1 00:00:01,010 --> 00:00:04,080 - A lot of founding teams don't have a lot 2 00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:07,090 of business experience on the team. 3 00:00:07,090 --> 00:00:09,090 A lot of times it's a couple of co-founders 4 00:00:09,090 --> 00:00:13,090 who really care about the product that they're building, 5 00:00:13,090 --> 00:00:17,050 have experience in a particular domain, 6 00:00:17,050 --> 00:00:19,070 but don't necessarily have experience 7 00:00:19,070 --> 00:00:22,020 building and scaling a business. 8 00:00:22,020 --> 00:00:24,060 As co-founders, finding people 9 00:00:24,060 --> 00:00:28,090 that have some business acumen is really useful early on. 10 00:00:28,090 --> 00:00:30,030 Now, these may not have 11 00:00:30,030 --> 00:00:33,020 to be full-time participants in your team. 12 00:00:33,020 --> 00:00:34,080 They might be mentors. 13 00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:36,050 They might be board members 14 00:00:36,050 --> 00:00:39,000 if you decide to put together a board early on. 15 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:40,070 But you're looking for people who are able 16 00:00:40,070 --> 00:00:44,000 to guide you through the creation and development 17 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:48,040 of the business versus just the product. 18 00:00:48,040 --> 00:00:51,070 In addition, one of the things that benefits founders 19 00:00:51,070 --> 00:00:53,060 from having people that have more experience 20 00:00:53,060 --> 00:00:55,010 around them is there's a lot 21 00:00:55,010 --> 00:00:58,090 of things you're going to run into that it's not necessarily 22 00:00:58,090 --> 00:01:01,010 that's somebody's going to give you the magic decoder ring 23 00:01:01,010 --> 00:01:02,030 of how to do it, 24 00:01:02,030 --> 00:01:03,050 but they're going to be able to talk to you 25 00:01:03,050 --> 00:01:05,080 from their own experience in a way that you'll be able 26 00:01:05,080 --> 00:01:08,050 to navigate the new situations that you're encountering 27 00:01:08,050 --> 00:01:10,080 as you start to grow your business 28 00:01:10,080 --> 00:01:13,000 in a way that's really helpful to you. 29 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:16,030 One thing to be careful of if you're a founding team 30 00:01:16,030 --> 00:01:18,040 is the opposite problem, 31 00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:21,000 which is if on your founding team you have a bunch of people 32 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:23,010 that have a lot of business experience 33 00:01:23,010 --> 00:01:25,070 but you have no one focusing on the product, 34 00:01:25,070 --> 00:01:27,040 you're going to have the same kind of imbalance, 35 00:01:27,040 --> 00:01:29,010 but just the other direction. 36 00:01:29,010 --> 00:01:31,030 So think of a founding team of four 37 00:01:31,030 --> 00:01:33,070 where there's one person working on the product 38 00:01:33,070 --> 00:01:36,030 and three people working on the business. 39 00:01:36,030 --> 00:01:38,040 The problem with that configuration 40 00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:41,030 is the person working on the product, 41 00:01:41,030 --> 00:01:42,080 there's not enough of that. 42 00:01:42,080 --> 00:01:44,040 The three people working on the business, 43 00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:46,080 there's not going to be enough for them to do. 44 00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:49,030 They're mostly going to spend their time torturing the person 45 00:01:49,030 --> 00:01:51,010 who's working on the product, 46 00:01:51,010 --> 00:01:53,040 which causes the person who's working on the product 47 00:01:53,040 --> 00:01:55,040 to have even less time to work on the product, 48 00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:57,020 so she's going to be submerged 49 00:01:57,020 --> 00:02:00,010 under that much more time pressure. 50 00:02:00,010 --> 00:02:02,070 So getting that right initial team configuration 51 00:02:02,070 --> 00:02:04,050 is really important. 52 00:02:04,050 --> 00:02:07,000 Generally speaking, having at least half the people 53 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:11,020 on the team working on product is really powerful, 54 00:02:11,020 --> 00:02:13,090 but having at least one person on the team 55 00:02:13,090 --> 00:02:16,080 that is focused on the business is key. 56 00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:18,060 One of the things that that person, 57 00:02:18,060 --> 00:02:21,060 especially at the early stages, can be focused on 58 00:02:21,060 --> 00:02:23,010 is making sure that the people working 59 00:02:23,010 --> 00:02:26,000 on the product can maximally focus 60 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:28,000 on working on the product. 61 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:29,050 Last thing to really focus on here, 62 00:02:29,050 --> 00:02:33,040 especially as you're looking for scaling up your business, 63 00:02:33,040 --> 00:02:37,040 is this idea to some degree of collecting people. 64 00:02:37,040 --> 00:02:38,090 As a founder, what you're trying to do 65 00:02:38,090 --> 00:02:42,090 is attract people to your business that are going to help you. 66 00:02:42,090 --> 00:02:47,010 And the mentor dynamic of attracting active mentors 67 00:02:47,010 --> 00:02:49,050 who will engage with you and help you 68 00:02:49,050 --> 00:02:53,050 in the context of your business is an important one. 69 00:02:53,050 --> 00:02:55,020 But it's not as easy as just saying, 70 00:02:55,020 --> 00:02:58,070 hey, I'm looking for some mentors, would you be a mentor? 71 00:02:58,070 --> 00:03:02,000 Recognize that the most valuable mentor-mentee relationships 72 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:04,040 are ones where the mentee gets as much from it 73 00:03:04,040 --> 00:03:06,040 as the mentor does and vice versa. 74 00:03:06,040 --> 00:03:10,050 So the mentor over time becomes a peer with the mentee. 75 00:03:10,050 --> 00:03:11,050 So it's not that you're looking 76 00:03:11,050 --> 00:03:15,000 to outsource the business acumen to somebody else, 77 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:19,000 but as a co-founder you're trying to learn from that person. 78 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:20,080 And while you're trying go learn from that person 79 00:03:20,080 --> 00:03:22,080 and incorporate in to what you're doing, 80 00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:25,070 you're also trying to help that person learn 81 00:03:25,070 --> 00:03:28,040 from your own experience historically 82 00:03:28,040 --> 00:03:31,030 and with this business and build a feedback loop 83 00:03:31,030 --> 00:03:33,070 so that there's more and more business acumen 84 00:03:33,070 --> 00:03:36,070 that gets developed and integrated into your company. 85 00:03:36,070 --> 00:03:40,050 If you look at successful founder CEOs 86 00:03:40,050 --> 00:03:42,090 of companies that have grown very large 87 00:03:42,090 --> 00:03:45,040 and you think about how much business acumen they had 88 00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:47,050 at the very beginning of their journey, 89 00:03:47,050 --> 00:03:49,060 they might have had incredible business instincts, 90 00:03:49,060 --> 00:03:52,040 but they had no business acumen. 91 00:03:52,040 --> 00:03:55,060 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would be good examples. 92 00:03:55,060 --> 00:03:58,060 And if you look Steve Jobs 93 00:03:58,060 --> 00:04:02,040 at the end of his tenure at Apple and his end of his life, 94 00:04:02,040 --> 00:04:05,030 he had an immense amount of business acumen 95 00:04:05,030 --> 00:04:07,060 that he grew and developed over time 96 00:04:07,060 --> 00:04:09,010 through that experience. 97 00:04:09,010 --> 00:04:11,060 You look at somebody like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. 98 00:04:11,060 --> 00:04:13,080 Same thing, in the very early days of Facebook, 99 00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:15,050 very little business acumen. 100 00:04:15,050 --> 00:04:19,060 Lots of instincts, but a huge thirst for knowledge 101 00:04:19,060 --> 00:04:21,050 and understanding about that, 102 00:04:21,050 --> 00:04:23,040 and today with an extremely large 103 00:04:23,040 --> 00:04:25,040 and extremely valuable company. 104 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:27,090 A huge amount of not just instincts, 105 00:04:27,090 --> 00:04:30,070 but grown and developed business acumen over the years. 106 00:04:30,070 --> 00:04:32,070 And if you look at both that were hired 107 00:04:32,070 --> 00:04:36,070 as well as the mentors of those entrepreneurs, 108 00:04:36,070 --> 00:04:38,090 it's a very long list of people 109 00:04:38,090 --> 00:04:42,080 who over time not just helped those entrepreneurs 110 00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:44,050 on the entrepreneur's journey, 111 00:04:44,050 --> 00:04:47,030 but learned and benefited from their interaction 112 00:04:47,030 --> 00:04:51,000 as a mentor with those entrepreneurs in their own lives.