sort of allegory to how other companies, others might work.
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:16.239
Like, you need to stick at it, you need to give it a real period of time.
00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:17.280
Fundraising is hard.
00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:18.800
We knew it was gonna take some real time.
00:40:18.960 --> 00:40:23.599
And again, it wasn't about getting to a close, although we did end up getting to a close by November, and a big one.
00:40:23.679 --> 00:40:26.320
We essentially closed on almost the entire fund in the first close.
00:40:26.480 --> 00:40:31.519
But it was like, look, if we don't have real momentum by September, then you know, let's revisit this.
00:40:31.599 --> 00:40:32.639
It may not really be working.
00:40:32.800 --> 00:40:34.880
That's kind of how we came together and kind of dealt with it.
00:40:35.039 --> 00:40:36.800
And it's helpful to have optimistic partners.
00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:40.880
And again, Brad is always the sort of eternal optimist, so you know, I think that helped as well.
00:40:41.039 --> 00:40:44.400
And um, fortunately for us, we stuck at it long enough for it to actually happen.
00:40:44.559 --> 00:40:50.400
But I'm curious, like, how did you handle personally the feeling of like, oh God, I don't think this is gonna work?
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:53.679
And you, you know, again, you had a small life savings, but nonetheless it was your life savings.
00:40:53.920 --> 00:40:57.840
Like, was there a pit in your stomach, or do you be like, all right, well, action solves everything?
00:40:57.920 --> 00:40:59.440
Or like how did you comfort yourself?
00:40:59.679 --> 00:41:01.280
I was pretty stressed out about it, right?
00:41:01.519 --> 00:41:03.119
Because, you know, we had two kids by then.
00:41:03.199 --> 00:41:09.360
I was, I mean, I remember joking with my wife that like I'd been a VC at this point, it was 2007, I've been a VC for six years.
00:41:09.519 --> 00:41:12.800
Like, I don't know that I'm super qualified to do anything from here, right?
00:41:12.880 --> 00:41:17.280
Like, what is my job gonna be and what does that mean for our life and all of that kind of stuff?
00:41:17.440 --> 00:41:25.119
And so I definitely remember feeling, you know, pressure around making something happen and finding some sort of backup, right?
00:41:25.199 --> 00:41:30.719
And I felt that my backup options were not great because I wasn't sure what I was qualified to do.
00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:34.159
And sort of going back into the job market felt pretty scary.
00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:36.880
I had really only applied for two jobs in my life.
00:41:37.039 --> 00:41:42.639
One was the very first job I had after college, and then the second was the job that was at SoftBank.
00:41:42.719 --> 00:41:44.880
And I was like, God, I don't know if that I'm ready for that.
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:56.800
So, you know, I think that I needed to convince myself, and again, I think my partners helped me do this, like we were not stressed and we didn't act stressed as a partnership, even though I felt stress and pressure personally.
00:41:57.039 --> 00:42:01.199
Yeah, that makes sense, and so that can kind of like almost bolster you in a sense how you're going through it.
00:42:01.440 --> 00:42:04.480
Yeah, feed off of their optimism, which I think was really, really helpful.
00:42:04.719 --> 00:42:04.880
Yeah.
00:42:04.960 --> 00:42:13.119
Well, as we talked about at the top of this podcast, Bradfeld, your partner, one of the most important people in your life, also pretty chatty, and you're pretty chatty.
00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:13.440
Yeah.
00:42:13.679 --> 00:42:15.760
And Brad has a pretty well-known blog.
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:20.960
You also have a blog, and I'm curious what made you start writing and sort of sharing your insights?
00:42:21.119 --> 00:42:23.360
And so I would just also say, build your personal brand.
00:42:23.519 --> 00:42:25.039
Why has that been meaningful to you?
00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:29.519
I started blogging very early on in like venture capitalist blogging.
00:42:29.599 --> 00:42:36.000
I was still an associate at Mobius, at SoftBank Mobius, and I kind of had it in my head, like I need to build my personal brand.
00:42:36.159 --> 00:42:40.719
At the time, I was not thinking I was gonna have a career in venture, I was thinking I would do something else, right?
00:42:40.800 --> 00:42:42.800
This is just a couple years into SoftBank Mobius.
00:42:42.880 --> 00:42:50.320
And also, I I mean, to our point earlier about like you just gotta get your hands ready and play with the technology, I was interested in RSS and blogging technology.
00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:53.599
Again, it's brand new, you know, this is like 2003, it's brand new.
00:42:53.760 --> 00:42:55.679
And so I wanted to like really play with it.
00:42:55.760 --> 00:43:02.880
But I felt like the voice of someone who is up and coming in venture, not a partner, might be interesting to add to the mix because there were a few people.
00:43:03.039 --> 00:43:06.159
Brad was blogging, Fred Wilson was blogging, a couple of others, but not many.
00:43:06.239 --> 00:43:07.440
And I thought it would be interesting.
00:43:07.519 --> 00:43:08.960
And then, you know, I like writing.
00:43:09.039 --> 00:43:09.840
I mean, it's very different.
00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:14.239
I've written a couple books now, so that's very different type of writing, but I do not have a quiet mind.
00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:20.480
And writing is a time when my mind tends to quiet down, like especially so when I'm writing more long form, like in the form of a book.
00:43:20.639 --> 00:43:22.639
So I did it really, it was sort of selfish, right?
00:43:22.719 --> 00:43:24.079
I mean, I I wanted to do it for me.
00:43:24.239 --> 00:43:29.119
I thought it'd be interesting, and I thought it would build my personal brand, and I felt like I didn't know how that would be helpful, but I figured it would be.
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:30.239
And how has it been helpful?
00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:40.880
I think it's been, especially early on in Foundry, when relatively few VCs blogging, I felt it was a great platform to build my name as a partner in venture.
00:43:41.039 --> 00:43:44.079
And so, you know, that's probably why I was much more active back then than I am now.
00:43:44.159 --> 00:43:46.719
Also, when you're writing long form, it tends to take up a lot of your time.
00:43:46.800 --> 00:43:49.840
So less time to be writing blogs, uh blog posts.
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:53.039
But I did feel like it was incredibly helpful for me to build my brand.
00:43:53.119 --> 00:44:07.039
And even if people didn't follow it, as I was, let's say, pursuing a company, I would send, you know, send them to my blog and say, hey, Hey, if you want to know a bit more about me, here's five posts that I think are interesting that you might, you know, that might be relevant to you, right?
00:44:07.119 --> 00:44:24.719
And and I would change those up depending on who I was talking to, but it was a really good way to sort of be a little bit vulnerable and and sort of be uh show people what what type of person I was before I had any kind of real sort of broad, I don't know, reputation, if you will, in the venture and startup ecosystem, right?
00:44:24.800 --> 00:44:29.440
And it's I mean it's interesting to think back and look back on it now because I've obviously that's changed, right?
00:44:29.519 --> 00:44:32.320
I've been a partner with Foundry for 20 years, Foundry's well known.
00:44:32.480 --> 00:44:38.159
Um I get a little bit of the Brad Pixie Duff, you know, sort of sprinkles sprinkles out on me uh as well.
00:44:38.320 --> 00:44:39.199
And so that's helpful.
00:44:39.280 --> 00:44:50.480
But but you know, if I look back 15, 18 years ago when I was like trying to scrap for deals and and you know show people I could be at uh value added, like it was a really effective way to say, yeah, this is the stuff I care about.
00:44:50.559 --> 00:45:07.519
It's not that different, frankly, than than what I now do with the books, which are longer form and more important um and sort of deeper, deeper topics, um, because it's something I can give to people and say, hey, this will tell you a lot about actually who I am and what I care about, uh, even if you don't read the whole thing and you sort of skim it.
00:45:07.599 --> 00:45:09.840
I imagine you use your book in the exact same way, right?
00:45:09.920 --> 00:45:12.639
I mean it's it's sort of lead gen for life, right?
00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:14.880
Well, that's very well said, lead gen for life.
00:45:14.960 --> 00:45:22.719
I think all the writing I do, writing and speaking and like podcasting like this, is all lead gen for life because I think it's so important that you just said that.
00:45:22.880 --> 00:45:24.079
It's not just for business.
00:45:24.239 --> 00:45:31.360
What happens is I read a I read a uh newsletter and I send it out every other week, and people feel like I'm writing directly to them.
00:45:31.599 --> 00:45:35.360
And they'll say, oh, this came at the exact right moment, or something like that.
00:45:35.519 --> 00:45:38.159
And first of all, hey, that's amazing, that builds my brand.
00:45:38.320 --> 00:45:40.320
Second of all, my mission in life is to make a difference.
00:45:40.400 --> 00:45:49.039
So I literally made a difference for that person in that moment by virtue of sending out this you know newsletter to a whole bunch of subscribers, and people really have the experience of knowing me through that.
00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:55.440
And I think it's you know, you get opportunities and you get interesting connections all by virtue of that.
00:45:55.760 --> 00:46:04.480
Yeah, and it's you know, I'm a big believer in like we call it give first here in in Boulder, and obviously Brad just wrote a book about it, but which was which you did a great podcast on.
00:46:04.639 --> 00:46:07.280
But I'm a big believer in just sort of putting good things out there, right?
00:46:07.360 --> 00:46:17.119
Like I actually would like to have a life where maybe I'm not remembered specifically, but like some some good things I did end up sort of outliving me, if you will.
00:46:17.199 --> 00:46:20.480
And and one way of doing that is to put content out and affect other people, right?
00:46:20.559 --> 00:46:28.480
And I think that that's you know, in in the sports world, they talk about your sort of coaching tree, for example, and you know, who are the other coaches that you brought up.
00:46:28.559 --> 00:46:39.519
And I think actually the met to me, the measure of a success of a coach is less wins and losses and much more, you know, who did your coaching style end up spawning, right?
00:46:39.599 --> 00:46:46.960
And what was sort of the culmination, like the the cumulative, that's a better way of saying it, success of all the people that are kind of down in your coaching tree.
00:46:47.039 --> 00:46:50.320
And I I think about that a lot in terms of the work that that you and I do.
00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:52.719
Like, do we and you don't even need to know about it, right?
00:46:52.880 --> 00:47:00.800
Like your newsletter, it's great when people write back and say, hey, that came at the right moment, but even if they don't write back and that and then downstream, it's like a big MLM, right?
00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:08.559
They affect some people and they affect some people, and all of a sudden this thing that you wrote, you know, has had this incredibly like you know multiplying impact in the world.
00:47:08.800 --> 00:47:09.119
Love it.
00:47:09.360 --> 00:47:09.840
It's so true.
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:10.719
Yeah, it's so true.
00:47:10.800 --> 00:47:13.440
And the same is true of my book, and I'm sure the same is true of your books too.
00:47:13.519 --> 00:47:16.960
And you just came out with a new book, which I think is really interesting.
00:47:17.039 --> 00:47:18.960
It's like a rethinking of capitalism.
00:47:19.119 --> 00:47:21.679
So let's let's spend a little time talking about that.
00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:24.079
What tell us about the sort of the premise of the book?
00:47:24.400 --> 00:47:24.639
Yeah.
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:29.119
I co-authored a book, or two books, actually with the same person, Elizabeth McBride, friend of mine.
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:31.920
By the way, to be clear, co-writers, not like a ghostwriter.
00:47:32.079 --> 00:47:35.039
And this new one is about sort of the evolution of capitalism.
00:47:35.119 --> 00:47:40.639
I was at a dinner in New York with actually the same company that I was telling you is sort of really embracing AI very differently.
00:47:40.800 --> 00:47:52.880
And this was a number of years ago, probably five years ago, and the CEO, it was just me and the management team, sort of at the end of the dinner, and the CEO said, Hey, uh, you know, we're being asked to comment on all of these sort of social things, social issues of the day.
00:47:53.039 --> 00:47:53.840
What should I do?
00:47:53.920 --> 00:47:58.000
And, you know, would you accept a lower return for you know us like living a set of values?
00:47:58.159 --> 00:47:59.679
And I thought it was a really interesting question.
00:47:59.760 --> 00:48:05.760
So I took it to Elizabeth because I share, you know, she and I have a very close relationship and I share interesting ideas with her.
00:48:05.840 --> 00:48:11.280
And it was one of those questions that, like, you know, sometimes people ask you something, it goes in one year, and then you're like two days later you've forgotten it.
00:48:11.440 --> 00:48:14.800
I'm like waking up in the middle of the night, still thinking about this like a week later.
00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:16.400
So that's when I took it to Elizabeth.
00:48:16.480 --> 00:48:21.119
And Elizabeth is a journalist, and so her first instinct is like, hey, let's talk to some people about this.
00:48:21.199 --> 00:48:22.159
This is pretty interesting.
00:48:22.320 --> 00:48:24.960
And so we did a few, like almost like informational interviews.
00:48:25.039 --> 00:48:26.880
We weren't thinking of writing a book.
00:48:26.960 --> 00:48:28.880
And it turned out that was like a fascinating topic.
00:48:28.960 --> 00:48:30.719
Like, what's the role of business in our economy?
00:48:30.800 --> 00:48:33.119
But also, like, where is our economy headed, right?
00:48:33.199 --> 00:48:40.960
Like the role of business, at least under neoliberal capitalism, like the style of capitalism that we've been living under for 50 years, was to create value for shareholders.
00:48:41.039 --> 00:48:42.000
But did that really work?
00:48:42.079 --> 00:48:56.480
And oh, by the way, in 2019, and this is like a year or two later, uh the business roundtable said actually, which is a group of CEOs from some of the largest businesses in the US, had said, no, no, no, there are actually other stakeholders that matter here, employees, community, environment, et cetera.
00:48:56.639 --> 00:49:00.639
And that sort of like real we realized this is like a bigger topic, a bigger question.
00:49:00.800 --> 00:49:03.440
So we dove, I mean, headfirst into this.
00:49:03.519 --> 00:49:13.920
I mean, I I'm not to disparage other VC books, but like neither of my books are the kind of like VC at my computer, writing about my experiences, pontificating about things.
00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:17.119
Like these are deeply researched books for the Capital Evolution.
00:49:17.199 --> 00:49:44.719
We talked to probably a hundred people, CEOs, uh, you know, academics, people kind of uh up and down the sort of corporate food chain, uh, corporate ladder, a bunch of uh sort of businesses you probably never heard of, but that were working on innovative models, other investors, Pete Stavros, for example, at KKR, uh, Jamie Diamond from uh JP Morgan, like lots of Dan Schulman, who's now the CEO of Verizon, he was the CEO of PayPal, Lisa Greenhall, who basically invented impact investing, like people like that.
00:49:44.880 --> 00:49:46.800
So very deeply researched.
00:49:47.039 --> 00:49:50.400
And the book is an exploration of like where have we come from?
00:49:50.559 --> 00:49:55.840
What does capitalism look like, not just in the last 50 years, but what did it look like before that in the golden age of capitalism?
00:49:56.079 --> 00:49:59.119
What's working and what's not working, and then where do we go from here?
00:49:59.280 --> 00:50:02.079
And we outline sort of some ideas about where we might go.
00:50:02.239 --> 00:50:04.960
It's I would I would think of it more of like a thought piece.
00:50:05.039 --> 00:50:07.519
Um, like it's not super prescriptive.
00:50:07.599 --> 00:50:11.760
We've got some ideas for what the future looks like or what the future could look like.
00:50:11.920 --> 00:50:12.079
Yeah.
00:50:12.400 --> 00:50:13.760
But we describe this choice, right?
00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:15.280
We're in this kind of messy transition.
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:24.480
We've sort of moved away from neoliberalism to what it's unclear, but the sort of like economic reality is affecting everything in our lives right now, and it's obviously permeating politics.
00:50:24.639 --> 00:50:31.280
And populism on the left and populism on the right are not all that different, and certainly what under underpins them are very similar.
00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:45.920
It's why you know Mandani and and Trump get together in the White House and they kind of get they kind of agree on a bunch of stuff, and everyone scratches their head about that, and you're like, you know, no, like again, populism on the left is pretty much the same as populism on the right, even if their prescriptions for what to do about it are very different.
00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:54.719
So we explore these themes in the book and in what I think is, or at least have been told, is a very uh sort of accessible manner, or accessible enough that it became a bestseller.
00:50:54.880 --> 00:50:58.559
So lots of people were you know were at least they bought it.
00:50:58.800 --> 00:51:00.079
Yeah, hopefully they read it.
00:51:00.159 --> 00:51:01.360
But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:01.519 --> 00:51:15.679
Well, but but Seth, give us a couple, maybe a couple of um thoughts to to get people interested in like, you know, give us like two insights that came out of the book, and in particular, maybe in your exploration, two insights that maybe surprised you in your reporting.
00:51:16.159 --> 00:51:28.400
So uh one of the things that surprised me was uh, you know, this the original question, because my original hypothesis, and I think Elizabeth would was there too, was that yeah, we are at a point where businesses are gonna have to be more active.
00:51:28.559 --> 00:51:32.320
People don't trust government, people don't trust the media, and you know, what's left?
00:51:32.480 --> 00:51:33.280
Well, businesses.
00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:39.599
And I realized after, we realized after spending some time thinking about it, like we need to be very careful about that on two dimensions.
00:51:39.760 --> 00:51:41.760
One is that it's a bit of a power grab, right?
00:51:41.920 --> 00:51:49.199
I viewed the 2019 business roundtable statement a little bit differently, which was less sort of I I always sort of wondered how real it was.
00:51:49.360 --> 00:51:54.320
And it was important, and we'd talk about why it was important, whether or not, you know, they really, really meant it or not.
00:51:54.480 --> 00:51:57.519
But actually, it it was more than sort of what they said.
00:51:57.679 --> 00:51:58.880
It was a kind of a power grab.
00:51:58.960 --> 00:52:01.599
It was like, no, no, no, we're gonna now be the arbiters of this.
00:52:01.679 --> 00:52:03.519
I think we need to be very, very cautious about that.
00:52:03.599 --> 00:52:05.440
That's not necessarily the world we want to live in.
00:52:05.679 --> 00:52:12.719
So that was something that changed in my thinking around sort of what you know, where we where we came from versus where we are.
00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:22.239
Um, and then the second thing was uh, you know, there's an important role for government here, but I think we need to be very cautious about what that role is.
00:52:22.320 --> 00:52:24.880
And so there's an entire chapter dedicated to this.
00:52:24.960 --> 00:52:28.559
It's called something to the effect of government is not the problem, but it's not the solution either.
00:52:28.719 --> 00:52:36.159
And we prescribe a, and I hadn't really thought deeply about like where can government be helpful and where does government get in the way.
00:52:36.320 --> 00:52:43.280
And so, you know, we tried to take, we tried to ask that question and we to we have some thoughts on what is the right role for government.
00:52:43.360 --> 00:52:47.119
So that's and that's something else that I think I I hadn't thought deeply about.
00:52:47.280 --> 00:52:55.360
I think I probably was more on the when we started the work, on the sort of uh page of like a little bit more government is probably not bad.
00:52:55.519 --> 00:52:57.840
And now I actually think a little bit differently about that.
00:52:57.920 --> 00:53:03.920
I think a little less government might be right, but more in certain areas and a lot less in other areas.
00:53:04.239 --> 00:53:06.800
Yeah, that's I think that's really powerful and important.
00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:09.840
And you spoke to all these CEOs, including Jamie Dimon.
00:53:09.920 --> 00:53:15.280
And I guess I'm curious, what specifically surprised you from the point of view of talking to all the CEOs?
00:53:15.440 --> 00:53:20.320
What were their insights or you know, ideas or the discussions like that surprised you?
00:53:20.719 --> 00:53:26.400
Well, for starters, I think the line about where they how involved they should be is not clear, right?
00:53:26.480 --> 00:53:33.039
It was very talking to Dan Schulman was very different than talking to Jamie, very different than talking to uh other CEOs.
00:53:33.199 --> 00:53:35.119
And in those cases, those are public company CEOs.
00:53:35.199 --> 00:53:40.239
We talked some private company CEOs as well, as well as a bunch of people from, let's say, Patagonia.
00:53:40.400 --> 00:53:43.679
We actually was were able to sort of get into some people from Chick-fil-A.
00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:45.360
We tell the story of Hobby Lobby, right?
00:53:45.440 --> 00:54:00.480
These are, you know, these are, I hadn't thought about them as as connected as they are, but like Patagonia, but again, Patagonia, Hobby Lobby, and Chick-fil-A are very similar in the sense that they're deeply values-driven organizations, very different values, deeply value-driven organizations that are private, right?
00:54:00.559 --> 00:54:02.079
So they can kind of reflect those values.
00:54:02.159 --> 00:54:03.840
And Chick-fil-A is kind of in the middle, right?
00:54:03.920 --> 00:54:13.519
We tell the story about how Chick-fil-A obviously had sort of got in trouble with people on the left because they're not because Chick-fil-A specifically, because the founder said some very anti-LGBTQ plus things.
00:54:13.679 --> 00:54:19.360
But then later they had they got in trouble with the right because they had a you know a VP of DEI, right?
00:54:19.440 --> 00:54:23.679
And and interestingly, got in trouble like years after they had promoted someone into that position.
00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:30.320
And so they're like kind of you know dealing with it from both sides, which I think is actually illustrative of like, you know, you got to be careful about your bedfellows.
00:54:30.400 --> 00:54:39.360
Um, but anyway, we tell we tell stories like that that, you know, really speak to the sort of diversity of opinion about where, how, how and where companies should be involved.
00:54:39.519 --> 00:54:45.519
Jamie said something interesting to us, which at first I thought was kind of BS, and we pushed him on it, and I still didn't really believe him.
00:54:45.599 --> 00:55:02.880
And then the more I thought about it and the more people we talked to, I actually started to more embrace this idea, but he really tried to differentiate for us values, expressing a set of values, and politics, which is like overtly getting involved in sort of like US politics, right?
00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:12.400
Um and I, you know, I think some of have maybe criticized Jamie for perhaps not speaking out on some issues that you know they feel like he should speak out on.
00:55:12.480 --> 00:55:20.079
But I think that's really Jamie sort of saying, look, I don't actually want to get pulled into politics, as he said, don't get weaponized, right?
00:55:20.239 --> 00:55:30.239
He's watching some fellow CEOs get weaponized by one side or another who are very fast to sort of turn what you're saying into whatever it is that they're trying to do that they think is the right thing to do.
00:55:30.400 --> 00:55:39.360
And I think I better appreciate, and I and Elizabeth as well, I think we better appreciate this there is a little bit of a line between, and it's a blurry line, but there's a line between values and politics.
00:55:39.519 --> 00:55:41.599
I'm not saying every company should be on one side or the other.
00:55:41.679 --> 00:55:43.519
Certainly these private businesses are not, right?
00:55:43.599 --> 00:55:49.119
I mean, Patagonia and Hobby Lobby literally sued the government, so that's very overtly political.
00:55:49.280 --> 00:55:57.920
But I think for the most part, we want our companies to express values, whatever they might be, but not in my mind be as expressly involved in politics.
00:55:58.000 --> 00:56:01.599
And I know that that some people, some of my liberal friends think that's terrible, right?
00:56:01.679 --> 00:56:08.800
Like that's I'm I'm giving them a pass to do bad things and and not stand up for these things that are, you know, basic human rights and things like that.
00:56:08.880 --> 00:56:17.920
And I understand and appreciate that perspective, and and you know, my politics maybe lean more, I guess, in that direction, although I'm relatively set what we used to call centrist, I guess.
00:56:18.079 --> 00:56:19.840
And that's kind of the conclusion that we came to.
00:56:19.920 --> 00:56:27.599
And we really sort of outline that in great detail in the book with some tension because Elizabeth and I aren't totally aligned in our views on this too.
00:56:27.920 --> 00:56:28.159
Yeah.
00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:36.800
Yeah, I think what it's important about it is that it is a very readable book, and it's also really a thought starter and a conversation starter for people to sort of explore their own thinking.
00:56:37.039 --> 00:56:39.519
But Seth, this podcast is called From Startup to Grown Up.
00:56:39.599 --> 00:56:47.519
So I can't let you leave as we wind down here without asking you about your observations about what makes a successful founder.
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So you've had a long career investing in founders, being around founders and startups.
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And I am just really curious what have you synthesized or pulled out that are the top characteristics that will tell you that a founder will be successful?
00:57:01.519 --> 00:57:02.880
Yeah, so I think it's a couple things.
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I think it starts with a deep curiosity.
00:57:05.360 --> 00:57:08.480
I think they put humility over pride, right?
00:57:08.639 --> 00:57:16.960
I think being being humble, approaching the world with humility, being coachable, being able to get feedback, it's hard, right?
00:57:17.039 --> 00:57:20.880
I've certainly struggled with I I think I'm better at this than I used to be.
00:57:20.960 --> 00:57:22.880
I think I was, you know, when I was younger, I was very stubborn.
00:57:22.960 --> 00:57:25.679
And I'm probably, if you ask people around me, I'm still pretty stubborn.
00:57:25.840 --> 00:57:30.159
But like I think it's really important to be open to that feedback.
00:57:30.320 --> 00:57:42.880
And I think that they are, generally speaking, the most successful founders we've worked with are somewhat, I'm gonna say driven, not ups not obsessed, but like somewhere between that driven and obsessed line of like the thing that they're doing, right?
00:57:43.039 --> 00:57:44.559
Because it's not a nine to five job.
00:57:44.639 --> 00:57:47.039
It needs to feel like a mission, right?
00:57:47.199 --> 00:57:53.519
It needs to feel like something that you are deeply, maybe passion is a better way of saying it, deeply passionate about.
00:57:53.679 --> 00:57:55.199
So I think those are the those are the things.
00:57:55.280 --> 00:58:00.079
You're you're curious, you're passionate, and you have humility, you know, humility versus pride.
00:58:00.239 --> 00:58:04.320
I think those are the characteristics of most successful founders.
00:58:04.480 --> 00:58:05.280
Not everyone, right?
00:58:05.360 --> 00:58:10.559
There's some examples of some deeply not uh humble, very successful founders.
00:58:10.639 --> 00:58:13.679
So it's not, there's not one formula, but that's the formula that's work for us.
00:58:13.760 --> 00:58:16.239
And certainly it's the type of person that I want to work with, right?
00:58:16.320 --> 00:58:24.159
I look for that in our founding teams because that's the kind of person that I want to spend the next, you know, 10, 12 plus years with, right?
00:58:24.239 --> 00:58:29.760
I mean, the venture, you know, the venture exits used to be six, five or six years, and it was seven or eight years.
00:58:29.920 --> 00:58:32.800
Now it's, you know, 10, maybe even 15 years.
00:58:33.119 --> 00:58:34.960
Yeah, it's a long journey, that's for sure.
00:58:35.199 --> 00:58:36.320
Just a couple more questions.
00:58:36.480 --> 00:58:38.559
What do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?
00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:43.119
I wish I had known that, well, I mean, really, I wish I'd known it was going to be okay.
00:58:43.199 --> 00:58:53.599
I spent a lot of time sacrificing things in my personal life and with my family because I thought I needed to be everything everywhere all at once to paraphrase the movie.
00:58:53.760 --> 00:58:54.880
And I didn't need to be, right?
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And I think it's as one of the things that I have realized as I've gotten older is that you don't need to say yes to everything.
00:59:01.360 --> 00:59:12.239
And I I understand there's maybe a pushback on that, which is like, well, you're successful because you did those things, but I actually think I could have done 60% of the things that I did and still been just as successful, right?
00:59:12.320 --> 00:59:25.039
Getting on a an airplane and going to New York 13 times a year for the first three years of Foundry, I was, I mean, I did a bunch of things in New York, and it was before New York was like a big startup thing, and that's part of why I did it.
00:59:25.119 --> 00:59:28.400
But I think I could have gone six times a year and have been just as effective, right?
00:59:28.480 --> 00:59:31.840
And I think that that I didn't understand that, I didn't realize that.
00:59:32.000 --> 00:59:38.000
And I also was not maybe sort of kind to myself in every sense of that word, right?
00:59:38.159 --> 00:59:45.599
I I pushed too hard, I was gone too much, I uh and then when I was gone, I felt like I needed to be at everything.
00:59:45.679 --> 01:00:01.199
And so I would have these days where I was like, you know, out at a breakfast at you know, seven in the morning, and then you know, meetings all day, and then drinks before dinner, and then a dinner thing, and then an after dinner thing, and I realized, and this is how I travel now, you know, I don't always need to do that.
01:00:01.280 --> 01:00:10.079
Like sometimes you just need a little bit of like self-care and kindness, and it's okay to take an evening where you either don't go out at all or you, you know, whatever.
01:00:10.159 --> 01:00:15.760
So I I think that I think that that's something I really wish I had been more thoughtful about, right?
01:00:15.920 --> 01:00:21.280
Which is like, where do I need to be and and how do I architect this to be better to myself?
01:00:21.360 --> 01:00:45.119
And I'm and I love that people are talking about that more and more, whether that's making sure you have time to exercise or meditating in the morning, or maybe not, I I don't I don't really drink when I travel anymore, because I found that it just I can show up better and it's just better for me and my person to not do that right when I'm on the road and I'm already, you know, my body's already a little bit stressed because I'm moving time zones and things like that.
01:00:45.360 --> 01:00:54.960
That I'm not saying that everyone should do that, but I just like those things worked for me, including scheduling some time to work out when I'm on the road and things like that, and just being okay with that, right?
01:00:55.039 --> 01:00:57.519
And saying, no, no, no, I don't, I don't have to do those things.
01:00:57.679 --> 01:01:07.199
Now, some of it is my kids are older, and so I'm, you know, it used to be I would go to these New York trips and I would, you know, I'd fly in, you know, late one night or early the next, you know, early in the morning.
01:01:07.280 --> 01:01:11.679
Sometimes I took the red eye from uh from Denver, which is terrible because it's like a three and a half hour flight.
01:01:11.760 --> 01:01:19.599
And I would just like I would run hard for two days and then I'd fly home and I'd get home at one in the morning, which is really three in the morning New York time, because I wanted to be home as much.
01:01:19.679 --> 01:01:30.480
And so I recognize that I get a little bit of time back to me because I can stretch that out another day, or maybe my wife can go with me, or you know, my again, my kid, two of my three kids are gone from the house and the other one's in high school.
01:01:30.559 --> 01:01:32.800
So I I feel less pressure around that.
01:01:32.960 --> 01:01:42.880
But I think I could have figured out again, if I'd I wish I had traveled fewer times and and maybe extended those trips by 12 hours to be more kind to myself.
01:01:43.119 --> 01:01:44.639
Yeah, that's very powerful.
01:01:44.800 --> 01:01:47.679
Very, very, very uh Does that resonate with you?
01:01:47.760 --> 01:01:49.280
I'm not sure if you're totally.
01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:51.199
I was just thinking how much it resonates with me.
01:01:51.360 --> 01:01:55.920
I mean, yeah, I used to take so many red eyes, and then there was a point I was like, you know what?
01:01:56.079 --> 01:01:59.039
I've earned the right to be more mindful of my time.
01:01:59.199 --> 01:02:00.960
No more red eyes is one of my roles.
01:02:01.199 --> 01:02:01.360
Yeah.
01:02:02.079 --> 01:02:02.400
100%.
01:02:02.800 --> 01:02:02.960
Yeah.
01:02:03.280 --> 01:02:10.480
And I think, I mean, people strive when they're younger and they feel like they need to do that or they need to show up at every event and they need to go to that conference or whatever.
01:02:10.559 --> 01:02:15.199
And I, you know, the advice I often give to people, it's like, it's like it's how I feel about buying clothing, right?
01:02:15.280 --> 01:02:21.519
Like, I'd rather buy a smaller number of really of high quality things, especially now we're on Zoom all the time.
01:02:21.599 --> 01:02:23.440
Like no one really sees me most days anyway.
01:02:23.599 --> 01:02:32.880
But like I think that that's sort of an allegory to how you can live your life, which is look, it's pick the things that are really impactful, and of course, lean into those, spend time.
01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:34.800
And I'm not even saying what that is for you, right?
01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:39.199
That could be going to upfront if you're in the venture industry or whatever conference it is.
01:02:39.360 --> 01:02:46.480
But like feeling, at least like I did, like I needed to show up to every single thing all the time, I think just stretched me too thin.
01:02:46.559 --> 01:02:48.559
And I clearly wasn't my best self at all those things.
01:02:48.639 --> 01:02:52.559
And I definitely, you know, it there was a cost of in terms of not being around at home.
01:02:52.880 --> 01:02:53.599
Yeah, 100%.
01:02:54.079 --> 01:02:55.119
Seth, last question.
01:02:55.280 --> 01:02:59.679
What advice do you have for other founders as they embark on their journeys to grow into leaders?
01:03:00.000 --> 01:03:02.800
Well, there's two things, and they might sound antithetical, but they're not.
01:03:02.960 --> 01:03:04.480
One is be bold, right?
01:03:04.559 --> 01:03:07.920
Like I love and appreciate this concept of boldness.
01:03:08.000 --> 01:03:12.239
I love the word because I think it's it's sort of like this all-encompassing and it can mean different things to different people.
01:03:12.320 --> 01:03:14.320
You can be bold in different ways in different contexts.
01:03:14.480 --> 01:03:16.719
But the second thing is breathe.
01:03:16.880 --> 01:03:23.199
Like I think sometimes, and again, I maybe I'm just projecting kind of my my earlier self, but like taking a minute.
01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:24.719
I do this all the time, right?
01:03:24.800 --> 01:03:29.519
Like when things get a bit busy and I, you know, it's better to be one minute late to your next Zoom or whatever it is.
01:03:29.599 --> 01:03:31.920
Like, take a second and like literally breathe.
01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:35.039
Take a couple deep breaths in, and it'll all be okay, right?
01:03:35.119 --> 01:03:37.920
And I I feel like that's just helpful advice.
01:03:38.079 --> 01:03:41.840
I actually think those two things marry nicely together, even though they might sound a little antithetical.
01:03:42.159 --> 01:03:43.199
I love that advice.
01:03:43.440 --> 01:03:44.320
No, I love that advice.
01:03:44.400 --> 01:03:45.360
I I do agree with you.
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I think it's like once you're breathing, you can then be bold.
01:03:48.400 --> 01:03:48.960
That's the point.
01:03:49.119 --> 01:03:55.519
It's like take a breath, take a pause, be intentional, that allows you with the energy and the space to be bold.
01:03:55.599 --> 01:03:55.920
I love that.
01:03:56.159 --> 01:03:57.440
I love that word intentional, right?
01:03:57.599 --> 01:04:04.159
Intentionality, I think we and I feel like this sometimes I describe like my calendar, for example, often getting out of control.
01:04:04.239 --> 01:04:09.039
And I just I think the issue is I feel like I am not being intentional when those things happen.
01:04:09.119 --> 01:04:12.320
And if I can take a step back and be like, no, I'm gonna be intentional about this.
01:04:12.400 --> 01:04:20.800
And when my days get busy, but I've been intentional, I have a very different reaction to it than when my days are busy and I just feel like I'm getting pulled by other people, right?
01:04:20.880 --> 01:04:22.719
And that agency, that intentionality.
01:04:22.880 --> 01:04:24.639
I love I love that way of thinking, Alyssa.
01:04:24.719 --> 01:04:25.119
That's great.
01:04:25.360 --> 01:04:25.760
That's great.
01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:28.079
Seth, I could talk to you forever, but I'm gonna let you go.
01:04:28.239 --> 01:04:29.280
This was such a pleasure.
01:04:29.440 --> 01:04:30.480
Thank you for joining me today.
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It was really great to talk to you.
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This was super fun.
01:04:32.559 --> 01:04:33.920
I could I could keep going as well.
01:04:34.000 --> 01:04:35.199
This has been really great.
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Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grown Up.
01:04:38.320 --> 01:04:43.039
If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.
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And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a line through my website, alysacone.com.