This Week in Startups - Culture | Scaling Your Startup S2 E7: 15five’s David Hassell & Balloon’s Amanda Greenberg | E1221

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Two CEOs join to talk about intentionally creating and maintaining a workplace culture that delivers high performance. First, 15five's David Hassel shares how to build culture at scale (1:49), then Balloon's Amanda Greenberg shares a process to help leaders navigate hybrid work (26:00). To wrap, Jason joins for a Q&A session covering workplace political speech, compensation, remote work, and negotiations (42:00).

Hey, everybody, it's another episode of Scaling Your Startup. This is the series where we try to make you a better founder. And I've invited two founders I've invested in. They are amazing at what they do. David Hassel from 15-5 is here, and he's going to talk about building culture. And Amanda Greenberg is here from Balloon, and she is going to talk about reintroducing everybody back to work. We talk about all the different issues around culture, compensation, politics at work,

Just so many amazing issues that you might be struggling with and how we got better in our little roundtable at the end at being better leaders in our own organizations. Stick with us. Season two of scaling your startup is brought to you by NetSuite. Don't let old software and spreadsheetsuits slow you down anymore. Upgrade to NetSuite, the world's number one cloud business system. Head to NetSuite.com slash twist for their special financing. program. Our crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join Our Crowd for free at OUR-C-R-C-O-D.com slash twist and LinkedIn

jobs. A business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters. Go to LinkedIn.com slash your startup to post your first job for free. That's LinkedIn.com slash Y-O-U-R-S-T-A-R-T-R-T-U-P. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, first up is David Hassel from 15-5. David, take it away. All right, thanks so much, Jason. So I'm excited to share on scaling culture today. And what I mean by that is actually how to build an epic culture at scale. Now, for me, and I'll explain a little bit about where I'm coming from in this as CEO 15.5, I mean actually building a human-centric, highly engaged in high-performing company, and one that cares both about people and performance. And that is really the key to building a high-performing culture where you're going to get the most out of your people and the best results.

Little background on me very quickly. So CEO 155, where a performance management and employee engagement platform, been around about 10 years. Recently won number three on Glass Doors, Best Places to Work. And this was actually just pulled yesterday, May 19th of 2021. You can see, you know, we're a 4.9 rated Glass Door company with over 100 reviews. And so I'm speaking from this place of having done this and been through the trials and tribulations of building a culture that performs very highly and is highly regarded by our people. And this is also an important chart here. This is our chart on G2 showing the employee engagement category that we play in, and that's 15-5's logo in the very top right. So

this is not just about having a place that people like to work, but it's about creating a culture where you get high performance and extraordinary results out in the marketplace. If you're an early stage founder who has not started putting attention on your culture, and you might be three people, 10 people, even 50 people, a lot of people will ask me, what's the right time to actually start doing this? And I will always say, yesterday. You know, the great old phrase, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. I don't think you can start too early on this because there will be a point at some point in the future where it becomes very, very difficult to steer the culture back

in a positive direction if it does go off the rails. And so I want to help you all avoid that by how to think about this and what's the right strategy to put into place. I really believe that culture is something that requires leadership and design. And as the CEO, that starts with you. And there are other people who do play a role, your entire executive and leadership team, and really every member of the company. And so you want to create a company where every person owns the culture alongside you, but you're the one who's providing the leadership and the cultural design.

It's important to know that you can't control culture. You can only influence it. And having clarity is absolutely critical. And what I mean about you can't control. it is if you took 20 people from 20 different countries with very, very different cultural backgrounds and you put them on a desert island and you waited 10 or 15 years, you'd actually have a very distinct culture that forms. And it's just a natural byproduct of human beings coming together and all of the interactions that you have that compound over time into a set of ethics

and social norms and things like that. And so your company is very much the same. You have all of these interactions that are happening. People are going to come together. And you're culture is going to happen whether you design it or not. And so that's an important thing to understand. Tony Shea, God bless him, shared a story. I think a lot of people have heard about how he sold his first company for $100 million, not because it was a great outcome, but because it became a really terrible place to work. And that's, I think, an important warning for all of us to make sure you take this series from the very early days. Three tips before you get started. So number Number one, think of your culture as community.

Your company is like a mini community that has certain characteristics and ways of being. The second piece that I recommend people think about is try to make your culture transformational, not just transactional. And what I mean by that is that, you know, as a CEO, you're on a certain journey to go create something in the world. But every one of your employees is coming to your company and they're on their own personal hero's journey. They're trying to follow up and achieve their own hopes and dreams. And your company is a stepping stone on that journey. They may be learning and growing and developing their career.

And so we put a lot of thought about designing our products for our customers, but we don't put as much thought of designing our company and our culture as a product for our employees that can actually help them get more of what they want. And believe me, when you do that, you create such tremendous loyalty and growth. You have people who come into the organization and actually grow and develop and learn and become better employees and better producers when you think about how do I actually make my company in the culture itself transformational. And then the third piece is design it to be the best place you could imagine working because the likely scenario is you're going to be working in this company for a very long time if you have any degree of

success. And so you want this company to be somewhere you want to show up and and how have the best place to work. So here's the five-step process I think about. And, you know, there's a lot of nuance to this. I don't have a lot of time today, but I'm going to give you a good structure to think about. Number one, you have to have clarity of the foundation. You really can't leave these things to chance. Number two, you need to communicate, and I'd say over-communicate that foundation. I'll go into exactly what that means. You want to hire and fire based on your why and your values. your purpose and the values that are core, the core values to the organization. The way you bring a culture alive from that clarity and communication and the right people

that are aligned with the purpose and values is to institute habits, rituals, and practices with both values and human psychology in mind. And I'll touch on that in a little bit. And then the last thing is you've got to have some way to see is it all of this actually working. and you have to be almost like the way that you go and figure out product market fit with a product you're doing culture market fit with your employees and you have to measure see what's working get feedback and adjust over time and the more uh you know you get this right the less you're going to have to make those adjustments all right so what is the foundation a lot of people will talk about this piece and you probably already have this it's your mission and your vision

your core values, the things you care about most, your operating principles, which are how do you execute? Some people have different philosophies on what's the most effective way to do that. Some people might think about operating with the 80-20 rule. Other people might say, it's all about hustle and 20-hour days. There's no right or wrong, but you have to know what yours are. And then the set of cultural norms, habits, practices, and rituals that actually have the culture come alive. Because what people experience in terms of the culture are all of the interactions that they have with their other employees and with leadership. And there's a feel to it.

You've probably been in different types of groups. And, you know, some groups might feel a little uptight and stuffy. Some might feel a little laid back. Underneath all of that are those cultural norms, habits, beliefs, values, and all those types of things. One word of caution, I recommend having a small number of core values. originally we had, we were very ambitious. We came up with 10 core values, all of which I thought were fabulous. And I thought if it was good enough for Zappos to have 10 core values, it was good enough for 15.5. However, it's very hard for people to actually hold and live more than a few core values and remember what they are. And so over recent years, we have clarified our core values into just four, which actually encapsulate many of the original 10. So our core values are being become your best self, cultivate relational master. do the extraordinary and create customer transformation. And what you'll notice about these is that they're actionable.

I actually call them values in action. And these are things that you can reference back to and see if people are actually living them. And of course, you're going to have to clarify this beneath this, but you have to have these larger goal posts and touch posts for people to come back to. So you want to make them actionable. You want to make them core to what you believe is most effective for. both taking care of the human beings and taking care of the success of the business.

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because they figured if they wrote them down and put up on the wall, nobody would read them and eventually, you know, the culture would drift and no one would actually be living them. So everyone had to know them by memory. And that's the other warning here is that if you write your values down and you say to the world and you say to your people, here's what we stand for. And then you don't actually bring them alive and live them, your culture will actually drift. And you will breed cynicism in the company. And so that's really important to note that culture does evolve over time. And so your job as a leader or someone you ascribe, like I have a chief culture officer, is to steer the culture back to the values over and over and over again so that the culture does not drift away from the value.

things that are core. The next is hiring and firing based on your why, which is the mission and vision, your underlying purpose, and your values. So you want to aim for people who want to work at your company, not just any company. Whenever I have somebody who come to me and say, yeah, I'm kind of considering these options between you guys and these three other companies, I already know they're not a fit. I want people who come and say, oh my God, this is the place I want to be. This is the kind of culture that I want to be a part of.

I'm really inspired by your mission. And when you're a mission-driven company and you have that, you tap into in people's kind of innate passion and drive for doing the extraordinary, which is one of our values, and really making an impact. And so, again, it's really important to select for those types of people who are aligned. I want to make an important note, however, that there's been a lot of talk about hiring for culture fit. And there's a danger in this because,

you do risk ending up with some conformity if you're just looking for people who fit into the existing culture. So instead, we talk about hiring cultural contributors and letting go of cultural detractors. And what we mean by that is that we want people who are inspired by and aligned by the values, but who bring also a lot of newness and uniqueness to the organization. One of the things that one of my co-founders and our chief culture officer was worried about as we grew in two years, from 30 people to 70 to 200 was that could we possibly maintain how great the culture was?

And actually, we were pleasantly surprised that it actually got better. And what got better about it is we brought more people who were values aligned, but actually contributed more to the culture than we had even going on in the first place. And so thinking about those two things.

So hiring and firing based on the purpose and values. The next piece is now getting to work. Like, how do you actually bring this stuff alive? How do you actually make sure that people are living your values and that what's happening in terms of the interactions and how people interact with one another really is what the organization is living or breathing.

And there's two places to source this. And I'll start actually by saying that as a CEO or a founder or a member of a leadership team, it is really hard to constantly be thinking about, oh my God, I've got to manage this culture thing. So when you automate it and you set it and forget it and you create structures and things that happen repetitively over time

that reinforce the culture, you don't have to worry about it. You've put it on autopilot. And so that's why I talk about habits, practice, and rituals. You know, there's a lot of people who talk about discipline. They'll say, you know, I'm not a disciplined person. But if you actually look at anybody's habits, everybody's 100% discipline to their existing habits.

Organizations are no different. And so if you can create organizational habits that reinforce the culture, it just puts things on autopilot. And you can switch those things up and change them. And I'll share about a couple of things that we do at 15.5. In terms of the psychology, I think it's very important. A simple model that Maslow came up with you've probably studied talks about how we have these human needs. And these base psychological, base human needs are psychological well-being, a feeling of safety, belonging, esteem. And if those are taking care of, we move up into this area that Maslow called self-actualization. We believe that's characterized by a combination of growth and contribution, and that anybody who has, including yourself, feels threatened like you have a low self-esteem, you feel like you don't belong, you don't feel like you're safe, you're in some form of fight or flight mode, you're in some level of self-preservation, self-protection mode. It's almost impossible to be in that place and also be a positive contributor

because you're trying to protect yourself necessarily. And a lot of companies don't think about how do I really create a sense of belonging in my organization? How do I create psychological safety? How do I create an environment where people feel like their strengths are aligned with their role and they have high levels of self-esteem because they're winning and setting people up for success? And when you design for those things as part of some of the practices, whether hiring practices, training practices, et cetera, you can create a culture where more and more people are having that experience of, I'm on a winning team, I'm winning personally, I feel great here, and I'm ready to work. And so alongside the Maslow model, I recommend thinking about things, and this maps to the

self-esteem piece, around what we call zone of genius. And the idea there is that everybody has some place where they have a certain set of strengths that they're really good at, and they have a certain set of passions that give them energy, and that intersection of the things that really light you up and give you energy, and that you're also really, really good at is what we call your zone of genius. and most people never do the introspection to figure these things out. And so they're just kind of wafting around in a career. Some people might be really good at what they do, but it just, you know, it sucks the life out of them.

We call that the zone of excellence. And if you can help people find this zone of genius and then map it to a role in your company, I mean, forget about it. Look out. Because that will unlock that person's ability to produce better than almost anybody in that kind of role. and it also takes care of that core need of self-esteem. And so if we map this back,

creating an environment that's psychologically safe where people feel safe and they belong, combined with helping them find their zone of genius, creates the foundation of the bottom of the pyramid, where most organizations historically just take care of those physiological needs and make sure there's a couple of bathrooms on the floor, they make sure people get a paycheck or whatever it is,

and we're saying if you take care of more of these human needs, what you end up with, is a place where more people are in this space of what we call best self, characterized by growth and contribution. Then you layer that on with your values. And there's a couple of things here that I think are really, really important. Number one is creating a culture of peer recognition. This also helps with that sense of safety and belonging that I talked about. And one of the things that we do, it's built into our product, but you could just do this on Slack, whatever your practice is, is have a practice of every once a week, at least once a week, people celebrating the wins they see around them.

And we call them high fives. And then hashtag your values. So for example, we might see somebody who won an extraordinary large or difficult sales deal. And someone might call them out and say, you know, hey, Joe, that was amazing what you did and whatever to be pulled out. You know, hashtag do the extraordinary. And so it just reinforces the values. and it creates a culture of celebrating the positive, because we're all wired to notice what's wrong.

Don't worry, people are going to communicate the wrong all the time. We tend to be stingy with the recognition, and then you end up with an imbalance of positive and negative, and people end up having a negativity bias, and it can really bring down the energy of a culture. So if you counteract that, create a culture of peer recognition, and this is part of comes out of our value of cultivate relational mastery, that'll create a really positive environment.

The other thing is obviously you need a culture of accountability. It's no good if people are walking around and not being held accountable to the things they committed to. And if you've studied radical candor, Kim Scott is the author of that, talks about how most people skew to either what she calls obnoxious aggression, which is candor but without care for the person, or ruinous empathy, which is care for the person, but not candor. And so they might be conflict avoidant. And the sweet spot is what she calls radical candor. Now, we've had some with people thinking radical is a problem. So we call that truth with kindness. And I think it's important to, and going direct. And so we want, we want people who are avoiding gossip and thinking about like, how do I actually address something that needs to be addressed, but bring kindness in that interaction. And ultimately, you know, these are things that are cultural norms of 15-5 that create an environment where we don't have the typical negativity and gossip and politics and resentment and blame. And when someone comes to me or anyone else in the company and says, oh, you know, I kind of have an issue with this person, we're certainly going to listen to that.

But then the guidance will be, well, when are you setting up a conversation to have a conversation with that person? And when are you going to go direct? And so, you know, these are the types of things that you can create as expectations and norms in your company. In terms of the rituals, we do a few different things. So we do what we do. What? we call the, we have two boosts per week, which are all hands meetings. They tend to be short. Monday, we focus on the business metrics. We focus on new hires and promotions. You know, they're really designed to create a high level of energy going into the work week. And then we'll also do things where a different person might be celebrating or sharing about

an important social issue or whatnot. But again, these are things that are depending on what your culture is and what you want to create in your environment, you can create space for people to share different things. We also have something because we really value the relationships in the organization, and especially in this post-COVID hybrid remote and remote world, people don't have the natural water cooler, lunchtime conversation. Let's go out to get to lunch. Let's go out to lunch and get to know each other. And so we have something called Question Friday, which is an optional thing people can tune into on a Friday. And once a month, somebody asks a different personal question and people go into breakout rooms and get to have a really fun conversation with each other about

different parts of their lives. And some of them are silly and some of them are more serious. But again, these are things that just over time, as people engage with them, they form tighter bonds. They have a better sense for what the company is about, et cetera. You can incorporate things like Do the Extraordinary. We'll talk about those on those boosts and all those all hands. And then bringing people together for retreats. And I think a great way, if you do company-wide retreats, is to organize the retreat actually around your values. So how? How can you actually use your core values to create a live experience of those values? They might be teaching on those things.

There may be sessions about, you know, how do you live them? But it might be more experiential. And so you can kind of think about having the values guide your retreats. And then the last piece here is measuring and then repeating from step number one. So doing regular engagement surveys. 15.5, we just acquired a company called Emplify, which is a phenomenal engagement measurement that also talks about the underlying psychological drivers of your engagement on a per manager basis. You can use that. There's other great products on the market. But having some way to

check in and assess what the pulse of the company is right now, having your managers do regular check-ins and pulse checks on how people are feeling, calling people up from time to time to get a sense for what's going on. You as a CEO need to get a read on how is the culture trending and what's the status of it today. Once you do that, and I think probably a quarterly basis, is a good cadence to take a moment and just reassess. Then you can kind of make assessments about how things are going, re-clify what needs to be more clear, then from that that flows new communication,

new habits, practices, and rituals, and ultimately, you know, continuing to refine and steer the culture in the right direction over time. And that's it. You can find more about 15.5 at 15.com. That's the number 15 and the word, fivee.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. Always happen to engage with folks if you have any questions or if I can provide more clarity. Happy to engage.

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Take it away, Amanda. Thanks so much, Jason. Hi, everyone. I'm Amanda Greenberg. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Balloon. Balloon is a platform that unlocks ideas, feedback, and insights from a group by eliminating in group think from collaboration and amplifying unheard voices. And it's all just about asking questions and starting discussions and asking questions, I think, is the most powerful tool that you have as a

CEO. It allows you to be a more informed leader, to make better decisions, just to have a more engaged, heard team. And one of the greatest challenges that we're all facing right now as leaders is this huge shift to a hybrid world. And we, Abilene, have created. a framework. It's a six-part framework, that it's a set of questions that we're using with our employees, that our customers are using with their teams. And I'm going to share it with you today. And I hope that you use it with your teams. And I hope that it's really, really valuable. So I first want to talk about the importance of place. So place is just a core component of a company's culture, just like people, practices, values, vision. And it used to be, of course,

all about the physical place. And that's just not the case anymore. The pandemic has definitely upended how we work and also where we work. And what place is and how it's defined is completely being redefined. And there's this huge shift going on, of course. And one of the things that's become really clear is that hybridity or hybrid work is here to stay. So hybridity is where, of course, you have part of your team in person in the same location and the rest of your team is remote. And most people want this flexible option.

They want to be autonomous. In fact, 73% of workers want full. flexible remote options to continue. 66% of leaders say their company is considering redesigning office space for the hybrid world. And 67% of workers are craving more in-person time with their team. So all of this very much lends itself to a hybrid model. And hybridity, I'm excited about all the opportunities it presents. It presents a lot of ways that you can just be more successful and gain a lot out of

your team. So a few of those opportunities, so flexibility. So as entrepreneurs, we're used to being really flexible. We're used to moving quickly, being really agile. And this is an opportunity to really use that to have a really big competitive advantage. Everyone's in it together. So it's new. And you can be thoughtful and deliberate and really make it better than before.

It's just this new opportunity. And accessibility. So access to more, more diverse talent. It just opens up so many different opportunities. So flexibility, being more creative, more innovative across the board. But also, of course, it presents a lot of challenges and areas that require just more attention, more focus, being more deliberate as a leader. We're all kind of in this together. And these are all challenges that we've all experienced over the last year plus. And I know that so many of us

are thinking about them now. So first, of course, is culture. So culture is undergoing this huge shift. Group dynamics. So you have a lot of relationship biases with some people in the office, some people not. How do you level out all of those different group dynamics and different issues? spontaneous interactions or a lack thereof. You know, you're not getting together anymore, you know, having coffee or meeting before the meeting or after the meeting. So how do you just encourage all those spontaneous interactions? Team trust. So team trust can really break down in a remote environment or in a hybrid environment. And team cohesiveness and communication, the need to communicate more as a leader and as a team. And then just a structure or model of what

works. Like everything is kind of on the table. You really have to think about how to create a plan, how to provide guidance to your team, and how to be more deliberate. So how do we really like manage these challenges and set our teams up for success? Like every leader is thinking about this right now. Every leader is asking themselves this question. And so at Balloon, of course, we're all about asking questions. So we really think that you need to be asking your team more questions right now. Asking questions is such a powerful tool as a leader.

It allows you to gain new learnings, to encourage kind of an exchange of ideas, to drive more innovation. I think most importantly, it builds rapport and trust among team members. It also can unlock and uncover new challenges, mitigate kind of any pitfalls or false starts. And it's just a really, really powerful tool. So I'm going to go through now, like the key challenge areas, the six-part framework that we've developed, and then the questions that you should be asking your team as part of that framework. And to develop this framework, we partnered with leaders and researchers and experts. So first questions you should be asking your team about cultures. So these are questions that will give you ideas about new initiatives that you might want to kick off to build just a more

supportive, productive team during all of these different shifts when we're just not in the same physical space. So first question is, how can leaders set an example of maintaining connection to your colleagues? So I think just leaders setting good examples right now is more important than ever before, just really strong modeling. How will implementation of hybrid work affect collaboration, leadership, and culture in our org? So I think being really deliberate and thinking pretty aggressively about this and not being passive, you know, obviously hybrid work and remote work has an influence on everything. So how can you really encourage and get the team bought into what this looks like and how this changes things? And then third, what initiatives, efforts, or events could we

explore to help enhance your personal and workplace connections with your colleagues? So how can we just build stronger connections as a team, like stronger social connectivity as a team as well. So second area of the framework is all around group dynamics. So obviously teams can become more siloed and remote. We've all experienced this over the past year plus. And that, of course, carries over into hybrid work. And you have people building these really strong relationships in person. And then you have people who are remote and you have kind of different levels of in-person interaction. And this can, of course, just result in more people. people being siloed and not a lot of cross-functional power and acting really cohesive as a group

and as a team. So how do you level all of that out? So two questions to think about asking your team, what protocols can we put in place to ensure that the team members in the office are in sync with those working remotely? So again, being aggressive and deliberate and asking your team and getting them bought into a solution. And then secondly, what can leadership do to facilitate better hybrid group dynamics? So what do your teams need from you? Like what can you do to be a better leader. So third is spontaneous interaction. So, you know, this of course has been lost. And I think there's been a ton of workarounds over the last year. But I think there's still so much to do here. How do you have like a spontaneous interaction? How do you create those moments of

magic across your team? How do you bring together people who just don't have opportunities to collaborate and work together? And how do you best leverage all of the power of your team? And ultimately just maximize social connectivity. So first question there is, what is, what is it about spontaneity that helps our business? And I really love this question because it's getting your team to think about the value of those interactions in the past and what it was about those interactions that created value for your company. And, you know, if you identify what it was about those, and it's a lot easier to model those or recreate those. And then second question is, how can we simulate only in-person interactions and how can we create time to be spontaneous? So with Zoom and

with everyone being remote, it's really easy to just like pack your schedule, like meeting, meeting, meeting, or, you know, work time to do these various things. How do you really give breathing room and space for those moments to happen? Because it feels uncomfortable sometimes to insert that additional space where you can have those moments of serendipity or spontaneity as a team and as a group. So fourth, and I think probably most important is trust. So I think there's just nothing more important in the workplace than trust. and I would say even in the world, I think trust is the most important piece. And you just can't have a

functioning team without trust. Trust of your team, trust by the team of leaders, and then trust of team members together. So two questions that you can ask here. First is what must we do differently to build and maintain trust in this hybrid environment? A lot of research shows that trust really breaks down when people aren't working in a physical place together. So how do you strengthen those core components of trust? And then Secondly, how can we bring more empathy to our team? So empathy, one of the three core components of trust, how can we be more empathetic as a team? What are we doing that's working and not working to understand each other's needs and successes? So how are you just, how are you just more supportive of each other as team members, especially during all of these different shifts? So fifth is

team cohesiveness and re-entry. So we are, quote, re-entering the workplace. It's really, I think, a good point to have kind of a retrospective discussion as a team about what team members valued about remote work, what they didn't like, and how leadership can help them through this shift. I mean, we're all going through this huge shift together. And that all results, I think, in more team cohesiveness and people being able to reflect back and think about what it looks like going forward. So these questions come from organizational psychologists and author Adam Grant. I love these questions. First question is, when was the team working at its best? Like when, over the last year was there a ton of success, a lot of closeness and bonding. Second question,

what are some of the old ways that didn't work for you? What changes did you make during remote work? So people have new habits. They have new flows. Team members are maybe exercising in the middle of the day or going for lunch with their family. Like there's just different flows because of new flexibility. So what did they love? And what do people want to continue, I think is really important. And then third, what were the best ways you worked with the team? So, when did you really feel engaged and included in your team and in your work? And then fourth, what were the best ways you stayed in touch with your team? So again, like, how do you form that connectivity as a group? Sixth and final structure. So the sky's the limit. Like, you have a lot of

freedom now to reimagine how you operate as a team and company. And I think there's just never been a better time to examine or re-examine your practices. So a couple of questions here to ask, what company-wide policies, procedures, KPI's need revisiting for hybrid work? How can we establish new routines and find ways to make sure everyone feels included and buys in? Second question there is how can we better measure performance and output to make sure we're not giving an advantage to people who work in the office? And that second question very much aligns with research, where if you work with people on a more continuous basis, you view them more favorably, you view their work more favorably, you're more likely to agree with them. or align with them, which of course can introduce tons of group think into an organization. So how can we change how we measure performance to really account for some of these differences?

Finally, hybridity really presents unique opportunities to think more creatively within specific areas of business. So, you know, those first kind of six pieces of the framework are really more company-wide. But I wanted to include this in here because I think it's really important to think about how remote work or hybrid model has both positively and negatively influenced areas of business. So sales, marketing, engineering, et cetera. And these are just a couple of examples of questions. So sales, what new strategies did we implement in 2020 that positively impacted revenue? Like creative ads, was it self-service? Was it a different sales strategy because everyone was remote? And thinking about what were those lessons learned? Where do we want to kind of go back to

how we did things and how we operated, but where is there room to incorporate a lot of those learnings? And to that point, the second part of that question is, what learnings can we bring with us as we build this new phase of work? And then a question for engineering departments, what pros and cons do you see with employing a buddy system between individuals from engineering and other departments? So bringing people more into conversations and discussions and making sure you're really operating as a cross-functional organization. And what you can anticipate kind of surfacing or unlocking there is identification of how the pandemic change team processes and then also ideas for how to incorporate learnings from remote work into a hybrid

workflow. Many small business owners are busier than ever because they're focused on managing and growing their business. They can't always spend the time they wish they could on. That's why LinkedIn jobs has made it easier to find and hire the best candidates for free. And it's definitely a part of my strategy here at launch. I am trying to build a career path and find great contributors from all around the world. And that is where LinkedIn is being super helpful. They have 740 million professionals on the platform. And I'm not hiring just in the Bay Area anymore.

Oh no, au contraire, my frere. I am looking for people anywhere they are, including in different time zones, because I'm realizing if I'm a good manager, maybe I could figure out how to make it work around the clock or maybe 18 hours a day and have a wider window. Be open-minded. You just want to get talented people on your table. And where are the talented people?

The talented people are all on LinkedIn. We all know that. Because LinkedIn can you find all those candidates with the skills that you need? And you get to go to your profile page and see who you know in their network. You get to see their projects. Maybe the testimonials. I love all those little nooks and crannies. They add up for me to finding great people and saving time.

And that's what it's about. You're in a race with your startup against your burn rate and LinkedIn is how you win the talent wars. They're going to find you the right person for your role. And your first job post is free. Just visit LinkedIn.com slash your startup. LinkedIn.com slash your startup to post your first job for free. In terms and conditions, of course, apply.

So those are, that's a little bit of the framework and hopefully give good questions to start to ask your team where you can really start surfacing ideas and feedback and insights. And so I think the next question is like, what's next? What do you do with all these insights, all this feedback, all these ideas you got from your team? So you've asked the questions, you have the information. I think what's most important as a leader is that you're then analyzing those answers, of course. You're codifying the answers. You're making a plan and you're being really deliberate with your guidance and you're providing that guidance to your team and you're really experimenting and you're learning. So it's not like a one and done. It's really continuous.

And David outlined some of these pieces as well in terms of what are those next steps. What do you do with this feedback and these responses as you're moving forward? And then I want to leave and kind of read this short quote from Matt Malinwig, who's the CEO of automatic and of course the distributed work guru, because I think it really captures like the power of hybridity and the power of this flexibility. I feel like everyone should print this out and have this with them. But the quote reads, flexibility unlocks creativity and innovation. And ultimately, it makes people feel more fulfilled and happy because being able to exercise that autonomy feels really good. And so, you know, really thinking about this as an opportunity,

you have maximum flexibility. As a startup, you especially have maximum flexibility. And how can you leverage all of this, both the learnings of the last year with what kind of it looks like going forward. And oh, and if you, you can check out Balloon at getballoon.com. And would love to, of course, answer any questions. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or on Twitter. All right, great job. Amanda, great job, David. Let's get right into it. Great talks about culture. Great talks about going back to work. While we were all in the pandemic, two seismic explosions in culture occurred. One at Coinbase, one at Basecamp. You knew I was going to ask this. Let's start with you, David. David, are you allowing political speech inside of your Slack instance and at your company? And how are you addressing

it? Yeah, it's a great question. I think that the, I could, in some ways, um, maybe understand where these leaders were trying to come from, but I think they were tone deaf. I think they weren't really tuned into the needs of their people. We don't have a lot of people, you know, I would say there's two things. Yes, in our Slack, we have a number of different groups that people are participating in. I would say that there's not a ton of political speech necessarily in our main company-wide channels, but at the same time, we also do encourage some of discussion around that. We just had a series. We are over the last four Mondays, a different member of our community from the AAPI community shared about Asian issues in the country and

some history about their own families and struggles, just to create more awareness for different stories and different perspectives. So we embrace some of that, but not to the degree of being an overly political organization. So if you pick a particular group and you have this Asian American discussion, which is obviously an important discussion at work, how do you contain the amount of time or energy that this takes? Because during Trump's presidency, during the Black Lives Matter movements, this was all encompassing a media basis, David.

And I myself was watching this stuff, you know, hours a day. And I could feel less productive during the Trump presidency or BLM and the protests or January 6 riots or insurrections and all this stuff. How do you contain it so people still get work done? I'm not sure necessarily that is people are getting work done. And are there going to be times when there's some major thing that comes up that society we're all dealing with and that's going to lower productivity across the board and we're all going to be obsessed with it. Yes. And we have to understand that those things happen and that,

and they hit people emotionally. Like we're, we are whole human beings. And if you're really impacted by something that's happening in the news, guess what? You're going to show up at work and it may be challenging and just having empathy for that. But we also have goals. We have goals that are very clear. People are adults. They understand that they have to take care of them. Sometimes they have to compartmentalize. But we also embrace the whole human being and also. have empathy for people's situations outside of work. We also know that these things impact some people more than other people. And so how can we, how can we account for that and be, just, just be more aware? Amanda, how do you keep, I'm curious, are you allowing your smaller team,

I think? Yeah. Are you allowing political, uh, issues to be discussed on your internal servers and chats and if so, how do you contain it and keep it from turning into chaos, which my feeling on electronic communications is that's the worst place. Chat in email, have no empathy and it quickly spirals out of control. Maybe David, you haven't had it spiral out of control, but I candidly think you're playing with fire. And I think at some point, somebody's going to get really offended and upset and it's going to become an issue.

Amanda, are you allowing it? And then what are your concerns or how do you contain it from spiraling, which is what happened at those other organizations? Yeah, I mean, I think we are a smaller team right now. You know, we're 10 people. So I think it's a little bit different. I think, you know, we don't, I wouldn't say we have like political conversations on, on Slack. But I think that there is acknowledgement of things that happen in the world.

And I think that that's important to acknowledge it as a leader. And I also think the last year has pushed us. to think differently about leadership in that way, that sometimes it's about principles and not about politics. And there's a difference there. And it's important to acknowledge that difference in these conversations. I think another piece of it. Can you give us an example of that? Like principles versus politics, I found that particularly interesting. Yeah, I think human rights. You know, I think if it impacts one of us, it impacts all of us. And, you know, an injustice to anyone is an injustice to everyone. And I think, you know, we can get really aligned as a team in those areas. And,

you know, I also think just in terms of our company and our mission is around amplification of unheard voices in the workplace. And so we had customers who were using Balloon to discuss, you know, how, what company actions can we take to address systemic racism inside and outside our company walls. So having a really focused conversation there. And so, you know, we, we, we, we can't tune, tune it out in that way because, you know, our customers as well are demanding, you know, templates in that or for us to think aggressively about that as well. But yeah, we focus, I really, I think Noah and I, my co-founder and I really focus on principles over politics and making sure that people feel heard and that we acknowledge what's happening.

And so, yeah, good, David. I was just going to say, I love that, you know, what you said about acknowledging and I don't think we can put our heads in the sand. and I love that you're also tying it back to your mission. And I do think that different companies, depending on their mission, may embrace more than something that's very narrow. For example, 15-5's mission is helping create really highly engaged, high-performing organizations, but by helping people become their best selves. And if there are certain things systemically that hinder some people from having the same opportunity to become their best self,

well, that's part of our mission. And so to the extent that it relates to it, I think it's important to acknowledge it and then participate in whatever ways make sense. So what do we think about founders who are taking the approach? And I might lean a little bit more towards this and a little bit further away from both of your positions. So, but with great respect, because obviously I mean, partners with you on both your companies, I think this is just a very dangerous, you know, thing to introduce on

electronic communication specifically. And I would feel that way for either side of any discussion, a pro-democratic, pro-Republican, human rights, etc. Only because there's going to be one or two people who could get into it. And then we all have to witness that uncomfortableness. So I'm wondering, since you guys haven't had an issue, what is your most charitable take on my side of it, or where I might be leaning towards where Jason Freed and David Hamer-Hansson wound up,

where Brian Armstrong wound up, which is, man, if this thing spirals out of control, there's so many bad feelings that can emerge. And you are both just so good at culture and it's so core to your missions that you feel you can navigate it. But I don't think most founders have this skill set that you both inherently have. So what are your thoughts on my position where I just told everybody, if you want to do it, talk in person, which obviously on remote is a little harder, but you can. even do a Zoom call. We're here talking. We're probably in disagreement about this issue, but we can see each other's faces and smile in disagreement. What do you think about my central

sort of point there about that? Yeah, I mean, I can see it. I can see it both ways. I really can on this, on this topic. I think that each company is really unique. I think that as leaders, we're going to be evolving. You know, me as a leader of a 10-person team isn't going to be the same leader as a 200, 500-person team as we scale and grow. So I can see needing to put more guidelines in, more framework, more rules. All of those different pieces, I think are important. So I think it's an ever-evolving piece. But, you know, I think respecting and treating everyone as adults, recognizing, acknowledging systemic issues that people can't, you know, leave at home. The whole person comes to work, I think is also important. I think there's a lot of nuance in it and there's a lot of opportunity to

learn. I don't think it's a, I don't think it's an easy issue, easy topic, something that is, you know, one size fits all, and this is how it should be done. David. Yeah. And I would agree that any sort of text-based communication, when you add an emotionality, you were playing with fire. So that's, I completely agree. I've learned that lesson early in my life, the hard way. And, and so, you know, I tend to when there's something that needs to be addressed, show up in person, show up on video, or at least the phone call. And I think that's a great rule of thumb. If things start to get hot, temperature's hot, you take it off the text.

We don't encourage political speech in the company, but we also don't say, here's what you, you know, this is, we don't deny people's experience, and there are places for it. So we have, we have people who are really passionate about DEI. And as a leadership team, we've learned to become passionate about DEI. And so we have a DEI channel in Slack. So in our main working on channel where people are talking about, you know, we won the sales deal and here's what's happening. of the company, there's not as much of that, unless, again, Amanda, to your point, we're acknowledging something that's happening, you know, something that people had a lot of strong feelings about. We might come in and say, hey, you know, we notice this thing happened in the world.

We understand people might be having, you know, some challenge with that. If you need to take some PTO, we encourage that. So really just saying, like, we get that this might be impactful to you, but we're not going into debating and all of those kinds of things. It's just not part of our culture at this time. And so, you know, I'm not necessarily afraid that we wouldn't be able to navigate things in a good way if it went that direction. But so far, it really hasn't. It's been, you know, to your point, Amanda, I think we've built a culture of mutual respect and people having dialogue and understanding how to address challenging interpersonal issues if and when they come up between each other. Yeah.

I think there's a distinct difference in at-scale companies, medium-sized. companies and smaller companies. When you're on a first name basis with each of your team members, you've spent time, had dinner with them, versus, oh, my God, the company got to 300 people. These people have never even met in person. There is no fabric between them. Let's talk a little bit about the massive productivity gains we've seen. And I want to just have this sort of candid discussion.

You take out a commute of, you know, 90 minutes a day on average. sometimes it's three hours, sometimes it's 20 minutes depending on where your office was. But you take out this commute and you take out the performative, theatrical aspect of going to an office where somebody who's extroverted and makes great jokes and is awesome in a meeting, it kind of neutralizes that theatrics and, you know, culture fit or, you know, real strong culture person. and now we are judging, at least I'm finding in many companies, you're just getting judged on your output. You're just getting judged on what you got done. This feels more like a meritocracy. But what I've seen as well is, wait a second, this person who is highly paid and been with the

organization is not GSD. They're not getting stuff done. And then this person who's a, you know, new out of nowhere person that we just hired remote, never met in person is crushing it and gets paid a different salary. So are you seeing that in companies, Amanda? And then how are companies managing that challenge of, hey, wait a second, when we can actually, when a manager is forced to look at productivity, there are some high paid people who are not GSDing it. Let's be real. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, there's been huge productivity gains. Like you lose, you know, so much, so many time wasters, I would say, you know, just so much time wasting. And I think that what I think has been more challenging has been shifting how people are evaluated, how their performance is evaluated,

especially in I think larger corporations where there isn't as much focus on output or evaluation based on output. There's a lot of people who are kind of, you know, in meetings, making decisions a little bit more like on the fly and less really like being productive and turning things out. And so I think what has happened is that there's a shift to how people are evaluated, how they're measured. But I think one of the things that still is is not resolved or worked out is really how people show up in meetings. You know, we've seen obviously there's been, you know, I think it's 35% more meetings. All of these issues with, you know, extroverts kind of dominating conversations have all been, you know, exacerbated as we've all been remote, and people show up differently there.

Is it exacerbated? Wow, that's interesting. I found that I had to, when everybody was the same size box on Zoom or whatever you're using, you know, this idea that people in different offices or remote workers versus in-person officers, offices, and like who was good in meetings got kind of leveled out a little bit. And I also found, I just started asking people to tell me, what the metrics they were tracking were and tell me how they're moving. And I just say every Wednesday, I want the charts of how many people are coming to this event, how many founders you met with and did introductory calls, how many ads were sold, how many views for the podcast? And when everything is a number and in a chart, everybody's just like, oh, this isn't working. This person's not getting it

done. Maybe there needs to be a different person here. So maybe David, this great reckoning that's occurring. how does one manage that reckoning when everybody in the company sees this person who's been here for a long time is no is not a high performer it's obvious when you are in slack and on zoom and the metrics are there that that person is not a high performer and that person is yeah well the first thing is it's it's really detrimental to a high performing organization and team to allow people who are not high performers to get a pass and stick around even if you like them um so they need a nudge they need to be put on a plan. They need to be given guidance. I mean, you care about them, but you say, look, you're not cutting it and here's where you need to be. And I believe you can get there, give them a chance. Great. But just giving a pass doesn't work. And I do think, Amanda, what you said earlier about, you know, the level playing field of people in office versus out of office, well, that advantage people had in the office when you have this kind of personal relationship. And to your point, Jason, you're not really looking at the output necessarily. I always, you know, kind of

railed against these leaders who would reward people because they were the first one in the office last out at night versus the one who actually got all the work done. Now it is a little bit more democratized in a way. There is such thing as manager bias. And so that's one of the biggest problems with performance reviews and giving people a rating is the manager's like, I like this guy. I'm with him every day. We go out to lunch and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so we've had to actually reinvent the performance review and rolled out a whole new rating methodology for our performance review at 15-5 in our product that looks not just at the manager rating, but also an objective, as objective as you can be, assessment of their competencies and their outputs.

And so then you take that in a more holistic view, and you can use that as a common way to assess people who are both in an office or remote. Yeah, the next issue is then compensation. we had a very interesting system that was based on geography. Cost of living, you come to San Francisco, we want you to move here, we want you to be part of the culture, come to the office, we're going to pay you 30% more if you come to San Francisco because we know it's going to be twice as expensive and painful. So we'll meet you halfway. So the $100,000 sales executive became 130 in San Francisco, but stayed 100,000 in Park City. Now those two salespeople may have started in Park City.

You convinced one to come to the office and now they're back in Park City and they brought the 130K base with them. And now they're with the 100K base person. What is one to do? You can't cut people's salary. Can you? Zuckerberg is doing that. And I know somebody had cut their salary when they went to Hawaii.

The person said, I'm fine with them. I'm saving so much money. But what are your thoughts on that, Amanda? And then I'll go to you, David. So this is a topic that I am still forming an opinion on. Okay. Oops. Sorry your employees are listening.

I mean, we're all in it together. We are. I mean, this is like I think one of those things that's a really challenging. Like I've read the research and the opinions on all sides and like, yeah, I see it always. And so, yeah, I don't have a clear opinion on it yet. I'm curious to hear David, if you do. We're still working it out too. I think everybody is.

Everybody is. I just hosted recently a really great virtual wine event with a bunch of CHROs of a number of big Silicon Valley tech companies you've probably heard of. And they're all figuring it out too. And, you know, thinking about, you know, do we look at more broad geos and say, okay, you know what, this is the comp for the U.S. or Western U.S. where it's not necessarily city located. Look, if you're going to a model where you don't necessarily as an organization get the value of an office, and, you know, say you have your San Francisco office, and now the value of having that community there isn't as strong for you. Well, why pay more? You know, maybe you shouldn't.

But if you do, maybe you are still willing to pay more because of the cost of living. So I really think it's going to take some time for all of this to flesh out. I do think, to your point, Jason, it is hard to say, hey, you just moved. I'm going to cut your salary by 20%. You know, There's situations like that. And, you know, ultimately, I do think we're moving more towards a, you know, kind of a more democratized workforce where compensation is based on the value you contribute, not based on where you live, but, you know, there's always, it's never going to be perfect. You know, you're always going to have high cost living centers and you might have value in having people there. And so, yeah, it makes sense for the company to pay more in those situations.

It is a very challenging situation. And I think for a big company, you know, making broad policies, it's one thing for a small company, it's, you know, when you only have 10 or 20 or 30 people in a startup, you know, what you're going to say to the person who did move to San Francisco then move back because they didn't feel San Francisco was safe or they wanted to have a backyard after pandemic, they reassessed their life. It's kind of hard to cut people's salary. I just, I could never do it. But what I can do is say, hey, maybe realistically a pay jump doesn't make sense right now and I'm going to maybe catch up some other people in the organization or, you know, which is also hard of difficult conversation like this person was back when we

were a San Francisco office and now I'm getting, you know, hiring 1.5 people for this, you know, sales position or this research or position, whatever it is in your company. I think all these salaries start to normalize like, to your saying, David, like this is the North American one. I want to ask another controversial question that we don't have. have the answer to, and we're all struggling with. Because this is kind of like, I feel like a great therapy session with my two most empathetic, insightful, culture-driven founders. Ellen Powell, who I can't think of anybody more woke and to the left, got really derided for saying, no more negotiations, women do not fare as well in negotiations as men. We're going

to get rid of negotiations at Reddit. You must have both seen that Bruho. a couple years ago. Yeah. I assume. I actually think I missed that. So I know of her, but yeah, so I didn't catch that. Pretty polarizing, but also I think probably insightful on a number of issues. And that was one where I was like, whoa.

And I had heard feedback from people at Reddit who were like, this has been a disaster because we want to get this developer. We found one. And now because they can't negotiate, we, you know, for 10 days, we're going to be screwed and not get this like. you know, unicorn developer doing some very narrow, hard to get positions. So just the, the intent and the reality of the world just didn't match. But then I just read, Brian Armstrong at Coinbase just said,

we're not going to negotiate comp for these positions. It's going to be a rack rate and take it or leave it. And I was like, well, that's a person who is the most libertarian on the right. Don't talk about politics at work. I don't, we're here to do crypto, anything else. You should go find another company. So you have two people who came to the same conclusion. Are they right or are they wrong?

Amanda. Oh, man. Yes or no? Give me an answer. Solve more problems in the universe. I, um, yeah. I mean, I think, again, I don't think it's a clear, I don't think there's a clear, you know, site.

I think one of the biggest pieces, though, is that, you know, if you just look at the research, it's that, you know, women and others do not, you know, just, yeah, just receive less pay. They just receive less pay, less compensation. There's a lot of unfairness that can be introduced specifically in negotiations. I have friends who have negotiated salaries with tech companies who have said,

give me your range, and then they'll give them the range, and the tech company will give them 20K more than the top of their range because they were just so undervaluing their work. And so, you know, I think when that's happening, and I don't think that the fix is necessarily you know, saying, hey, become better at negotiation or, you know, know, know, you're worth more because, you know, someone else is on the deciding end of what you're proposing. And so I think as long as you

have kind of those systemic issues, I think putting, you know, widespread kind of guidance and rules in place is probably not a bad idea. Like, you know, I don't, I don't necessarily see the downside there if you're already, if people are really well compensated and you want mission alignment as well, especially for a startup. But it's probably one of those issues that my thoughts on it are probably nuanced and will shift and change over time. All right, David, give us the definitive answer. Yes or no.

Ellen Powell Wright and Brian Armstrong. The definitive answer. Or they're both right. Well, they both agree now for no negotiation. But should people negotiate or should there be a schedule of salaries? Here's what I'm saying. I think they're both right in having a clear guideline and sticking to it. And that's what's most important.

Yes. Okay. What happens is if you are all over the place, right, then what happens? The squeaky wheel gets the higher comp. You have to have a comp philosophy that is fair and balanced and is promoted in a way that says like, this is our philosophy and this is when we're going to do more, this is when we're to do less. I kind of like what Buffer did years ago where they said, here's the formula.

You know, it's like, here's what you get for being an industry. engineer and it's a little bit more if you live in San Francisco or a little bit less than this other buffer. They just publish their formula. Yeah, cool. Yeah. But have a comp philosophy and then yes, we should all be taking in the DEI concerns into that philosophy and understanding to the best of our ability to craft it in a way that is is going to take care of those concerns as well.

But having a philosophy and sticking to it, I think negotiating from time to time and having some buffer to do that is a really beneficial thing in certain situations. if you want to get the best talent. But maybe it shouldn't be a huge wide range. Maybe there's some guidelines around that of how you do that. Then you also look at what, you know, Reid Hastings in his book, No Rules Rules just talked about, where he said, look,

a top 1% engineer is going to perform like 10 mediocre engineers. So we just pay top of the range. That's their comp philosophy. Now everyone could do that. Netflix is, you know, great. A money printing machine. Like, it's amazing how, it's amazing how these philosophies hit.

when you have literally a machine spewing $100 bills faster than you can shovel them into your bank account. Exactly. Yeah, everybody's philosophy is brilliant. Not everyone can follow that one, but that's their philosophy and it works for them. Right. And it's clear. And so, you know, again, I think you got to have a core philosophy you stick to and that's it. I'm curious what you guys think of my new philosophy, which is I have started to think.

I thought about what do I enjoy as an entrepreneur. I enjoy watching people accelerate their careers quickly. I realized, you know, you know some of the people who've worked with me, Jackie, Ashley, and one of the great joys of my life is watching people go through this very fast ramp from zero to in five years, you know, just really becoming incredible leaders. And it's probably a little narcissistic because I like to think that I did that. And I'm a high performer who really advanced their career through hard work. And I said, you know what, I'm going to just make a career path out of everything.

So I just wrote up how to how to get a job at VC.com and I said, you know, here's how most people get a job in VC. They go to Stanford or they go to Harvard Business School and they spent a quarter million dollars. What if I created a path where you came out of business school like undergrad and we just paid you $250,000 over four years? You started at 50, 60, 70, 70, 70, or you had like four levels, 50, 60, 70, 80 or whatever it is. And here's a career path for you. I'll teach you everything, and you can join that career path at a school, and I am loving it. And I did it at Inside as well. And I just say to people like, yeah, I get that you were working at some other venture firm and they were paying you this extraordinary amount of money.

We don't have that opportunity here. I'm going to recruit from the draft and build my own players like the Knickerbockers are doing right now. And it's made me love coming to work with these. I don't want to say young because they don't necessarily have to be age young, but new to the career and provide that opportunity. How much of, and it also, I think, is helping me with this remote issue, which is, listen, if you're in Canada, if you're in Boise, Idaho, if you're in Miami, Austin, New York, wherever you are, I don't care. You could be in Europe. You could even be in Asia. As long as you speak English and, you know, you can meet with founders during the times they're available.

Why do I care? It's just totally freed me to hire anybody anywhere and not have to deal with the Bay Area issues. What do you think of my new strategy, Amanda? Yeah, I like it. I like it. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think that there's so much to be learned. Yeah, I think there's so much to be learned.

I think about that all the time with, you know, how people want to be, I think they want loyalty. Like, I think both sides want loyalty. I think there's so much to be learned on the ground that you can't kind of manufacture. You can't go to school to learn. I mean, being a founder, like, you just can't go to school. You can't learn it until you do it. And I think that applies also, I'm sure, to VC and to other career paths as well. So, yeah, I mean, I love that.

David, any thoughts on creating career paths? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I love it as well. I love it for you because, you know, I've always found, and I had to learn kind of the hard way, that I'm far more fulfilled when there's some sense of meaning in my work. And actually, my first company, that was where I found meaning it.

I found people who were overlooked by other companies and I'd help them accelerate their careers. And that was fulfilling for me. And so I think that goes back to my point of, you know, the best cultures are transformational, not transactional. And I think, you know,

you doing that is creating a transformational culture where you're taking people who have the desire and maybe the grit and then you're putting them on that path and they get to go have more of what they want. But it's, you get benefit too, right? So they're going to deliver a lot for your organization. So I think it's fantastic.

There's something about explicitly stating publicly the career path that I found has attracted the right people. And then you have founder like career path like joy or alignment. And so for me, watching Prash, you know, one of our associates here in year three or four or Marine, or people you've both worked with on my team, it's just made me so fulfilled as a manager to watch them advance in their careers and know, hey, you know, and then sometimes they get a mercenary. Once in a while I get a mercenary.

It's like, I got a job offer for 5K more or 10K more than you're paying me. And I'm like, by the way, like, not to be a narcissist over here, but if you come work for somebody who's well known, or you come work for Coinbase or a company that's well known or your company's in your vertical, of course somebody's going to come and say, oh, yeah, you pre-sorted people for, you know, me, thank you. I'm going to poach people from your organization.

Like, stick with it. Year four in a company, year five in a company. If you really have the bosses or the managers or the founders' attention and buy in on your career, man, you're going to go so much further. And I find there was so much transactional nature to the Bay Area of the West, you know, five to 10. 10 years. And now I'm finding work from home when people like it. This is one of the big benefits is I think they'll stick around for that fourth and fifth year. And boy, are those the best years.

When you get somebody a year three, four, and five, and you're in sync, it's like a basketball team. You know, you've been playing together three, four, five years. You kind of just know where they like to have the ball pass to them. They know how to set the screen. It just feels like, you know, we're all going to be on the plane, eating the food together and going to the gym together, you just get this great alignment and, you know, etc. I'm really excited about trying to, you know, have more of those four and five year people in my world. Love that. Anything you think about in terms of building loyalty?

You brought up so many questions, Amanda, that I thought were really great to think about. But how do you think about loyalty and that two-way street with remote work in creating that loyalty? in, you know, like we'll wrap on that, unless you have questions for each other. Yeah, I mean, I think loyalty is so important. It's actually something that, Jason, when you're thinking about the five-year plan, something that you kind of taught me was asking, like, you know, do you want to be here for five years? Like, this is, you know, that's what I, that's how long I want you here. Like, I want to go the whole way with you. You know, I want you to grow within this company. And it's something that I think about.

And I think I've realized as a person that loyalty is like really important to me personally. And so I think that I'm trying to build a team where that's also really, really important. I think it's like somewhat undervalued, but really, really valuable. And so I think one of the things that you brought up, David, it was actually one of the questions I had for you was around like the zone of genius and getting people really into their flow. And I think that if you get people operating in their zone of genius, they're probably less likely to leave.

They're going to stay. They feel great. They feel productive. They're really driven. And so I guess one of my questions is, how do you help people identify their zone of genius? I think it's really challenging for people to identify what they love. I think you're told so many things from society that you should like or you're defined so often. You know, you're good at math. You're good at this. You're good at that.

How do you really help people foster that? Because I think that leads to more loyalty. Yeah, it's so great. And it's one of these things where I came across this book called Unique Ability by Strategic Coach, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. And, you know, their thesis was, you know, we grow up in a society where we go to school and we're constantly told to work on our weaknesses. You come home with like straight D's in one A plus. You're not, you're in big, big trouble. You're going to work on all those Ds. Well, you find someone who's straight D's in an A plus in business. Like, they're a rock star. Like, that's who you want. The A plus in the one area. Lock out the other stuff and just double down. You're like the 100x developer. Do not go and

try to do sales or product. Keep writing code, brother. Let's go. Or sales. Like, just keep doing sales. Don't touch code. Exactly. So we actually walk around with the area that we have the potential to do the best in, thinking, well, that's just normal. I'm going to go work on all this weak stuff. And so you need to give people like the idea that there's something about them that

probably comes really easy and they probably don't even see it in themselves. But guess what? Everybody else sees it. So you need to be able to get reflection. So there are things you can email people and say, what do you see is my unique ability? Email 10 people in your network. And you'll get kind of an ear. response from people about how they all see you in a certain way.

What is yours, David? What do people tell you your unique ability is? I put you on the spot. I think, yeah, you put me on the spot. I think it's, you know, and I'll map it also. The other thing I'm going to say is strengths finder is great. You can do these tests like Strengthsfinder or Colby. You know, so I'm strategic and futuristic.

I'm always thinking about where is the world five years from now. So a lot of people kind of think about me as, A, being able to envision the future and inspire people on that, but also have this kind of a bit. to be an ambassador and to help create alignment and peace and harmony and all those kinds of things. I have an uncanny ability to do that. I would say that's very accurate.

We've now known each other for six years or seven. How long has it been? Maybe even maybe longer. Gosh, 2012? Nine years. Oh my Lord. We've been on this journey together. And every time I talk to you,

I feel like I learn more and like become more empathetic. And like it really has been a great, great to know you. And that's awesome. Well, and also I think this is like a very important thing. I agree with that assessment of you. You seem like you have this great equanimity and ability to combine like an unflappableness with being a futurist. Some futurists are manic. You're a futurist who is unflappable.

And I really think that's pretty special. And I think when I stop trying to do the things I don't like and focused on the thing I do like, which is talking to people. Yes. Like, let's be honest. Like, what is my skill in the world? it's making people laugh and having a great conversation with them. So why would I do anything in negotiations or lawyers or paperwork? That's right.

Like if I am like an Olympian talking and having conversations, well, screw it. Like, let's just do more podcasts and have more dinners. Amanda, have you figured out at this point in your career what your zone of excellence is now? Yeah, I mean, I've done strength finders, which is interesting. Wait, what is strength finders? I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's like the five. Who is a buy?

Gallup. Gallup. Yeah. So you can go take a test and just, you know, answer a bunch of questions. It'll tell you what your top five out of 34 strengths are. So that's just one great mirror. Finders. Yeah, you should do it, Jason.

I'd be so curious. Oh, I'd love to see that. Yeah. Mine was always the ENTJ. Yeah, me too. ENJ. Same. Yeah.

But then I became an ENTP for one of them, like, was my, and I was like, am I getting soft in my old day? What's going on here? You're involved. I'm evolving. Unfortunately, I'm becoming soft now. Yeah. Brutal.

Amanda, what's your zone of excellence? I'm curious. Yeah. So my number one strength was competitiveness, strategy, futurists as well. Something around vision as well. I thought it was interesting because I think I'm, and they said this in the book, which was like being, you know, a lot of people who have, who have competitiveness as their number one are most competitive with themselves, which I think is like completely true. Yeah.

But I, you know, you learn so much when you like take those tests. I think it's right there like staring at you. But we haven't done that with our team. So it's interesting. Yeah. That's a fun thing to do that every once in a while. You introduce something new and get people some more self-reflection. And then you can.

Here's the other question. You ask the other part of it. I had someone who is an early head of marketing. We only had two people on the marketing team. And I thought she was just brilliant at everything. And one day I sat her down. I said, Holly, can we make an inventory of all the things you're doing? And let's make two columns.

on one side, what are the things that actually give you energy? And then what are the things that drain you of energy that feel like suck the life out of you? And I was shocked, like a full 50% of her things were in that draining of energy. And she admitted to me in that conversation, she was considering leaving the company. We went out and hired a marketing coordinator

whose zone of genius was all those things, brought him in, freed her up to do more of the things that she was great at, and she stayed another five years. Wow. Wow, what a great save. Exactly. What's something, Amanda, you've struggled with as a manager and now turned into a strength. And I'm going to close with that, David, and same question. So give it a second.

Something you kind of sucked at at some point in your career, but developed some techniques or strategies. I'm looking for tactical here. I'm looking for something that somebody who made the hour mark in this video, you know, another one of those things they can write down on a piece of paper and bring to the office tomorrow and say, I can execute on this. what's something you got you got really good at that you used to suck at? I think there's so much. I mean, I do.

I think there's so much that you're always, like, becoming better. I'm always pushing myself to be better and to listen and really assess, like, you know, what are my strengths? Where am I not doing so well? I think I was really bad at delegating early, you know, as we started kind of growing our team and really trusting people and team members to really, like, be fully autonomous. and go with it. And I think it's something I still struggle with.

But what's your fear? I mean, I think that I think it's, you know, I think it's that competitiveness piece. I think it's like the level of execution, the importance of all of it, right? I think there's everything's important when you're a startup. You know, like it's all in the details. It's all in the language. It's all in the nuance. It's all in, you know, the way you email, who you email, like all those different pieces.

And so I think trusting people to really. operate is something that I'm always working on. I had those issues. I had those issues early in my career. I was not a good delegator. Then I realized, like, wait a second. If I'm not a good delegator, I'm not, I'm not clear myself on how to execute on this. Yes.

So that when I started to have form an opinion and have the confidence to say, well, this is how our investment firm works. This is the founders we're looking for. I could give better instructions to Ashi. to Jackie, to Prash, to Marine, and say, these are the type of founders we want to work with. And it was kind of on me to be better at defining stuff. Yes. David, what's something you sucked at

that you've now gotten better at that you can share with the audience what you learned? Yeah. Well, you know, the delegating thing definitely got, I think, really good at that moving from delegating tasks to delegating outcomes to delegating, like, ownership. And I think that's a great path to think about.

but the first thing that came to mind was actually, I was incredibly conflict avoidant in my 20s. I just felt a lot of anxiety in having difficult conversations. And so I still think I can improve in giving more critical feedback, but whenever something occurs to me to give feedback, I do it like immediately. So rather than like even think about it, it's like, call the person, text the person, we got to talk.

And so I've gone from, you know, kind of stewing on it to like, if I notice there's something I have to share, doing it right away and again that principle of truth with kindness. What was the principle? Truth with kindness. Deliver truth of kindness. Love it.

How do you approach it if it's uncomfortable? Do you just say to the person, hey, I want to talk to you about something that might be a little uncomfortable? I might, well, I might acknowledge my own discomfort. So I might say, hey, I'm actually feeling a little nervous right now about this.

I don't do that often, but if I actually am authentically feeling, if I'm feeling uncomfortable, It's less about, you know, they might, you know, however people feel in a conversation, they might feel great, they might feel uncomfortable. That's not my responsibility. My responsibility is to, you know, to voice like, hey, I might feel uncomfortable and then to be coming from a place of care in the feedback. Yeah, I think that that's pretty wise. Like, if you know your intent is good, then, you know, what do you have to lose? Like, your intent is good.

You're only trying to help the person on the other side. this. And you know, you can always say like, I could be wrong here, but I get the sense that you're unhappy here. Am I correct? Because it'd be great if we could resolve that and get back to work. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just share one thing that I was always uncomfortable with was just the dependency and being under-resourced, which as a founder, you're perpetually in that state. And I found a really nice hack for it, which I find is very good for. employee engagement as well and team member engagement is I started rotating people from one discipline to another and giving them like essentially a tour of duty in a different part of our

organization and then explicitly telling people the reason I'm doing this is we have only one person who knows how to run the accelerator. We only have one person who knows how to run the syndicate. I want to have three people in the organization know how to do every function. And then if any of you quit, go out on maternity or paternity, get sick, want to take a month off or take the summer off, the organization and the mission does not get compromised. So that none of us compromise the mission. No single points of failure. No single points of failure. And I said, I want to have everything.

And this is a great thing about what's happening in the pandemic. I tell everybody it has to be documented on Notion. If you have a best practice, if we have email templates, I want to see the Notion page. So anytime you're giving us a report or sharing something in a meeting, drop the Notion link in and show us the document where you've documented. If you haven't documented it, what a great opportunity for you to document it and say, here's the checklist of how we do that so that you can remove that anxiety when you go on vacation and know everybody's got your back. It's kind of like, you know, if you were Navy SEALs or something, you know, everybody knows how to do the scuba tanks, even though there might be a scuba team that does specific of that. Everybody knows how to use a sniper. Everybody goes to sniper training, but there might be a sniper on the team who's the best sniper. You know, and this person's great at the 50 caliber. This person's great at the tech. You know, like, you're trying to like really optimize. I don't know if that's helpful. I think they can map to the loyalty conversation too, because, you know, I think that people stick around when like I'm winning, the company's winning or the team. winning and there's more for me to learn. And so you're giving someone an opportunity to have a new experience and learn some new

things. Yeah, and I do phrase it as a win. Like, this is going to be great for your resume when I retire in 10 years, like either your takeover this company and run it when I'm done at 60 and I go buy the Knicks. Or you, you'll have this for when you start your own venture capital firm or whatever you choose to do. You'll always have this. Listen, this has been unbelievable.

Great job. Amanda Greenberg. Great job, David Hanson. Hassel. Sorry. It's a hassle. You can get all the scaling your startup series, all the notes, all the bullet points at this week in startups.com slash scale. This week in startups.com slash scale. You guys are great. And it's just great to be in business with you. And we will see you all next time on this week in startups. Bye.