The Pomp Podcast - #1310 Lexy Franklin | Former Facebook Exec Will Help You Get A Promotion

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Lexy Franklin is the Founder & CEO of Sidebar, and a former Facebook employee who has tons of lessons learned from one of the greatest companies in all of Silicon Valley. In this conversation, we talk about professional development, future of work, importance of small groups for career growth, lessons from Facebook, and how Sidebar can accelerate your career. ======================= Base is making it their mission to bring a billion people onchain. But what exactly is Base? It's an Ethereum L2 offering a seamless experience for both builders and users. With near-zero gas fees and rapid transaction speeds, Base is shaping the future of the onchain world. Base is a canvas for everyone, with hundreds of apps in the Base ecosystem, whether you're an emerging creator, a seasoned developer, or someone exploring the onchain space for the first time, Base is designed to bring your ideas to life. So, if you're looking for a platform where the future of onchain is being built daily, Base is your destination. Join in and make onchain the next online. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠base.org⁠⁠⁠ and follow along on Twitter at @BuildOnBase to see cool things to do onchain, everyday. ======================= BetOnline.ag is a proud sponsor of the the Pomp Podcast. Use crypto to bet on sports, play poker and enjoy casino games at BetOnline. Visit https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp and use promo code POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline boasts no crypto transaction fees, and processing is anonymous, instantaneous and secure. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Today's episode is with Lexi Franklin. He is the founder and CEO of Sidebar, and he is a former Facebook employee who's got tons of lessons learned from one of the greatest companies

in all of Silicon Valley. In today's conversation, we talk about professional development, the future of work, what people are doing to actually get ahead, why Lexi built a product that puts peers into small groups and helps them accelerate their careers, and also helps them learn about all the things that will make them better operators. Lexi is incredibly thoughtful. They built an amazing product and they have some incredible people that are already on there. I've gone ahead and I've taken a look at it and I have to say I am blown away by how high quality both the information and the people are. Lexi shares all the secrets behind how they built the product, how they think about the algorithm, and why you as an individual may want to consider using Sidebar. Here is my

conversation with Lexi Franklin. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by BASE. BASE is making it their mission to bring a billion people on chain. What exactly is BASE? It's a layer two offering a seamless experience for both builders and users. With near zero gas fees and rapid transaction speeds, BASE is shaping the future of the on-chain world.

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All right, guys. bang bang i've got lexi here uh lexi one of the big themes uh with the rise of the internet is more access to information and as people get more information they can use it for one of two things in my mind like they could do a lot of dumb things on the internet and they kind of just like waste their time and they rot their brains and they doom scroll on the internet but then there's this other category which is self-improvement or professional development and to me the people who are curious the people who want to be ambitious at work like they're constantly learning they're constantly reading they're constantly talking to people etc talk a little bit about that

space on the internet in general. You're building a business that is helping people do this, but there's a broader trend that you're riding the coattails of a little bit, which I think is one good for a business to be built here. But also two, it just seems like that is something that was much, much harder to do 15 or 20 years ago before the internet and specifically a lot of consumers were on the internet. And so now it's become much simpler and easier to do. Yeah, absolutely. And I think what's really interesting about this is when we think about work in general and the relationship to work to our lives right you know we spend on average 90 000 hours of our lives working it's just the vast majority of time we spend awake

on the planet right and yet we're so busy working there's so many things there's just more work filling more work it's like well how do we really learn how do we really grow how do we really continue to just be great at what we do i mean i think what's so i've been so powerful about starting sidebar and really thinking about this and looking at the overall market is that there are so many people on the planet who are just so committed to be excellent at what they do like these are people who are just driven to be the best that they possibly can be at whatever they're doing and specifically whatever they're doing at work and so what i think you see is across the internet all of these pieces all of these things that are sprouting out whether

they're networks whether they're programs whether these other parts of the internet whether they're these kind of large Slack channels or they're on LinkedIn or they're in Facebook groups or they're in all these places where people are just trying to learn as quickly as they can and try and get better and try and iterate on their crafts. How much of the success of these kind of like peer groups is I am obsessed with being excellent at what I do, but part of chasing excellence for me is also being great at being able to teach what I know to other people. And like, that's helping me like hone my craft. It's kind of like, you know, if you really want to understand something like teach it to somebody else. Is that a component of this?

I think it's an absolute component of it. I mean, I think one of the magic pieces of sidebar that we see is that very rarely in life do you find things that are both altruistic and self-serving at the same time. And I think that that creates this kind of magical type of experience sort of thing. And what you're talking about is altruistic in the sense that it feels so good to help other people. There's the sense of we all have this kind of hard-earned tuition-paid work knowledge that we're accumulating and learning through our trials and tribulations through our growth through our hard kind of work that we do throughout our careers um and it's really powerful to share that it's really powerful to help someone else you know

one of the things that's so incredible about starting a company is you realize there's all these other founders who come out of the woodwork to just help any way they can right there's this like huge culture of paying it forward and paying it back i mean it's just like it's incredible and And I think that you see that with how good it feels to help other people. And on the same time, there's also this kind of interesting self-serving aspect, which to your point, you just get way better at something when you teach it to someone else. You have to be way more fluid. You have to be able to articulate it a lot clearer.

And so there's this kind of magical give and take of, great, I can get better at my job by helping someone else. And it also feels really good. When I look at certain industries, there are very rigid, almost in some ways, regulated ways to continue to do development. So continuing education credits in law, in medicine, many other fields. Things like the tech industry, it's kind of more like, you know, choose your own adventure. Like maybe you want to get better. Maybe you don't. We're not going to really tell you what to do. So how do you think about free sidebar? Like what are people doing for self-development?

how many people are actually engaging in this stuff? And like, what does that world look like for somebody who's like, I want to get better at my job? Like, where are they going? Yeah. So I think like, let's break it down. So I think that there's a few different places that people are going to, right? Like one is they're going into their current companies. They're trying to talk to their managers. They're trying to talk to other people. They're trying to just like fit it in, in between work. But what you kind of see over the last three years, there's been such a substantial change of how we work. Like, you know, with the move to remote, remote work there's this really interesting stat that it's you know about 40 percent of people

are participating kind of in remote work and that's looking to double in the next year like it's just this huge transformation of how people are working and what that means is like there's less time with your managers like there's less connection with your peers so that as a channel is getting weaker over time that we see i think another thing that you try to do is you try and talk to friends or your partner but i think what's one of the things that's difficult about that is that it's really easy for those relationships to not have as much context about the day-to-day of your role or for it to kind of take over and dominate that conversation right like when you're working on something that's just tricky and hard to define it's it can be like well i

really need to talk to someone who has the expertise you know one of the really interesting things that's been growing a lot um throughout kind of tech is this idea of coaching and executive coaching and i think coaching is really powerful because it's a really powerful and interesting way for us to talk about what's going on in our lives what's going on at work and how do we basically think about the way that we're holding ourselves as leaders the way that we're holding ourselves on our day-to-day and kind of self-examining what that process is and what that looks like i think coaching is like a really positive step in the right direction i think what we see is that for a lot of questions that are kind of very tactical and practical about the

day-to-day of work right i need to go make a decision about this tomorrow i need to go figure that i need to go decide what to do with uh this you know situation at work i need to move this metric and i'm like trying to work on this product thing and i'm not exactly sure what to build the more context that someone has the closer they are to problems like that the more lived experience that they have the more powerful the feedback is and so that's kind of what we see is that you know there are these options that exist you can also there are lots of slack channels um that people can join of these different communities right product community marketing community growth communities that are all great but sometimes in a lot of them it's really hard

to discern the signal from the noise right you're part of this thing and maybe you're giving giving giving but are you getting back and so one of the things for cyber that was really important for us is we call sidebar a program and not a network right networks have benefits but programs have outcomes you know i think it's the difference between a gym membership and a fitness program with a personal trainer you know a gym is an amazing beautiful tool right it creates this incredible autonomy that i can go i can go to the gym anytime i want but like also i haven't done push-ups in like a year right it's only on me versus a fitness program with a personal trainer the trainer knows exactly what you're working. They know your exact goals. There's a program,

there's social accountability, there's steps along the way. And we just thought that there was a really interesting opportunity to structure these interactions. Because what you hear about a lot of these interactions, whether it's talking to friends or trying to talk to a manager or doing like other external things is that they start out fine and then they peter out without the structure. When you think of Sidebar today, can you describe what is Sidebar? And like, I'm somebody, I want to get better at my job. I want to chase excellence. I come to Sidebar, I sign up, what happens? Like, what am I getting? And like, what does that experience look like? So Sidebar is a leadership program that accelerates your career. It's where people

who are at the top of the field go to grow through a small group, through a virtual platform, and through this facilitated curriculum that's personalized to them you know we've built this platform that matches people it matches you to the right people for you in order for you to just substantially get better at your job and like it has goal tracking it has messaging it has this virtual platform it has all these sessions that are customized to the member and i think one of the big differentiators the defining characteristics for sidebar is the power of peers so sidebar provide these small peer-focused groups of about eight to 10 people with expert facilitators that are focused on tactical value, right? They're focused on outcomes over networking. You meet

like twice a month and you see these real results in your career. You know, one of the things that I fundamentally believe, and I think we fundamentally believe at Sybar, is that peers is this tremendously untapped resource. Like I would argue that nothing in life gets you further in your career than learning from your peers. Because in these small groups, you're able to learn these diverse insights from everyone's work experience, where when you're working on this problem, they're able to explain similar situations they've been in and provide like their shared learning. So let me give like a concrete example. Let's say that I'm going and I'm leading a new team. And usually when you're growing really fast in the company, you just tend to get more and more things that are

sent to you, right? New teams, you're leading new areas, you're having to manage in transition. I'm leading a new team. I'm trying to solve a concrete problem. And it's the first time I've ever seen it before. So most people, how we think about this is that we would just go and try and solve it to the best of our abilities, right? Use all of our intelligence, use first principle thinking, and just be like, I'm going to solve this. Like I'm the first person to ever interact with this problem. And I'm going to do it as well as I possibly can. But that's actually not the most efficient way to do it and it can take a lot of time right versus if i was in a peer group and i was able to talk to you and you would be like i've seen that problem before i actually spent

two years of my life on that like i don't even think you're in the right mountain range like here's how i think about it try this this and this and you can go integrate that and and try that tomorrow like that's the value that we really see and so what i kind of think about is this the power of peers is peers encourage us peers hold us accountable peers push us and research tells us that when you're in these small groups that create this safe space, it's just an incredibly effective place to learn. So there's this amazing stat. We remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, and 90% of what we learn in a small group setting. And so we think that that's really the magic of sidebar is creating these really well-matched small groups of peers

that are laser focused on outcomes. When I think of everything I've ever learned in a small group, it could be a dinner, right? And it's me and a couple of friends talking, whatever. There is something magical about putting people who have similar work experiences in a small group and also being able to be honest, both in terms of the questions that you care about,

but also the answer. And I'll give you a good example. I've been at many founder dinners and nobody wants to like ever bring this up until it comes up. And then someone will be like, yeah, I'm like negotiating my pay package with the board. And then every founder at the table has got an opinion and they've got like super specific advice, things that work, things that didn't advice they had gotten. Like it just like gushes out of people. Right. And I always think like, man, if that one person wasn't like

courageous enough to ask the question, none of this would have been shared, but also it's like, who's at the table and this like intimate setting got the answers. And I wonder if it was one-on-one with someone, I don't know if you would get nearly as good of advice as if you got, you know, four or five people to all do it at the same time. Well, I think that, I think that resonates for me so much sort of thing. And like, there's just so many of these things, you know, this is the vast majority of time we spend awake on the planet. Right. And there are millions and millions and millions of people who are driven to just do the absolute best job that they can at their jobs. Right. You know, what I think is so interesting about this is that we spend so much time on this,

but where do we talk about it like where do we authentically share that where do we you know as a founder like pay is a really good example like another really good example is when your board is telling you hey they're giving you all this direction and you're trying to be like great what really matters and really it doesn't and how do you think about that like how do you basically like distill what's really valuable but also like maintain focus like these are these things that are so impactful and so incredible and matter so much but where do you get to talk about those things or as you know a senior leader and a senior manager like a really concrete example is you know one of our members came in and they felt like that they had plateaued at a director level they're

doing an amazing job but they just feel like they plateaued at a director level what do you do in that situation what's the conversation you have with your manager do you stay do you go do you double down how do you broach that subject or another idea is around feedback right like imagine that you have a manager and you want to do the best job that you possibly can, but you just don't know exactly how to connect with them, right? Like, what are the four questions to ask? How do you think about that? You can't go to your manager about that. If you go to your friends, maybe they know the answer, but they don't really have context. When you're in these small groups that are matched really well with other people who are at the similar scope of jobs, they're solving

similar problems on a day-to-day basis. It just creates this magic. And I think to your point, it's really really important that the vulnerability is there that's one of the things that i've been the most surprised about in cybar it's just on day one people are super honest and you come into these and it's just you know there's all these meetings and you have this time that's set aside for yourself to double down on to just really be like this is my time to grow and people are really focused they're really prepped the programming is really structured so they come in and they're very honest about the things that they're working on and that authenticity in a group is just even more powerful than it is one-on-one when you have these groups going on

it's not just people talking amongst themselves right there is a facilitator who's there as well and like what are they doing are they like the boss are they you know tell people what to talk about or are they kind of just like completely silent in the background how does it work yeah so one of the things that we think is really important is that structure leads to value and so if you've ever been part of, or if you've ever been part of a small group where you created on a chat thread or something like that, and you're excited about all these people, you know, the data tends to show, and we talked to a bunch of people qualitatively as well, is that those just peter out over time because there's not enough structure there, regardless of how great the people are.

And I think the same is true. Like, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but when you, when you go out to all your friends, uh, when you go out to dinner with all your friends and it's not quite planned and you have all these really smart people together. And it's just like, it's like a cluster like no one knows what the plan is or what to do or what to think about sort of thing you're just like who's in charge here and so the first and foremost goal of the facilitator is to make sure that there's a clear what we call hand on the tiller someone's in charge right like people come in there's a really clear agenda we send agendas ahead of time and there's actually agendas for three years of the program so people know exactly what's coming up the group has

opportunities to update and augment and change what they want to work on but it's really structured And the goal for the facilitator is really to hold that safe space where people come in, everyone talks, they know kind of what the next steps are. We've built all this technology, so it's really clear whose turn it is, what's coming up next. So you get the sense where this time is maximized for you to learn from each other. We kind of believe, and we iterated our way through a bunch of versions of this, is that the facilitator's job is not to be the smartest person in the room. Their job is not to come in and be like, I have the answer to all the problems. People are really showing up for their peer groups, but our facilitators are brilliant and amazing. And their job is to hold space, hold people accountable, push when it's necessary, and just create the environment in order for people to get really good, really fast and to solve their problems.

And so when people are having these conversations, like how much of it is professional versus personal versus, you know, just kind of something else? And the reason I think about this is as the future of work is being debated, as people have gone more remote, it seems like personal and professional stuff is melding together. You know, I've had conversations with friends in these kind of more intimate groups, and somebody may be talking about starting a business, but they actually are like, oh, but my wife or my husband thinks it's a great idea or thinks it's a horrible idea, right? And, like, part of the advice on, like, should I start the company or not entails, like, do I want harmony at home, right? And there's like very intertwined, uh, kind of components now between personal and professional life. I mean, I think it's super intertwined, right? I think that the distinction between work and life is, is it's, it's not like a really hard line. And especially in this remote world, you know, with 40% of people working remotely and that going to double, like a lot of us are

working from home. And so like that interaction is super important and super critical. And so, you know, people come in and I think the way I think about it is work is the gateway. right work is the initial way to start that conversation work is the way to bring up what you said right which is like what about ceo pay but then when you're talking about that all these things come up right there's personal emotions there's family there's balance there's integrity there's all these pieces that come out that aren't just defined by the boundaries of work like let me give you a really good example so we had a member who joined who was just really eager to figure out their next career step they explored consulting they explored fractional leadership

full-time roles but they were really interested in passive income like for them in their life and where they were that's what they wanted sort of thing they began searching for kind of existing businesses to purchase and we do something where it's a member spotlight where a member can kind of share and their whole group is able to like help them brainstorm and think through next up and during a member spotlight she presented her top options and the group coached her through this decision-making process now this is a life-changing journey right like what she does and what we do in work? These are big questions. And ultimately, she chose this franchise opportunity and just closed the deal, right? This is a big six-figure investment and a complete

lifestyle change shift. It's not going to just change work. It's going to change all of life. And it was just clear that the advice, perspective, support in the sidebar group directly contributed to this huge change in her life. And so that's an example of how I see this working. When these groups are successful, what are those outcomes? You talked earlier about kind of, you know, putting the right people in a room with structure, with the facilitator, et cetera, promotions, like multi-billion dollar outcome. Like how do you almost like kind of gauge whether it works or not? Yeah. So let me, let me just walk through some examples, right? Cause like we, like our community is absolutely incredible. And so let me just kind of walk through some

example so you know we had a member who sold their startup to like a very large well-known company in the travel space for hundreds of millions of dollars right so we you know there's the example i just shared previously about someone really trying to plot the next step in their life and deciding to figure out a side business and buy a franchise and set that up you know we've had members who are like they're in their corporate jobs and they're deciding to leave their corporate jobs to build their own company right and then they're talking with their group and they've gone ahead and raised their first round of funding and hired a small team to begin building. On the other side, we've had entrepreneurs who are like, you know, I actually would like to

join a big company. And they've gone through the process of selling their entrepreneur business and then go to go work to go find a job at a bigger company. You know, we had a member who tactically was like, I just want to get better at my pitch at a conference to get clients. So their big goal for the year was one more client, which was like, that was like their big goal and you know after the conference they had seven potential client opportunities and another 10 follow-ons so you just see these outsized huge gains in their life you know one way i would think about this is that i tend to believe that 85 to 90 of the time we know what we're doing at our jobs you know we generally know like great i'm going to do this i'm going to go do this i'm going to

go figure this out and 10 to 15 of the time it's just less clear it's murkier like how to capture that value it's just it's not as clear and for me personally those are the things that i'm staying up late at night thinking about those are the things that i'm just moving over over again that's where i tend to get a bit stuck and sidebar is really now in that 10 to 15 of time the value unlock potential is tremendous there right these are the tricky things that i just like can't quite figure out but if i could figure out create these outsized returns sidebars for that 10 to 15 right Right. It's for those things where you just can't quite figure it out and you need the power of peers, the power of perspective to help you in the market. The matching is obviously very important.

How does the matching algorithm work? Does it, you know, look at where somebody is located? Does it look at what they like? Do you tell the algorithm, hey, I want to be with people who have certain achievement level or skill? How does matching work? Yes. So we're like huge believers in building this with our community. Right. One of the things that's super important to us as kind of product people and as a team that's building this product is to really make sure that we're building with everyone. So the first thing we did, Samantha, who's our head of user research, who's absolutely brilliant, was just survey so many different people, right?

What really matters from a matching perspective? We surveyed current members. We surveyed other people who've experienced other platforms and other experiences. And we're like, what's really important? And when you think about, okay, what matters in a small group? it's number one it's not a great group if you feel like you know all the answers right and you're just teaching other people and helping people because that feels good to help other people but you also want to get the outside returns in your life as well you want to be able to give and get the second

thing is that if it doesn't feel like there's anyone like you like if you don't feel like these are like this is like my people sort of thing you know in in the sense it's just like you're like well, I might show up to one or two groups, but this isn't really impactful for me. You know, sidebar is a commitment and it's, that's really important for us. People sign up for a year and it's actually a multi-year program. And, but like, you know, you have year one, year two, year three. And so you're really focused on, I really want to make these changes over a long period of time. And so the way we thought about matching was this, was if you look at matching right now today a lot of the feedback you get is that matching is either based on location

like this is the san francisco bay area version of of this group sort of thing or mashing is based off of job title which is like everyone is like a vp or above now that's good in the sense that it's directional of we want to get people who are dealing with similar problems but there's not all vps in every company are created equal some vps have 200 people reporting to them some people have two people reporting to them some vps are tackling really complicated business problems other vps are tackling much different things that are more focused on international and growth and all these other pieces like those things matter so at sidebar we really take into a few things into account the first is like what are the type of problems you're tackling on a day-to-day basis

right what are the things that you're having to deal with and what would it look like to be matched with peers who are having to tackle those similar problems what are the type of questions that may come up or the type of things that you may not you may need help on and who are people who can provide those specific answers i think we also look at goals right where do you want to be in the year like what are you trying to learn what are you trying to develop what are you trying to grow into um and then i think diversity is really critical and important for us cyber groups are diverse across a variety of different aspects across gender across ethnicity across race across whether or not people have kids and the age of the kids across where they live and so you end up

getting this overarching feeling of I'm with all these people that I'm not sure I would have been able to meet on my own. Like in order to get a sidebar group, it might take 10 or 15 years to meet these people and get all that structure set up, but they're solving similar problems that I am. And they're a little bit ahead of me in terms of some of the goals that I'm working on. And they have this incredibly diverse perspective. What are the downsides? Like being in these groups, have you guys seen things that you're like, okay, we need to craft the product in a certain way. We need to craft the groups in a certain way. I can imagine a world where some people are not great at like sifting through a lot of advice. So, you know, it's kind of like, Hey, throw a

question out there. I'm thinking about this thing at work. And then you get 10 different people or five different people with different pieces of advice. Like they can be overwhelmed. So like, What are some of the downsides or challenges that people have in these groups? Yeah. So I think that there's like two parts to the answer to that question sort of thing. So one is like what I hear is like the structure of the groups themselves and how do we structure the product and two is the type of problems that people can bring. So I think that from a structure perspective, you know, this is one of those beliefs where

I think us just really being super humble, listening very deeply to our community and just running group after group after group and just making each one a little bit better than the next sort of thing like our product team is exceptional and our engineering team is exceptional and we're just listening all the time and being like oh we can make that better we can make this better we can make this better a few to highlight is you know one of the things that really matters is just laser focus on outcomes like versus it just be a network where it's for networking sake like you have to be able to apply this and get better at your job and so our like key focus on outcomes means that we actually have this policy when someone shares before everyone kind of gives

all the answers we need to first fully understand okay what's the problem we're really trying to solve right the group needs to be able to repeat back and really understand yeah this is a great problem but what's the aspect that would be most valuable to you like where's the pain point here um and then so we start with a bunch of questions so the first part of it is just asking a lot of different questions and then actually repeating back and being like is this the type of information that would be really helpful for you. You know, we have a lot built into the structure of once people receive that feedback,

there's check-ins with the facilitators, which is like, is that valuable? Is that what you needed? Do you need to direct this in a different way? So this isn't just like checking a box of, great, someone asked a question and there's like 20 things overwhelming. It's like, no, do you have like a clear action item

and next step? So we actually built this into the product itself. We have this new product that just launched called Goals and Actions. And so a goal is something that you write down that you want to accomplish over a period of time. And so when I was at Facebook, I worked on the growth team and we did this amazing thing

where you would have to stand up in front of everyone and say what you were going to get done by what time to like this room of 25 people. So you're like, hey, I'm Lexi and I'm the PM and I'm going to make sure that the executive team knows X, Y, and Z. And I'm going to get this done Wednesday by 11 a.m. And so Wednesday at 12 would roll

and our standup would roll and they would be like, Lexi, did you do this? And like, you only don't do that once. Like the social pressure is pretty strong to just be exceptional and for the arrow to hit the center of the target. And so that social accountability is something we built into the system. And so at the end of every call, we have goals, right? Which is where do you really want to be in three months? Where do you really want to be in six months? Where do you really want to be in a year? And what are the actions that you're going to take by what date to go accomplish that goal? Like, how do we break that down? So if someone's goal is I want to be the CPO of my company in the next year. That's this amorphous big thing to try and tackle.

But how do we break that down? What are you going to do in the next two weeks? And so at the end of every call, we check in and we're like, great, what are you going to do in the next two weeks? And at the beginning of the next call, we're like, how did that go? Do you need support? Do you need help? So there just is this through line of, it's not this high level kind of goal that's hard to achieve. It's these individual things with due dates, right? With time schedules to go and get them done. And I think that that's something that we iterated on with the community and continue to do so, but it's really helpful to kind of build that into the system. What are some of the other things

that you've learned at Facebook? Obviously the growth team there is legendary. The company culture is something that I think if people haven't experienced it, it's hard to kind of fathom just how powerful it was in terms of getting things done. But what are some of the lessons you took away that you're implementing at Sidebar? I mean, so many lessons, right? Like, I think that working at Facebook was like the biggest honor. Like I loved working there and the people there are just incredible. And I think that there's a few things. One of them is just speed. Like I think Facebook is so focused on how quickly you move sort of thing and move with thoughtfulness. Right. But I think at the same time, like as a young startup, just I had a mentor

told me who, who had this great anecdote once, and they were like, you know, how do you beat a grandmaster in chess? And I was like, I have no idea. And they're like, well, the only way you can do it is if you have eight moves for any one move that they make sort of thing. And I thought that that was a really good lesson. And then I went to Facebook and I saw it in action, right? Just the speed at which you execute the thoughtfulness, you know, you know, I'm a big fan of um this concept of you know doing small things and then larger things right um jim collins talks about shoot bullets then cannonballs right like what's a really quick test that you can run to understand hey are we in the right direction right like how are we thinking about this um

another really big insight that i had um so there's this amazing uh book called get together that was written by a lot of people who worked at facebook before and they really talk about building with a community and how important that is and i think cyber at its core is a community product and so really really our members being just front and center of who we think about every day who we build for like we are deeply invested in their success and so this concept of we could easily build a feature and get really excited about it and love it on the whiteboard um but But that doesn't really matter. And then there is this ethos Facebook or meta that I really appreciated, which like it doesn't count unless it makes an impact, a positive impact in people's lives. Right. It's really nice to have a slides that look cool. It's really nice to have a design that look cool.

But we've got to get out the door and it really has to make an impact in people's careers. It has to accelerate their success. And so there just is that laser focus that I really appreciate. I think the social accountability was another big one sort of thing, which we built into the product, that idea that you're not alone. You know, in work, I think that there's this feeling that we're spending this 90,000 hours of our lives. And when we get to that moment, that's new for us, that we don't know the answer that's in that 15%, it can feel really lonely. It can feel really lonely to be, it can feel really lonely to be the CEO of a company.

It can feel really lonely to be a senior leader. Like, who do you talk to? And I think for us, we wanted this feeling of with your small group, you're just not alone. There's eight to 10 people who have your back. They believe in you. even when maybe you don't believe in yourself in that moment. And I think that that was really important for that experience.

And then the last thing that I would say is that, you know, when I was at Facebook, I was surrounded by the smartest people I'd ever met. It was incredible. And you watch these people do these amazing things. They would just throw a hundred mile an hour fastball. And you're like, wait, how'd you do that? Like, I would really like to learn that. Like, I would really like to break that down and work on my craft because I want to add

that tool to my toolbox. And it's just so busy. there's so many things going on there wasn't quite the exact right um way in order to be like oh i want to go learn that skill how do i go learn that skill and this is something that for me this was before the pandemic right after the pandemic kind of finding that space to improve just became 10x harder and so for us we really saw this huge opportunity which is like if you had that structure if you go small group and be like you know i'm working on this thing like what do you you all think, how do I learn this? How do I technically apply it? And then, you know, you

have this advice where you're just like, Oh, just go try this. I tried this sort of thing. Like, that's really amazing. Like that's really helpful. Like, so I, I, you know, one of the things with my small group that was really valuable was one-on-ones. So you have all this time in a company and a one-on-one, right. And there's all this advice out there about how to run a good one-on-one. But if you Google all of this, like Google is just hard. You're just like looking for all this information. And this is just a symptom of kind of work in general, right? When you have these answers like you're just trying to figure out the answer but there's not this added context around it so i asked my group i was like who's good at one-on-ones what do you think like this

is a half an hour for every member of my team like every two weeks it's super valuable it's really really expensive time i want this to be best what do i do and they were like i got you here's a template here's this here's what i think about don't do this i spent two years on this and then i iterated on it it wasn't just that one moment but over time you're like wait this actually works really well for us. And that's a tactical thing where I just didn't know who else to ask. When you think of the practicality, it seems like that's a really big part of this. That seems to be a component that makes it not high level, not kind of fluffy, but something I can take away and go implement today. Is that a big part of the value proposition

of these small groups? I think it's a huge part of it. So maybe I can dive into a few different pieces that i think are really important so one is i think just how cybar is different and i think the practicality is a big reason right we call cybar a program and not a network so networks have benefits but programs have outcomes right and i think that you know we can use that gym membership versus fitness program with personal trainer right fitness program with a personal trainer has really clear outcomes you're driving in you write them down ahead of time you're like this is where i want to be you check in consistently on whether you're hitting them sort of thing. There's this sense of, yeah, it's not kind of theoretically, it'd be really

nice for me to learn more machines in the gym, but in a fitness program, I'm literally sitting there and learning it. And if I'm not learning, it's like, what do you need to do in order to go faster? I think what's exciting about sidebar is the reason we're laser focused on this is that it works. You know, 93% of people who are a member at sidebar report a significant positive change in their career. So there just is. And I think it's directly connected to this core loop of learning something new, being able to apply it, being able to get data on that, bring that to the group, iterate on it, and then trust the group even more, share more information and just like complete that circle. And, you know, the magic kind of starts with what we talked about before.

It starts with matching, right? You have to get the right people together and using that technology and that vetting process cyber is vetted right it's not for everyone you have to apply in order to get in you get these top minds together who are just like curious and on fire and really want to help each other succeed but i think that then you add the structure right because if we just were good at matching but there wasn't structure there wasn't facilitator it would peter out and so you get this curriculum that's like really personalized to everyone on what they want to learn and how they want to grow there's these clear goals and then you have these peers to hold you accountable. And so I think it's that system that is really critical for us. Now,

one last thing that I'll say is that this idea of, and I think this is really true, is that, you know, there's a billion people around the world who have day-to-day blockers that slow them down, right? We're all experiencing this individually. You know, there's like so many things that on a day-to-day basis, I'm like, oh, I have to figure this out. I'm not quite sure how to do that, right? Where do you go to talk about that? Like, I can't go into LinkedIn and be like, Dear LinkedIn, I'm really struggling with setting up the structure for this board meeting and getting our strategy really clear so we can get good feedback. What do you all think? This stuff is way too intimate in order to share, right? So where do I get to share authentically on these

things that I'm struggling with on a daily basis on work? And I think that it can just feel like we're tackling these things on our own. And we just fundamentally believe that doesn't need to be the case. We believe that there's all these people who are surrounding you who can really help. They just need the structure and they're facing identical problems in their careers. They just need the structure to talk about it together. And so you can go through this process of spending 10 years to try and find the right people and create your own kind of board and like think about it in all these different ways or, and like maybe find them or maybe not, but that's like a huge thing to leave up to chance. Like sidebar just finds your people for you today. Where can

we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about sidebar? Sidebar.com. So like if go to sidebar.com um that sounds that's absolutely great uh and you know you can follow us on we're on all the platforms um but yeah sidebar.com and we're really energized about this you know i'm incredibly personally passionate about this and our team is just incredibly dedicated you know i just want to make one comment uh about that which is you know when i went to start sidebar one of the things that i was so hopeful for was that i would just get to work with people where you fell over because you were so excited to be around them and like i've never worked with a group of people like this like our team is just absolutely amazing they're so focused they care

so much about members and so what i think is so interesting about sidebar is that it's not this kind of set it and forget it product right where it's just like it's at scale it's already like a done deal it hasn't changed in two years it's just static it's incredibly dynamic there's this incredible team that's spending every day that we have just trying to make it better just trying to make that tweak just trying to make that value addition a bit more and so i think that you see us you know i mean i think in the last two weeks we shipped like 25 or 30 proc changes right we revamped the programming where like the facilitation team is training consistently there There just is this amazing loop of making it better and better and better.

Got it. The passion and enthusiasm not only comes through, I think, in talking to you, but every single person I've interacted with at the company, it's just like very obvious that you guys care, you're excited. And there's a element of like, this is going to work because it has to work, which I think is always important as well. I mean, I think that I completely believe that sort of thing. A lot of our investors were early at Facebook and they were early at Pinterest.

And I would talk to them and I was like, you know, how'd you do such a great job? Like, what did that feel like sort of thing? And their answer was really apropos, I thought, which was like, you know, it was the revolution. We believed in the revolution sort of thing. And I think that that concept as a startup, right. Which is like, we fundamentally believe that people will dramatically accelerate their careers if they have a group of peers that they can like, that's just the truth we think is real in the world.

And we're just so excited for everyone to have this. Like we don't want anyone to feel like they're on their own at their jobs. Like we don't want anyone to feel like they're hitting a wall, right? We want them to feel supported, connected, and with clear actions to go after the life that they want, the one true life that exists beyond all the others that they really care about. And so whether that's within a job and just like growing really fast, whether that's within work, you know, there's this really interesting, there's this really interesting moment where

when steve jobs is launching the think different campaign he's talking about nike actually and he's like well who does nike honor and he says nike honors great uh athletics and they do that through honoring great athletes and i think there's this question of like well who do we really honor at saibot and i think we honor people who are out there they're doing the work right they want to be great not because that they will get a gold star they already are great but they want to be great because intrinsically they just want to do the best work that they possibly can. These are people who wake up at 6 a.m. to get the presentation right, not because anyone's watching, because that's who they are. And I just think that there's millions and millions

and millions of people like this. And we just want to make sure they have the support to accelerate as fast as they can in their careers. Got it. I'm excited for you guys. I think this is a no-brainer. I think that you guys are doing a fantastic job. And I highly suggest anyone go check it out, sidebar.com. Thank you so much. I'm super grateful and I love spending time with you. Your passion is equally inspiring to me. We'll do it again in the future for sure. Awesome. Thanks so much.