Dan Martell - The Driving Force of a Startup's Success with Aydin Mirzaee @ Fellow.app - Escape Velocity Show #50

00:00:00.000 You know, the culture is the things that people do and the norms that they have.

00:00:04.580 And when you have these operating guidelines of like how everyone operates,

00:00:08.960 that's how the boat, you know, moves faster.

00:00:12.540 Admission sequence start.

00:00:14.660 Three, two, one.

00:00:25.680 Aiden, what's up, man? How's it going?

00:00:27.380 I'm going to reach across the corner.

00:00:28.740 Oh, dude, the founder of fellow.app, or fellow,

00:00:33.740 previous founder of Fluid Survey,

00:00:35.980 sold to SurveyMonkey, serial entrepreneur, and good dude.

00:00:40.240 It's good to have you on here, man.

00:00:42.240 This is going to be fun.

00:00:43.580 I think it's going to be fun.

00:00:44.680 Yeah.

00:00:45.180 So is your background technical?

00:00:48.400 Yes, it is.

00:00:49.980 So I did an engineering degree, an electrical engineering

00:00:53.800 degree.

00:00:55.300 I probably shouldn't have.

00:00:56.780 I think if it wasn't for the parents' influence,

00:00:59.280 I might have done economics or something.

00:01:02.220 But I did do engineering.

00:01:04.280 I coded as a kid before going to school.

00:01:09.420 And I did electrical engineering because I

00:01:11.420 assumed that why would I need to go to school for software?

00:01:14.440 Because I could probably teach myself that.

00:01:16.840 But being in an electrical lab, that's

00:01:19.520 something I might need school for.

00:01:21.720 So that's how the mentality came.

00:01:23.300 But I think my parents didn't care.

00:01:24.620 It was like, oh, go to a school for engineering.

00:01:28.040 That's great.

00:01:28.820 Economics, what are you going to do with an economics degree?

00:01:31.220 So but yeah, I mean, I think it all worked out in the end.

00:01:34.380 And was Fluid your first?

00:01:37.080 And what was it?

00:01:37.880 It wasn't Surveys originally.

00:01:39.180 It was Fluid.

00:01:39.980 Yeah, so the company was called Fluid Wear.

00:01:43.700 And we had Fluid Surveys.

00:01:45.500 And we had another product called Fluid Review.

00:01:47.640 Today, Fluid Review is rebranded as Survey Monkey Apply.

00:01:50.980 OK.

00:01:51.560 Yeah, it goes by a different name now.

00:01:52.860 But we had two products, which is another story.

00:01:55.280 You should never have two products in building your startup.

00:01:59.040 And you did this for seven years?

00:02:01.580 From start to exit, it was six and a half.

00:02:04.060 Six and a half.

00:02:04.800 Yeah.

00:02:05.360 And did you stay at SurveyMonkey post-exit?

00:02:07.700 I did.

00:02:08.320 I did.

00:02:08.820 So I stayed for just over two years.

00:02:11.400 OK.

00:02:11.900 I think the mandatory term was two years,

00:02:14.160 and I stayed for two years and two months.

00:02:15.620 OK.

00:02:16.160 Yeah.

00:02:16.460 So got the earn out-ish.

00:02:17.700 Got the earn out, yeah.

00:02:19.140 And then when did you start Fellow?

00:02:21.880 I started Fellow in February 2017.

00:02:27.360 So it's been just over two years.

00:02:29.320 Got it.

00:02:30.060 And obviously, I know the product,

00:02:33.500 because we've talked about it in the past.

00:02:34.880 But for those that are new to it, what does Fellow do?

00:02:38.000 Yeah, so Fellow is software for managers and their teams

00:02:41.980 to work better together, primarily around meetings.

00:02:44.760 So things like one-on-ones, team meetings, stand-ups, staff

00:02:48.700 meetings, brainstorming things, weekly syncs,

00:02:51.200 like all the different sort of meeting interactions

00:02:53.220 that you have, Fellow helps you collaborate on agendas,

00:02:56.520 come to meetings prepared, track action items,

00:02:59.440 aggregate those action items across,

00:03:02.280 you know, keep private notes.

00:03:03.820 It's just, you know, Dan, I'm sure you've been at meetings

00:03:06.700 where you're like, that thing that we talked about last time,

00:03:10.460 you said that you would do it, like, where is it?

00:03:12.800 And so Fellow just makes each one of your recurring meetings

00:03:16.080 into this like nicely formatted discussion history,

00:03:19.620 So you always have any incomplete action items

00:03:22.260 brought forward, so they're always top of mind.

00:03:24.840 You make sure that everybody has a voice in the meeting,

00:03:27.300 create a more inclusive environment,

00:03:28.860 but also just run effective things.

00:03:30.960 Don't walk into meetings where everybody's unprepared,

00:03:33.940 a lot more structured.

00:03:36.100 And what we find Fellow does is it just

00:03:38.520 allows you to take control of those meetings.

00:03:41.460 One of the things that I believe you guys talk about

00:03:44.260 on the blog that I saw was in the world of engineering,

00:03:49.080 there's 10x developers and your argument is you're helping people become 10x managers.

00:03:53.960 Yeah, 100%.

00:03:54.780 What does that mean to be a 10x manager?

00:03:56.860 Because I know that a lot, I think the early days of your kind of like co-creation was

00:04:00.660 in partnership with Shopify and I had Toby on and he talked about their whole talent

00:04:05.840 acceleration department.

00:04:08.240 Yeah.

00:04:08.840 Is that like what they are doing to try to create these 10x managers, kind of how you're

00:04:14.640 trying to bring that process to the world through Fellow?

00:04:17.020 Yeah, so I think so a couple of things. So on the 10x manager point, the I think our argument is that there are no and this this may be controversial, but we don't think it's about 10x individual contributors.

00:04:34.340 We kind of actually think that doesn't make much sense.

00:04:37.400 And I think that the way that society has progressed and the way that we think about the business world and so on and so forth,

00:04:43.860 we often think about 10X individual contributors, whether that's an engineer or it's, you know, scientists or, you know, it's a finance person or what have you, right?

00:04:54.960 And so a lot of that is, you know, the notion is, okay, they will produce as much work as 10 other people would.

00:05:02.160 however like our view is that it's not about that it's not about the individual

00:05:07.620 contributors it's more about teams coming together because if you

00:05:11.340 orchestrate a really great team you're going to have the strengths of one

00:05:15.120 person make up for the weaknesses of another person if you have a really

00:05:18.840 well orchestrated team people will be working on stuff that they're more

00:05:21.900 interested about and more passionate about they'll get to use their strengths

00:05:25.320 at work every single day and you really only get a 10x effect when you actually

00:05:30.240 have the ability to orchestrate a team in that fashion.

00:05:33.380 And so our view is that a great manager can do that,

00:05:36.940 because a great manager understands

00:05:38.820 on a very personal level each and every person on the team,

00:05:42.760 really understands strengths and weaknesses,

00:05:44.860 can continue to make each and every team member better

00:05:47.400 at what they do.

00:05:48.620 And it's by forming that dynamic cohort

00:05:52.140 that basically you can actually get the 10x effect.

00:05:54.460 So our view is that 10x individual contributors

00:05:57.600 don't exist.

00:05:58.420 Even on the developer side?

00:06:00.580 Even on the developer side.

00:06:01.800 Because you think that a lot of it

00:06:03.220 has to do with the manager who is helping orchestrate

00:06:07.420 that person's work.

00:06:09.460 Yeah, there are people that will be very strong

00:06:12.380 at any given component.

00:06:13.880 But I'm sure you've also worked with, say, developers

00:06:17.560 that, say, are very, very, say, strong in a particular aspect.

00:06:21.640 But it's really horrible to work with them.

00:06:25.180 And so as a result, they write a lot of code,

00:06:27.960 and it works, and so on and so forth,

00:06:29.200 but then nobody can maintain that code,

00:06:31.500 or nobody understands it, or wasn't communicated,

00:06:34.080 or they just create an environment that is not

00:06:38.920 conducive to teamwork.

00:06:40.020 Now, I'm not saying that's the case with everybody,

00:06:42.540 but the idea is you can 100% have people that

00:06:47.480 are 10 or 100 times better in one particular skill set.

00:06:51.780 But I think the magic is basically

00:06:54.580 getting those people in a team format.

00:06:57.200 So I'll give you a few examples.

00:06:59.060 So what's interesting is they've done a lot of studies

00:07:01.720 about this, but if you take, for example,

00:07:04.880 and they've done a study where they studied 1,000 star

00:07:07.560 analysts in financial firms everywhere.

00:07:11.060 And so when you plopped out one of these star analysts

00:07:14.600 and you took them into another company,

00:07:17.280 it took them up to five years to regain that star status,

00:07:21.760 which is astonishing.

00:07:23.260 There was one exception.

00:07:24.860 And that one exception was if these guys moved

00:07:27.860 with the team that was around them.

00:07:30.120 They've done a similar study for doctors and surgeons.

00:07:32.980 So they looked at a bunch of hospitals and they said,

00:07:36.540 okay, well let's see who the star surgeons were.

00:07:39.640 And when they first looked at the data,

00:07:42.320 they couldn't find star surgeons

00:07:44.620 because it was really strange.

00:07:46.400 There was different behavior when different doctors

00:07:49.360 were in different hospitals.

00:07:51.100 And so what they understood was it wasn't just the doctor,

00:07:54.460 It was also the team around them.

00:07:57.020 And so the things that kind of impact this high performance

00:08:00.780 are not just one person, the team around them,

00:08:03.580 when they learn to work really well together.

00:08:06.360 And we think, again, managers, one of the things that they do

00:08:09.640 is they're really, really good at helping these teams gel

00:08:13.120 better together.

00:08:14.120 What are the things they do, Aidan, that helps them?

00:08:18.020 What are the characteristics of a great manager?

00:08:20.960 What do they actually do?

00:08:21.820 If I want to be, somebody's listening,

00:08:23.800 and they want to be that, what do they do?

00:08:24.960 Right.

00:08:25.660 So I mean, there's a bunch of different points.

00:08:27.760 So we can look at this concept of what a manager is,

00:08:32.820 and we could define it in a few different ways.

00:08:34.660 So we can say, oh, well, managers, they hire well,

00:08:38.680 they motivate, they encourage people,

00:08:41.040 they give people responsibilities,

00:08:43.420 they coach you, they give feedback,

00:08:46.400 they do all these different things.

00:08:48.000 But it's not really about any one

00:08:50.060 of those individual things.

00:08:51.420 It's more about with the manager's involvement,

00:08:55.560 the work that that team produces has

00:08:58.380 to be much greater than if they were not involved with the team.

00:09:02.260 So there needs to be a contribution to management.

00:09:05.780 Like management needs to provide some kind of contribution

00:09:08.040 to the team.

00:09:08.540 Yeah, 100%.

00:09:09.180 Because I mean, there's a lot of team.

00:09:11.240 I know you've worked with a lot of teams.

00:09:12.900 So you've definitely worked with teams.

00:09:15.520 And if you think about it, if you take out a manager

00:09:18.160 from any given team, what will actually

00:09:20.160 happen to the performance of that team.

00:09:21.660 So will it?

00:09:23.280 But this is, I mean, I've seen this in sports, coaches.

00:09:26.280 You could have a star player on one team,

00:09:28.200 and they go to a different team, and they're

00:09:29.620 And they're no longer the star.

00:09:30.720 Yeah, and it's like, you know, and there's

00:09:32.100 a great book called Multipliers that argues

00:09:34.160 this point of like, you want to be somebody that unlocks

00:09:38.100 and enables people that they otherwise wouldn't be able to get.

00:09:41.640 Yeah, 100%.

00:09:43.120 So there's all these things.

00:09:45.160 So there is this multiplier effect,

00:09:46.680 and we think that's what managers are good at.

00:09:49.160 But amongst the things that we think are really important,

00:09:51.960 so there's obviously some things that we

00:09:53.840 think that they should do well.

00:09:55.220 So our view on management is managers

00:09:58.880 are, to a large extent, these coaches.

00:10:01.340 And so what does a coach do?

00:10:03.320 They understand each and every person on an individual level.

00:10:07.400 So how do you develop that understanding?

00:10:09.260 Like you have to look at people as like, well,

00:10:13.520 they are the most important ingredient of your company,

00:10:16.420 but you have to understand everyone on an individual

00:10:18.600 level, build rapport, build relationships,

00:10:21.360 deeply understand that person, like what makes them tick,

00:10:24.960 what gets them excited, what truly are their strengths,

00:10:29.100 what would make them really happy working

00:10:32.140 in whatever environment.

00:10:33.720 And by having this level of understanding,

00:10:36.100 that just gives you the framework

00:10:37.780 to really get this team to gel well together

00:10:40.980 and to perform at the highest levels.

00:10:43.840 This is a thing that I find that in North America,

00:10:47.120 we're very traditionally, we're known

00:10:49.840 to be very individual contributor oriented, right?

00:10:53.220 So it's all about competition and being the best

00:10:56.240 and so on and so forth.

00:10:57.840 But the reality is that teams win the Super Bowl, right?

00:11:02.900 And I think you see a lot of this in Asian cultures

00:11:06.240 where it's a lot more about the whole than the individual.

00:11:09.720 And I think what's starting to happen in North America

00:11:12.160 is we're starting to understand this at a much deeper level.

00:11:15.880 And so this concept of managers and leaders,

00:11:18.580 this is becoming so much more prevalent.

00:11:22.640 I mean, we all know this.

00:11:23.800 In a typical company, the workflow

00:11:26.640 is you're the best developer, you're the best designer,

00:11:29.840 you're the best analyst, and now you lead a team.

00:11:32.920 And that's fine.

00:11:34.640 It's just this is a really, really important role.

00:11:38.060 And it's completely different than what you were doing before.

00:11:41.020 Doing the work.

00:11:41.740 Yeah, doing the work.

00:11:42.640 And traditionally, we've basically

00:11:45.040 just thrown people into the mix.

00:11:46.640 And most managers out there will tell you

00:11:49.300 that they've never actually been officially trained.

00:11:52.060 Yeah, there's no, many of them just

00:11:53.800 are like, you're now leading a team

00:11:55.780 because you did a good job.

00:11:56.800 Right.

00:11:57.040 Good luck.

00:11:57.580 Yeah, good luck.

00:11:58.420 And so the thing is, and the truth

00:12:00.000 is that people have this, you know,

00:12:02.920 people think that they're doing it right.

00:12:04.780 And it's very much like, you know,

00:12:06.740 most people think that they're better than average drivers.

00:12:09.580 And so it's a lot of those concepts.

00:12:12.340 And we just live in this world.

00:12:14.040 But now, people are starting to talk about it.

00:12:16.340 Now, people are starting to say, managers

00:12:20.040 are the highest point of leverage in a company.

00:12:22.140 Because if people leave managers and not the company.

00:12:27.360 Yeah, people don't quit companies.

00:12:28.660 They quit bosses.

00:12:29.640 Right.

00:12:30.140 And so you have this, we spend all this money and effort

00:12:34.560 recruiting people.

00:12:35.880 But what we don't do is we don't kind of address

00:12:39.000 the number one source that has the highest point

00:12:41.040 of leverage in the company.

00:12:42.280 And again, it's not just about people leaving your company.

00:12:45.220 If you look at the studies, 70% of employee engagement

00:12:48.780 is directly correlated to who your manager is,

00:12:52.060 like your direct manager.

00:12:53.780 And so it just has this massive impact.

00:12:56.400 They're the conduit through which the messaging of the company

00:12:59.660 is fed to everybody else on the team.

00:13:02.520 And it's not about like, I think a lot of these things

00:13:05.480 are changing.

00:13:05.980 One thing I really like in tech is that in most companies,

00:13:09.680 you will have different tracks.

00:13:11.140 So you'll have a manager track, if you're a developer, say,

00:13:14.920 or you'll have this architect track.

00:13:17.900 And you can really progress in those two different avenues.

00:13:20.640 And I think it's really important for these two

00:13:22.900 to be separated, because they're completely different roles.

00:13:26.540 Yeah, so anyway, I'm excited at where this stuff is going.

00:13:29.860 And I think I find it neat that it's

00:13:32.140 like now a conversation where I've always

00:13:35.220 felt like leadership was such an incredible,

00:13:37.020 like invest in the people, the people build the business.

00:13:40.260 grow your people, the people will grow the business.

00:13:43.440 And to see you go from survey reviews to now this

00:13:49.720 is really cool.

00:13:50.780 Where did this come from for you?

00:13:52.320 Like, why solve this problem?

00:13:53.520 I mean, that's a great question.

00:13:54.780 So now that it's all done and the company's all sold,

00:13:58.300 I will say that I don't know that I was ever

00:14:00.640 passionate about surveys.

00:14:02.860 It was a story of multiple pivots, how we got into there.

00:14:05.780 But what we were really passionate about

00:14:07.620 was building the business.

00:14:08.580 We thought it was really, really cool that we're these folks,

00:14:12.660 and we have this global audience.

00:14:14.680 We have, I don't know, like tens of thousands

00:14:18.280 of customers out there.

00:14:19.680 You guys were a team of, what, 65-ish?

00:14:22.140 When we were acquired, we were just under 100 people.

00:14:25.800 OK, wow.

00:14:26.400 So we had 75 in one location, and the rest

00:14:29.680 were basically distributed all throughout the globe.

00:14:33.500 So yeah, when we were doing that,

00:14:35.340 it was so we were excited about building the business of it,

00:14:38.220 building this intranet brand where we never met any of our customers, and that was super

00:14:43.100 exciting to us, and that's what got us into, and we were excited about the tech and everything

00:14:47.960 else, except with Fellow, we're actually really excited about the product because we love

00:14:53.860 this concept of helping companies everywhere run better.

00:14:57.440 That's the stuff that really gets us excited, but it's exactly what you said.

00:15:02.680 So the way that we figured out that this was something

00:15:06.440 that we should address was we obviously,

00:15:09.760 when we first started out, 2008, the world was falling apart.

00:15:14.840 So we didn't really try to raise venture capital.

00:15:19.780 And so we were really just learning on our own.

00:15:22.300 And the internet isn't what it is today

00:15:24.140 in terms of all the content there is out there.

00:15:27.260 And so we learned things somewhat

00:15:30.040 by using different software products.

00:15:31.760 So if you know nothing about sales and you use a sales force,

00:15:35.240 you'll learn some things about sales.

00:15:37.220 If you don't know anything about marketing, use Marketo,

00:15:39.900 you'll learn some things about marketing.

00:15:41.660 Just through the way the product asks you to set it up

00:15:43.600 or use it or whatever.

00:15:44.360 Yeah.

00:15:44.860 And that makes sense because what are these products?

00:15:46.880 They're basically best in class workflows in digital format

00:15:50.480 so that everybody can do the same things.

00:15:53.020 And so when we started hiring people from the get go,

00:15:55.860 that was one thing.

00:15:56.660 And then we started and they started hiring people.

00:15:59.520 And now we were managers of managers.

00:16:01.460 We started wondering, well, A, are we doing it correct?

00:16:04.000 And now we have people reporting to us.

00:16:05.880 Are they doing it correct?

00:16:07.400 And so this was, and we said, where's

00:16:09.980 the equivalent of Salesforce's for account executives?

00:16:14.040 Where is that equivalent tool for managers of teams?

00:16:17.060 We looked for it.

00:16:17.980 It didn't exist.

00:16:19.600 10 years passed.

00:16:20.780 It still didn't exist.

00:16:22.000 We thought that we'd go out and do something about it.

00:16:24.480 But that's the idea.

00:16:25.280 Where does the shop, are you allowed

00:16:26.780 to talk about the Shopify relationship?

00:16:27.940 Oh, 100%.

00:16:28.440 OK, cool.

00:16:28.940 Yeah, so I mean, I will say a bunch of things

00:16:31.200 about Shopify.

00:16:32.880 One is that, obviously, one of the fastest growing

00:16:36.500 companies in the world.

00:16:37.900 So we were incredibly.

00:16:39.120 And they were one of the first that I knew

00:16:40.520 that had a whole coaching division for that.

00:16:42.700 Yeah, 100%.

00:16:43.720 So one of the things that they obviously care a lot about

00:16:47.280 is employee development.

00:16:48.840 People work at Shopify, and they work at Shopify

00:16:51.300 for a very long time because it feels

00:16:53.720 that you're at this company that's consistently growing.

00:16:55.980 So for us, incredibly fortunate to have them

00:16:59.140 as an initial customer.

00:17:01.460 So when we started out, we kind of started

00:17:04.520 in this beta period.

00:17:06.540 There's a few users using it there.

00:17:09.280 And the first version did not go very well.

00:17:13.140 So a bunch of pivots.

00:17:14.380 We were fortunate that they didn't kick us out

00:17:16.260 in the beginning.

00:17:16.800 Right away, yeah, give us some time.

00:17:18.020 You know, it got close at some point.

00:17:19.720 But we kept iterating and so on and so forth,

00:17:22.200 delivering more and more value.

00:17:23.560 And you bootstrapped the initial.

00:17:24.920 Yeah, the initial we did not raise outside capital.

00:17:28.040 But obviously, we did really well in the SurveyMonkey exit.

00:17:31.700 So we also didn't need to raise outside capital.

00:17:35.580 And yeah, we started working with them.

00:17:37.640 And then it really spread.

00:17:38.820 So we worked with Britt, who is the SVP,

00:17:43.480 or I think now she's the chief people officer at Shopify.

00:17:46.300 So we worked very closely with her and her team.

00:17:48.980 What did you learn about that space from them?

00:17:52.340 Yeah, I mean, we learned.

00:17:54.200 Was there anything unique?

00:17:57.040 What is, I don't know that it's anything necessarily unique

00:18:02.200 other than everybody speaks the same language.

00:18:05.800 I think as a company.

00:18:06.800 So creating a common language around talent development.

00:18:10.280 Yeah, I think everybody, I think they've

00:18:12.320 done a really good job across the company.

00:18:15.280 Whether you look at an executive or a new intern

00:18:17.920 that they brought on, everybody has the same values.

00:18:21.040 Everybody has this desire to continue to get better.

00:18:24.760 And obviously, you know, Fellow fosters a lot of that too,

00:18:28.300 so I think like that was a cool mix.

00:18:31.540 But it was, you know, everybody was passionate

00:18:33.720 about this stuff, so everybody was doing,

00:18:35.640 so one of the things obviously Fellow helps a lot with

00:18:37.860 is one-on-one meetings.

00:18:40.320 Making sure that those are at a great cadence,

00:18:42.460 that things are being, people are coming in prepared.

00:18:45.720 Fellow suggests topics that you should talk about.

00:18:48.320 So a lot of these things were, you know,

00:18:50.800 firsthand feedback from the team,

00:18:52.660 And so we, again, started with 15 people, then 100 people,

00:18:55.940 then 200, then 400.

00:18:59.380 And this was interesting, too.

00:19:01.280 Even though we were developing this kind of like

00:19:04.400 in this beta ground there, they tested it at every level.

00:19:08.640 They wanted to make sure that it worked for the C-suite.

00:19:11.800 It worked for everybody.

00:19:13.120 And they even did things like run surveys.

00:19:15.460 Hey, should we deploy this to this next group?

00:19:17.660 And should we deploy it to everybody?

00:19:19.560 And so they were very methodical about everything.

00:19:22.200 I mean, they're very data-oriented companies.

00:19:24.040 So even when it comes to things like this,

00:19:25.860 should we roll out this product, they

00:19:28.380 really wanted to make sure that it was the right thing to do.

00:19:31.440 But what, I mean, what could, without using Fellow,

00:19:35.280 what could people take away from that that is relevant?

00:19:39.900 So one-on-ones, a lot of people still

00:19:41.820 don't realize this is kind of a non-negotiable.

00:19:44.440 You need to start doing them.

00:19:46.080 Is there anything else that they did that was unique about how

00:19:48.540 they developed their talent and anything

00:19:51.080 about the language that you notice,

00:19:53.000 like other than just core values, but like.

00:19:55.820 Yeah, I mean, Shopify is a feedback culture, right?

00:19:58.800 Like it is drilled into everyone.

00:20:01.740 And they understand it at a very deep level.

00:20:04.280 If you walk around in Shopify, there's

00:20:06.020 posters of feedback as a gift.

00:20:08.000 I remember one time visiting there.

00:20:09.340 I think that when we first met Fresh Founders,

00:20:11.600 we were, because it was hosted back then at Shopify's office,

00:20:14.400 I believe, right?

00:20:14.840 Yes.

00:20:15.400 Yeah, and in the hallway, they had designs

00:20:17.760 of new UX experiences that anybody could go by and mark up.

00:20:24.440 Like designers had to put it on the wall.

00:20:26.720 Anybody in the company could kind of like be like,

00:20:28.640 I think that's wrong.

00:20:29.600 Move the button here, change the label of this.

00:20:32.000 It's just a small example, right?

00:20:33.660 Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things

00:20:36.260 all the executives there, they're

00:20:38.880 very receptive to feedback.

00:20:40.260 I think anyone in the company can give the CEO feedback.

00:20:43.420 So there's a lot of this.

00:20:45.460 And it's a very foreign concept to many

00:20:50.620 of traditional corporate America.

00:20:52.960 Yeah, don't tell me to do my job.

00:20:54.760 Yeah, there's very much a lot of power distance.

00:20:57.280 And so whereas I think in more modern day organizations,

00:21:01.340 and Shopify is a great example of that,

00:21:03.940 there's just this concept of feedback.

00:21:05.560 And when you feel that you can give feedback

00:21:07.800 to any place in the organization,

00:21:11.060 it makes you feel like much more of an owner

00:21:13.720 because you have the ability to really shape

00:21:16.960 any part of the company.

00:21:18.580 And so a lot of this stuff, do you

00:21:21.400 need software for any of this stuff?

00:21:23.420 No.

00:21:23.920 I mean, you could do all these things without software.

00:21:28.000 And where software comes in is basically just

00:21:31.360 make those workflows easier, make sure they happen more

00:21:34.660 of the time.

00:21:35.160 And train the way you said.

00:21:36.400 Somebody could be exposed to fellow

00:21:38.900 and then just know how to do things.

00:21:40.720 You know, one of the examples that we talk about often

00:21:43.300 is Salesforce, right?

00:21:45.600 You can run your sales team without Salesforce.

00:21:48.820 Or if you're not a larger company,

00:21:51.120 you don't want to use Salesforce, something, say,

00:21:53.060 free like Zoho, you could run your sales process on Zoho.

00:21:57.680 Or you could do it on a spreadsheet, right?

00:21:59.740 Google Sheets is collaborative.

00:22:01.060 Or whiteboard, if you had to.

00:22:02.140 You could do anything with all those things.

00:22:04.120 It's just a matter of when you want

00:22:05.900 to take a particular workflow and make sure that it scales.

00:22:09.160 And most people do it all the time.

00:22:10.840 What these tools do is they make it frictionless.

00:22:13.120 They make it easier.

00:22:14.080 Consistent.

00:22:14.700 Yeah.

00:22:15.160 And with a lot of this stuff, at an intellectual,

00:22:18.880 people might understand that it might be good to give feedback.

00:22:22.900 It might be good to recognize folks when they do great things

00:22:25.600 so that they can continue doing that and do more of it.

00:22:30.160 Or to do one-on-ones or to come to staff meetings prepared

00:22:34.000 and to track actions and all this stuff,

00:22:36.920 these are all things that if you imagine the world's greatest

00:22:40.460 executing leader, they would do all these things.

00:22:43.960 The trick is that, you know, life happens,

00:22:46.080 work happens, one week you're busy, the next you're not.

00:22:50.000 And, you know, how do you make sure that people

00:22:52.140 do this stuff all the time, and how do you make sure

00:22:54.680 everybody in the company does it the same way?

00:22:56.960 One interesting thing, I remember someone at Shopify

00:23:01.140 told me was, what we really like about this notion

00:23:04.600 is that we have the ability that we know that

00:23:07.120 no matter which team someone joins,

00:23:09.460 Shopify is a very dynamic organization.

00:23:12.040 And obviously people, new project, new teams.

00:23:16.180 And so no matter which team you go to,

00:23:17.800 you know that the operating system

00:23:19.740 and the philosophy of the company is the same.

00:23:22.600 And I think that is, at all the great companies,

00:23:25.640 and if you've read about Bridgewater

00:23:28.960 and what Ray Dalio does there, it's just,

00:23:31.580 the culture is the things that people do

00:23:34.260 and the norms that they have.

00:23:35.800 And when you have these operating guidelines

00:23:38.260 of how everyone operates, that's how the boat moves faster.

00:23:43.600 If you've done these dragon boat races and so on and so forth,

00:23:46.600 it's not about you have to be synchronized.

00:23:49.020 And I think that's what gets companies to outperform.

00:23:52.140 And what are some of the one-on-ones, 360 reviews,

00:23:57.120 I'm assuming?

00:23:57.700 What do you guys do?

00:23:58.480 Yeah, so our view on feedback is you

00:24:01.120 can do people feedback stuff in Velo.

00:24:03.500 For sure, you could do those sorts of get feedback

00:24:06.240 about people on your team.

00:24:07.420 You could give anyone feedback, all that natural stuff.

00:24:10.560 But the thing that I think that we do, which is a bit more unique and I think relevant

00:24:16.740 in modern day work, is getting feedback about the work that you do.

00:24:21.500 So, hey, we just shot this podcast.

00:24:24.960 Great.

00:24:25.560 Let's get feedback on that particular thing from the people that were involved.

00:24:29.060 We just hit this milestone.

00:24:30.460 We just delivered this product.

00:24:31.780 Let's do a retrospective.

00:24:33.300 We just had this meeting.

00:24:34.380 Let's get feedback on that particular meeting.

00:24:36.440 We just had an all-hands, let's get feedback about that.

00:24:39.100 It just makes it easier for you to get feedback about the work that happens.

00:24:43.440 So throughout the year, you're not waiting and trying to remember,

00:24:46.800 oh yeah, like what were the things that so-and-so did so that we can,

00:24:50.460 this old model of doing things at points in time is completely dead.

00:24:56.200 And we've seen it in every other place of the company.

00:24:58.800 So obviously, for example, when you look at software development,

00:25:01.620 we started out with this waterfall model.

00:25:03.720 And it was bad for a lot of reasons.

00:25:06.720 And now everything is more agile.

00:25:08.720 And we're consistently reprioritizing

00:25:11.720 and looking at different things.

00:25:12.720 You can build the system to allow you to do that.

00:25:14.720 100%.

00:25:15.720 So what is a lean startup to begin with?

00:25:18.720 It's you take big chunks, and instead of big chunks,

00:25:20.720 you do things in small chunks.

00:25:22.720 So all we're saying is that that same philosophy

00:25:25.720 of small chunks now applies to leading teams.

00:25:29.720 And that's all it is.

00:25:30.720 And that's all it is.

00:25:32.680 And our view is like, let's build this thing that

00:25:35.020 allows people to do that, but does it in a way

00:25:38.100 that it's not prescriptive, it's lightweight, easy to use.

00:25:41.480 It feels like Trello or a Santa or a Slack.

00:25:45.020 So it's not this prescriptive experience,

00:25:47.180 lets people use their own style, but you're

00:25:49.760 using it to get your work done and work better with your teams.

00:25:53.240 Got it.

00:25:54.420 What are some of the fun surprises

00:25:57.420 you've discovered since letting it open?

00:25:59.680 And you guys, are you guys been public on the fundraising?

00:26:02.760 Yes.

00:26:03.260 Yeah, we have.

00:26:04.360 If not, you could have just been like, cut.

00:26:07.840 Take that out.

00:26:09.260 How much did you guys raise?

00:26:10.300 So we've raised $6.5 million US dollars.

00:26:13.180 Was it easier?

00:26:14.080 Did you raise for fluid?

00:26:15.300 We did not.

00:26:15.900 We were completely bootstrapped.

00:26:17.040 OK, so harder or easier than you thought?

00:26:19.880 To raise money.

00:26:21.920 So again, it helps that you sell a company.

00:26:24.560 Yeah, unfair advantage.

00:26:27.160 We sold a company, so that obviously always helps.

00:26:31.720 It was, I think the thing that we looked at the most

00:26:37.180 was it wasn't about just getting money in the door.

00:26:39.940 It was, can we work with people that we really like?

00:26:43.240 Who led the round?

00:26:44.600 So Inovia led the round.

00:26:46.840 Felice has participated.

00:26:48.140 And then we just had a mix of angels as well.

00:26:50.920 But the main thing is, here's my rule on raising money

00:26:54.620 and who you want to work with as an investor.

00:26:56.340 When your phone rings and you see the caller ID

00:27:00.020 and who that person is, how do you feel?

00:27:03.040 If you feel excited to talk to that person,

00:27:05.620 that's a good person to work with.

00:27:08.440 And the thing is, this is a long-term relationship.

00:27:10.940 You're actually partners.

00:27:12.040 So you should probably be excited about the person

00:27:14.640 that you're working with.

00:27:15.900 And I felt that way about both Inovia and Felicis.

00:27:20.620 The other thing that convinced me

00:27:22.500 that these are great folks to work with,

00:27:24.680 Other than reputation and everything else that they have,

00:27:27.680 they're both users of the product,

00:27:29.900 and they're obsessed about it.

00:27:31.060 If you look at Inovia's stats on how often they use Fellow,

00:27:35.480 it's actually ridiculous.

00:27:36.320 The entire company uses it.

00:27:39.120 And there's many, many users that use a product

00:27:42.600 every single day on the hour.

00:27:44.360 So that's the level of engagement that there is.

00:27:47.340 And so when you see that, you understand that everybody

00:27:51.000 is a supporter.

00:27:52.040 So it's not just that one partner.

00:27:54.480 The other 50 people in this company

00:27:56.360 know the company, use it every day.

00:27:58.980 They're interacting with others.

00:28:00.280 And they're like, hey, look at this company we invested.

00:28:02.140 I use this all the time.

00:28:03.840 And I think that's the super powerful thing.

00:28:06.140 And it's great to have that kind of in alignment.

00:28:09.120 How did you figure out pricing starting off?

00:28:11.980 How does the pricing model work today?

00:28:13.480 Yeah, so for us, it's very much freemium style offering.

00:28:17.480 So most of our users will always be free.

00:28:20.820 Our view is we always want to have a really great free

00:28:24.040 product in the same way that you think

00:28:25.580 about many of Slack's users.

00:28:28.300 Slack.

00:28:28.880 OK, so more like a Slack.

00:28:29.940 Yeah, more like a Slack.

00:28:30.880 It's actually very similar to Slack.

00:28:32.720 I think we're super complementary to Slack.

00:28:35.720 Do you have integration yet or default integration?

00:28:37.680 Oh, yes.

00:28:38.280 Yeah, so we integrate with all these different tools.

00:28:40.580 But we think that Slack is really great for interactions

00:28:46.980 that are kind of real time and getting information

00:28:49.760 across that way.

00:28:50.840 Fellow is more about interactions around meetings.

00:28:53.800 And again, these meetings don't need to be in person.

00:28:56.400 They could be remote.

00:28:57.240 They could be asynchronous.

00:28:58.940 So we think that the complete communication solution

00:29:02.980 is Slack plus Fellow.

00:29:05.160 And the pricing, how does it work today?

00:29:07.800 Yeah, so very similar to Slack.

00:29:09.260 It's free.

00:29:10.600 The second that you want to access archived old info,

00:29:14.680 then we start to charge dollars per user per month.

00:29:19.100 Dollars per user per month.

00:29:20.100 So it scales.

00:29:20.700 That's your value metric is the number of people.

00:29:23.240 Do you have different types of people on your pricing?

00:29:25.340 Or is everybody treated the same?

00:29:26.940 Everybody's treated the same.

00:29:28.300 Everyone has meetings.

00:29:29.480 It's not like a manager and a team member

00:29:31.240 priced differently?

00:29:32.340 No.

00:29:34.040 We explored things like that.

00:29:35.700 But we really wanted Fellow to be this inclusive sort

00:29:39.120 of platform, so it wasn't necessarily

00:29:40.920 differentiating much between managers and otherwise.

00:29:46.040 And the reality is a lot of this stuff

00:29:51.880 is actually good for individual contributors as well.

00:29:55.700 Because as an individual contributor,

00:29:57.880 you're also managing.

00:29:59.080 You're managing up.

00:30:00.380 You are literally managing your manager, right?

00:30:03.180 And you're trying to get stuff that you

00:30:05.400 need to do your job out of them.

00:30:07.360 And you're going to get them to work for you,

00:30:09.320 to unblock you so that you could do what you need to do.

00:30:12.880 And by the way, this is another sort of philosophy

00:30:15.260 that I'm sure you've heard of, this concept of servant

00:30:17.740 leadership.

00:30:19.460 I was talking with David Cancel the other day,

00:30:22.360 and so we were running through this model,

00:30:26.500 but basically, you know, customers at the top,

00:30:30.220 and then you have the individual contributors

00:30:32.860 who report to the customers,

00:30:34.360 and then basically the directors, managers

00:30:37.320 that report to the individual contributors,

00:30:39.480 directors to managers, VPs to directors, and CEO.

00:30:43.900 It's all about, you know, serving the other people

00:30:47.140 that are closest to the problem,

00:30:48.700 unblocking them and allowing them to thrive.

00:30:50.940 Yeah.

00:30:51.640 So that's a really neat model.

00:30:52.940 Do you guys talk about that on your website at all?

00:30:55.180 Somebody wanted to go look at that diagram.

00:30:57.380 Yeah.

00:30:57.920 Do you know what they would search?

00:30:59.520 Just servant leadership or?

00:31:00.840 Yeah, servant leadership.

00:31:02.160 And you would find a lot of stuff around that.

00:31:04.540 What have you learned from Fluid that you brought forward into Fellow?

00:31:08.180 So many things.

00:31:09.280 You know, it's interesting.

00:31:10.520 You know, that question is usually phrased as,

00:31:13.320 hey what are the mistakes that you've made that you will not do again and i think that's important

00:31:20.340 but i but i also think the other thing that's important is what did you do that you are doing

00:31:25.620 again yeah um and i'll start with that because very often people don't don't talk about that

00:31:31.940 you know the first thing is team is by far the most important so very fortunate that so my co-founders

00:31:38.960 and I, this is our third startup together.

00:31:41.400 We've been working together for over 12 years,

00:31:44.180 five different products.

00:31:45.740 So we just, going back to this notion of a team,

00:31:48.840 like we believe this very fundamentally,

00:31:50.900 that once we've learned how to work with each other,

00:31:54.260 like you'll sit in a room with the three of us.

00:31:56.120 And if we're kind of in our mix, I

00:31:57.720 don't know that you'd really even understand what we're saying

00:32:00.240 just because we've, yeah, it's so shorthand

00:32:03.100 and all the anecdotes and we'll get there very quickly

00:32:05.900 and just communicate so rapidly.

00:32:08.900 And I think that's a power of just working with the same team

00:32:10.780 over a long period of time.

00:32:12.540 We've brought some other team members

00:32:15.440 that we worked with in the past.

00:32:17.420 So that's the first thing.

00:32:18.440 If you find a great team, stick with that team

00:32:21.960 as best as you possibly can.

00:32:23.840 That truly is the magic.

00:32:26.000 Frankly, and whenever we have the possibility to do it,

00:32:29.480 we would hire a team of people versus just one person.

00:32:33.300 Why would you hire?

00:32:34.400 Because you want them bringing their .. 0.93

00:32:36.400 Yeah, their team.

00:32:37.380 I would love, you know, when we hire someone,

00:32:39.380 we ask, who else do you work really well with?

00:32:42.900 Who else would compliment you and work really well with you?

00:32:45.100 I use that as a test to just know if the person's

00:32:46.700 a good dude that could bring other people with them.

00:32:48.820 That's also a good reason to do it.

00:32:50.380 Yeah, 100%.

00:32:51.580 And so that's the first thing.

00:32:53.300 The second thing is, don't build stuff

00:32:55.560 in some isolated laboratory.

00:32:57.660 So if you're building a product, one of the first things

00:33:01.500 was when we were ideating what Fellow was.

00:33:05.460 Actually, even before that, when we were ideating fluid

00:33:08.500 surveys or any of the products we built in the last company,

00:33:11.460 we basically sold screenshots.

00:33:13.460 So we would basically draw up these screenshots.

00:33:17.100 Fireworks was the tool we used to use.

00:33:19.140 Now you might use a Sketch or Figma.

00:33:21.360 But the point is, you draw these things up,

00:33:23.560 and you're being upfront with the customers that, hey,

00:33:25.780 these don't exist, just so you know.

00:33:28.260 But if they did exist, is this something that you would use?

00:33:31.640 Why or why not?

00:33:32.480 Prototypes, wireframes, yeah.

00:33:33.480 Right.

00:33:33.980 And so that's the thing.

00:33:35.540 So we were doing this customer development stuff

00:33:37.700 from the get go.

00:33:39.080 We did it before, and we did it again.

00:33:41.540 And the nice thing about it is you're not just building

00:33:43.880 and spending all this time coding and putting things

00:33:46.300 in hardcore production format before you get it out there.

00:33:49.700 So that's another thing we did again.

00:33:53.720 The third thing that we did again

00:33:56.300 was we took it slow in the beginning.

00:33:58.860 So it wasn't about going and hiring a large team.

00:34:01.700 We think it's really important in the get go

00:34:04.480 that when you're trying to find this product market fit,

00:34:07.880 you have so many problems that are happening at the same time.

00:34:12.200 Don't complicate them by adding a ton of people.

00:34:15.200 So this is an important point.

00:34:16.580 It's communication overhead.

00:34:17.720 There's cost to that.

00:34:18.540 100%.

00:34:19.260 And so the thing is that in the beginning,

00:34:22.400 I think it's the founder's role to find product market fit.

00:34:25.520 That should be all that you're focused on.

00:34:28.080 And the challenge with hiring people

00:34:30.280 is that you are now further and further distanced

00:34:33.340 from that direct feedback, right?

00:34:36.240 The founders should be the first salespeople.

00:34:38.740 They should be the first customer development people.

00:34:41.320 If you're getting that information secondhand,

00:34:43.420 the signal is just not as clear as if you were talking

00:34:46.060 to those people directly.

00:34:47.780 So we took it very slow in the beginning.

00:34:50.440 Often we'd have investors that would come in and say,

00:34:53.080 please have this money.

00:34:54.560 And we said, no, we're just not ready.

00:34:57.040 We're still in this pursuit of product market fit.

00:35:00.160 And when we're ready, we will come to you.

00:35:02.760 But when we do come to you, you will know that we found it.

00:35:05.980 And so I think that was a, now, it takes patience

00:35:10.420 and it's annoying.

00:35:11.360 And second time around, I think your patience is even less.

00:35:15.660 But I think that was important.

00:35:17.820 We stuck with that rigor.

00:35:19.060 We were a very small team for probably just over a year

00:35:24.000 where we already had a bunch of paying customers

00:35:27.080 before we even approach this whole fundraising landscape.

00:35:30.980 Aidan, when you look back over the last 12 years

00:35:34.560 of entrepreneurship and your own personal development,

00:35:38.480 who have you had to become to be the person to lead

00:35:42.260 the third company, venture-backed?

00:35:44.960 Yeah, good question.

00:35:47.400 I think one of the things that I learned,

00:35:52.220 first company probably mistakes as a manager.

00:35:55.260 So there are great things with bootstrapping a company.

00:35:59.080 One of them is that you tend to be able to do every single role in the company.

00:36:05.420 So when you don't have a marketing person, you do all the marketing.

00:36:10.940 When you don't have sales, you do all.

00:36:12.460 So the nice thing is you get to do all of those different things.

00:36:16.320 What ends up happening, though, is that as a first-time leader and so on and so forth,

00:36:21.420 you it is very hard to relinquish a lot of those things and and i remember we kept hiring people

00:36:27.980 and i felt that how come i'm not getting any less busy what is going on and and i think in the

00:36:33.700 beginning i was probably too much in the micromanaging side and i was fearful of like

00:36:40.240 letting go of tasks because you know i just felt that it was way faster for me to just do something

00:36:45.660 versus get someone else to do it and give them feedback and go back and forth and and do all

00:36:50.140 this stuff.

00:36:51.100 And eventually, you start to clue in 0.94

00:36:53.140 that that's such a foolish behavior,

00:36:56.140 that ultimately, it's about the company that you're building.

00:36:59.840 So our view is that at Fellow, and so this

00:37:02.980 is what I've clued in on today, is

00:37:05.440 that our product is not actually the product.

00:37:08.560 The product is the company.

00:37:10.380 So the company is this machine that keeps getting better

00:37:15.520 over the course of time, and churns out this product.

00:37:18.700 And this is one product.

00:37:19.840 And there may be other products in the future.

00:37:21.960 But the key is, can this machine be able to do that?

00:37:25.280 And a lot of that is you're programming the machine.

00:37:28.120 So what are the rules?

00:37:30.040 What are the behaviors that are emphasized?

00:37:32.640 And this is things like where values come in.

00:37:35.080 So what are things that we did differently this time?

00:37:37.460 So we sold the company, and we didn't have any values.

00:37:42.800 They were never communicated.

00:37:44.080 I never clued in on the importance of that stuff

00:37:47.840 until after the acquisition.

00:37:49.220 And by the way, SurveyMonkey is an incredible company.

00:37:52.340 And I'm so glad we did this, because we were injected

00:37:55.480 into this larger machine that was this well-oiled machine.

00:38:00.020 And so when you're living there, and now you're

00:38:02.420 living there at a leadership level,

00:38:04.540 you just understand these things on such a deeper level.

00:38:07.200 So now-

00:38:07.700 The importance of them.

00:38:09.040 100%.

00:38:09.620 And you see how it plays out.

00:38:11.900 So now it's the same thing at Fellow.

00:38:14.860 So we have values from the get go.

00:38:17.600 we do things like we emphasize growth.

00:38:20.360 We emphasize books people read and their development.

00:38:23.700 And the other lessons that I learned

00:38:26.280 from the previous experience is,

00:38:27.900 if you look at the first person we hired,

00:38:31.360 who was our first support hire,

00:38:32.720 he ended up being the director of marketing

00:38:34.840 and running a huge marketing team.

00:38:36.920 Our first finance kind of person

00:38:39.500 to help us send out invoices in the beginning

00:38:42.360 is running a massive sales team and has grown.

00:38:45.440 And so we've seen what development can actually happen.

00:38:49.200 And so now our philosophy is get people that are hungry,

00:38:53.060 that are talented, and above all else,

00:38:55.460 want to basically continue to grow and learn more,

00:38:59.640 and then just give them all the resources

00:39:01.780 and let them function.

00:39:02.740 So my job is not to ideally to do the work.

00:39:06.620 And if I am doing the work, I'm literally

00:39:08.660 being the bottleneck and slowing everything down.

00:39:10.640 So now I just care about people.

00:39:12.880 It's just how can I get every person at the team

00:39:16.300 to be better at what they do, be excited about their work.

00:39:20.000 And again, if we build a really great company,

00:39:23.320 the product that we have, I mean, we all

00:39:25.720 use the product every day.

00:39:27.060 But the thing is that if our goal is

00:39:29.640 to build one of the most well-run companies in the world,

00:39:33.160 we will try and get all those workflows kind of implemented

00:39:37.220 and help get the best example of it.

00:39:39.640 Yeah, be the best example, but get the software

00:39:42.380 to help us do that and then get the software

00:39:45.120 into the hands of others.

00:39:46.580 And so it's just like this perpetuating loop that I think.

00:39:49.940 And that's another thing I love about this,

00:39:51.860 which is when we were building the last company,

00:39:54.440 yes, we did surveys from time to time ourselves.

00:39:57.260 But we only did it some of the time,

00:39:59.180 and only some of the people in the company did it.

00:40:01.520 But now we're in this situation where

00:40:03.020 we have this product that we all use,

00:40:05.040 and we all use every single day.

00:40:07.000 I think that just the feedback loop of learning what works

00:40:10.300 and doesn't, obviously you talk to customers

00:40:12.140 all the time but just having every single individual person at the company doing the

00:40:17.240 same thing it just gives you this keen awareness of things that work and your bar just becomes so

00:40:22.580 much higher because you don't want to deal with things that don't work super well especially if

00:40:26.640 you're using it 100 yeah aiden one thing i want to say as we wrap up is um how much i appreciate

00:40:32.060 the fact that selfishly it's a canadian company building a product that i think is inherently

00:40:37.060 you know, on brand for wanting to build a great place to work

00:40:41.600 and help develop leaders that you're building.

00:40:44.400 And I think it's a super important space

00:40:46.140 that I'm very passionate about.

00:40:49.280 And it's really cool that you decided

00:40:51.140 to kind of make this your mission to build this company.

00:40:53.540 So where do people go online if they want to sign up?

00:40:57.440 Super easy, great free plan, www.fellow.app.

00:41:03.180 And they can go sign up for the free, try it out.

00:41:05.180 Yeah, 100%.

00:41:06.180 value and eventually become paying customers yes 100 for sure aiden appreciate you being on here

00:41:11.400 this was great thank you thanks for watching this episode of escape velocity be sure to like

00:41:17.140 and subscribe and leave a comment with your biggest insight from our conversation be sure

00:41:21.960 to check out the next episode

Dan Martell - March 25, 2021

The Driving Force of a Startup's Success with Aydin Mirzaee @ Fellow.app - Escape Velocity Show #50

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