Why Hiring a Business Coach Was a Game Changer with Elias @ Drift.com - Escape Velocity Show #34
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Summary
In this episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the co-founders of Drift, a startup that has grown to more than 150 employees in a year. We talk about how they got their start, how they built their team, and how they acquired their first company.
Transcript
00:00:50.760
Yeah, it was, all of the sudden people are congratulating me
00:00:58.240
We basically have grown, I think this is fairly public, I guess you can see this on LinkedIn or something, but it's two of us.
00:01:05.660
I think it was like, we hover around 10, 18, and then we went to 45, 150, no, 300.
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Hence the name of your conference, the book, Hyper Growth.
00:01:24.820
What have you, I mean, so managing, I'm assuming engineering.
00:01:29.320
So prior VP Avenge at HubSpot, so they bought Performable.
00:01:33.640
I think we first met, was it at the, you guys were doing an event.
00:01:44.620
It was right, I think it was while you guys were doing Performable.
00:01:51.040
I mean, we, David has this, you know, in his blood, this marketing essence and then like
00:01:55.460
always about events, always about creating momentum.
00:02:04.300
And, um, you know, I, I remember back then and you also did Lookery.
00:02:10.380
So Lookery, Performable with Josh and then HubSpot and then Drift and always on the technical
00:02:40.360
And so we, you know, definitely I get to spend a lot of time.
00:02:50.560
And I'm more kind of like executing with the engineers,
00:02:53.140
with the product leaders, as well as I do like sales, too.
00:02:57.280
So I spend a good amount of time in sales and recruiting.
00:03:00.060
Well, I know you've written a lot about culture,
00:03:01.580
and it's a big part of what I love following along
00:03:04.260
with David's thoughts, the stuff he reads and he tweets.
00:03:11.000
I mean, building an engineering team at HubSpot scale,
00:03:15.100
I didn't realize, like, so I mean, they acquire Performable.
00:03:20.560
I mean, that was, I think, an incredible acquisition
00:03:32.040
You guys called it the DubSpot, which was unique.
00:03:35.260
Because back then, I think most companies from the Valley
00:03:39.300
or others that opened up here, they didn't really hire a lot.
00:03:42.760
Google had 2,000 people, but only like 200 were engineers.
00:03:46.260
But you guys made the decision to do full stack.
00:03:58.380
But we like to have the office own a single product.
00:04:04.380
because we like to build squads that have product leadership,
00:04:07.260
product management, designers, as well as the engineers.
00:04:14.280
Like I even, I was discussing with a friend recently
00:04:18.600
It's kind of weird because it's like the people that
00:04:22.320
And then there's the bug, people are fixing bugs and stuff.
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I find fascinating about what you guys have done.
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Because to grow that high and still produce and build product
00:04:33.960
and get results and outcomes, it's really down to the people.
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predominantly like marketing or business focus.
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When you look at building an engineering culture,
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what are some of the core tenets that you look at
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It really has to be about speed because what happens
00:05:06.940
to just be more careful, be more thoughtful, plan,
00:05:15.380
whether it's done correctly, whether it's architected,
00:05:19.040
Because you guys get the call if the thing goes down.
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But I think, in general, humanity just likes to be careful,
00:05:31.820
And so I think that that's really the essence of Drift.
00:05:35.620
It's about being biased for action and role modeling that.
00:05:40.280
I think that that's, you know, now that you just made me think about that, is that in my career, I go back and forth in that I will code, I will build, and then I start leading, and I stop coding, and then start over.
00:06:03.960
And so at Little Curry, small team, performable, the same, you know, I was, you know, building it.
00:06:08.840
And then I would spend most of my time selling, right?
00:06:11.800
And we had sales reps, and I had to be there helping them sell it.
00:06:20.340
And then you just can't code because you're like booked solid all day long.
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Those things were the first thing we needed to rebuild
00:06:34.980
because we didn't have that part of the product,
00:07:06.980
And so if you look at my GitHub, I'm proud of it
00:07:17.960
that was involved in the product, talk to the customer,
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If you want to create something and have people
00:07:41.420
use it in the whole world, you've got to learn how to sell.
00:07:45.980
I mean, just in general, what's your approach to selling?
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Is this formal, or you've just learned intuition now?
00:07:55.020
I mean, I think they're doing a lot more reading about it
00:08:02.660
And so like, you know, Kildini and all these kinds of books,
00:08:05.700
right, you know, Persuasion, just Understanding, Chris Boss,
00:08:14.960
If you want to write some code, if you want somebody,
00:08:24.540
and I'm trying to figure out what their challenges are,
00:08:26.540
and really connect some emotional connection there.
00:08:30.500
Like how would you coach your new engineering hires
00:08:44.660
You want to show them that they don't have to worry,
00:08:47.480
that you're going to maintain whatever it is that you're
00:09:01.040
When you do present the idea, and at the end of the day,
00:09:08.180
that it's the right decision, that you're not going to,
1.00
00:09:22.100
as somebody trusting you and giving you their money, right?
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It's like if you're the engineering leader at a company,
00:09:30.440
you have worries, you have concerns, you have timelines,
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and you just present it as, I need to do this, I'm right,
00:09:45.220
Which is the, I feel like, I call it mad dog mentality
00:09:53.860
And I was just like, man, add a little bit of compassion,
00:10:11.580
if somebody is trying to figure out where, at scale,
00:10:16.460
The way that it works is that we have these ratios.
00:10:24.580
And everybody wants to change them all the time.
00:10:32.120
And you can combine two three-person teams into a squad.
00:10:39.740
So you have a tech lead, two engineers that are kind of
00:10:48.880
It's not going to talk about comps, their career stuff.
00:10:54.720
And the person that leads and makes the decisions.
00:11:02.780
But that product manager has to be fixed to those two,
00:11:10.940
Meaning, when I say it can't change, it's never perfect.
00:11:14.000
You know, we're always behind one product manager.
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00:11:19.040
But we never be like, OK, let's have this product manager
00:11:26.960
And so because of the pace at which we produce.
00:11:33.380
And so basically, I have eight people, exactly.
00:11:35.600
So we have a product manager, a product designer
00:11:40.700
One to six product designer, one to six product management.
00:11:55.060
that every two weeks, biweekly, the team presents to the VP
00:12:01.440
presenting to them and the VP of product what the team is doing.
00:12:05.360
And that person from support is there at that meeting.
00:12:11.460
that that team owns from the support perspective
00:12:21.820
But it's like people from sales or from other places
00:12:28.060
It's like, we know what the customers are saying.
00:12:32.020
These are the top three issues, not just the tickets.
00:12:35.800
But these are the issues that a support person is
00:12:41.040
This, to me, is you guys are not just keep surfacing over and over.
00:12:48.320
but you're saying it's important to have somebody that's
00:12:53.480
to go looking at stuff, to give them the specific nuance
00:13:02.060
And that format, and I'm not sure if Shopify does something
00:13:04.760
similar, but I've heard they do pods and stuff.
00:13:07.000
Yeah, so do they stay on a specific area of the product?
00:13:18.680
You have like messaging and core infrastructure.
00:13:34.120
Because that's where all great engineers go to die.
00:13:38.480
That's really where all projects never get finished.
00:13:46.860
And so I battle that all the time with engineers.
00:13:53.420
And I'm like, David is in the complete extreme.
00:13:57.800
And so what we do is every team has to have a goal.
00:14:00.360
And the goal has to be, how does this affect the customer?
00:14:12.720
We're here to serve our customer, Drift's customer.
00:14:23.360
we have like three DevOps people in the whole organization,
00:14:29.760
And do you not like the concept of DevOps in general?
00:14:34.160
I don't either, because the way that, you know,
00:14:36.920
we were 50 in product, and I did DevOps, right?
00:14:42.340
I set up the Terraform initially that we would deploy.
00:14:52.340
And so like somebody owns it as they're like 20%
00:14:55.720
and everybody, every team at Drift deploys their own stuff.
00:15:01.020
They don't have to go to somewhere to ask for permission
00:15:03.220
or like you deploy me this SQS, you deploy me this RDS.
00:15:06.740
I remember reading the Facebook engineering blogger.
00:15:11.980
And they're pushing to production all the time.
00:15:18.740
which is anybody that's been doing this for a long time.
00:15:32.500
But I like the concept of saying there's no core things
00:15:41.620
At that scale, when they're building containers and data
00:15:46.360
centers and that kind of stuff, that's next level stuff.
00:15:49.940
But when you're a normal startup with just leveraging AWS,
00:15:55.500
the concept of DevOps could get really overkill.
00:16:13.560
it's really just about how fast can we add value
00:16:20.820
So now we have three, because it's like you have security,
00:16:27.480
getting to a point where I'm OK with that, right?
00:16:34.400
If they're protecting the systems for our customers,
00:16:38.020
if they're SOC 2 compliance and things like that.
00:16:47.520
And then how do you think of, like when you said the demos,
00:16:55.700
and I think David brought this from Performable.
00:17:03.820
So do you guys still have that concept at Drift?
00:17:10.380
Because my understanding, and correct me just for people
00:17:12.520
listening, is essentially they had to show working code.
00:17:29.960
So it used to be, I think if I remember correctly,
00:17:37.780
And like, you know, posters and like show what you did.
00:17:46.060
But then we kind of changed that and we were like, do presentations.
00:17:51.220
And then we kept, you know, upping the controls on that because people would be showing stuff that was not available.
00:17:58.860
What would you show the whole company's sales and customer
00:18:01.200
success and marketing, something that was in your laptop?
00:18:04.620
So that's where we got the rule of never demo me anything
00:18:11.040
Everything has to be demoed from app.drift.com.
00:18:18.780
So it's like, if it's not there, get it for us,
00:18:28.860
I just love the idea of saying, look, there's this thing called demos, which is this, you know, it's kind of like Steve Jobs.
00:18:36.380
One of the engineers wrote this really great book that's not well known about he worked on the iPhone and the keyboard and stuff.
00:18:42.400
And, you know, you get the understanding of why Steve did demos and he would sit in a room and people would present.
00:18:50.280
It was just like he would think about it and he'd give some cues and stuff because it was the interaction.
00:18:55.880
And I think when I see engineers show me stuff off local hosts,
00:18:59.960
I'm like, you're not thinking through the data integration.
00:19:18.000
What are your thoughts on creating an environment
00:19:20.360
that you don't have to push people to get something out there,
00:19:23.680
but creating a system, either culture or meeting
00:19:30.180
motivates them to do the thing you would want as a founder,
00:19:36.700
I think, yeah, let's try to organize this a little bit.
00:19:43.180
But yes, the original question, how do you infuse culture?
00:20:04.420
And so I coded for like two years straight, you know?
00:20:14.200
to know that I wasn't just this like VP of engineer talking,
00:20:19.120
earn your street cred but like how do we do it and it's like me constantly let me show you let
00:20:24.440
me show you it's possible it's possible it's possible and then transition into what you just
00:20:28.780
said right which is um how do you how do you pull it from them right and so we do several things
00:20:36.460
one is this notion it started with very basic things like don't demo me something that it's
00:20:41.860
not yeah we would sit around a table at drift uh on friday which is still what we do today
00:21:00.440
And you just say something, share it with the team,
00:21:08.500
Every department will volunteer someone to go tell a story,
00:21:14.160
Of like who wins the gold in Mike based on strict stuff.
00:21:18.720
So we're teaching the whole company how to be storytellers, right?
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The clarity, the subject, why is this helpful and so forth.
00:21:26.400
So there's rules and there's a judging panel that rotates from the whole company.
00:21:31.080
So that's kind of the evolution of that show and tell where it's a little bit of a-
00:21:36.020
And you're allowed to tell stories about things that are not?
00:21:43.700
and it has to be in production, it has to be real, do that.
00:21:47.900
It's neat because it brings an element of, I think,
00:21:55.540
Like, it's a cool feature, but if you can't explain the story
00:21:57.600
of who it's going to help and how it's going to help them-
00:22:02.600
And then you have this other thing that we developed.
00:22:06.980
Where, as I was not coding, as I was the only person with the team,
00:22:12.640
is that we have this, we would meet, we meet, right?
00:22:24.440
To control me, what they did is I asked them to make,
00:22:29.180
we started this evolution because we're fascinated by messaging and video.
00:22:32.740
And so we would say, make a recording of this local host.
00:22:39.260
This is the one meeting where you can bring me work in progress.
00:22:42.540
And so because I want to know the work in progress.
00:22:47.380
But it has to be a recording because I didn't want to spend time.
00:22:52.580
And I didn't have time to wait for an engineer to set up their local host.
00:23:00.680
Instead, record up to a five-minute video with the product manager.
00:23:05.980
And so they would tell me anything they wanted, and I couldn't stop this video.
00:23:12.000
Product manager, but sometimes engineers would do it.
00:23:18.520
And then I would start talking about giving feedback,
00:23:22.020
thinking through the stuff, challenges, problems,
00:23:25.700
and talk about the vision, talk about a customer call, this.
00:23:29.360
And so we would spend that time to really with each team
00:23:34.440
And then I learned that really it's the coaching habit
00:23:38.960
And switch it more to is a place for them to ask me questions.
00:23:47.160
So you're totally right is that we have to switch it.
00:23:54.220
They have to get the things they want to resolve that day.
00:24:04.080
And then I learned through coaching that what was the right level for me to be in that meeting?
00:24:08.960
to not be getting in the weeds right and to be focusing on the vision where we're going because
00:24:13.420
they need to know the why yeah and the other thing is that goals a big ritual now i drift is
00:24:20.300
we do quarterly goals so we move our cadence to still meet bi-weekly yeah that is a forcing
00:24:27.180
function of like i got to show are we driving towards this outcome are we doing something
00:24:30.840
right what's the progress but the beginning of the quarter we start working like a month before
00:24:36.200
you know david and i strategy product leadership and we start focusing on what's the strategy for
00:24:42.160
the quarter yeah and then we plan and then it gets to the vp of product and the product managers and
00:24:48.100
then the teams get to work and they define their goals okay we define the goals for the department
00:24:53.000
and so and they get that with kpis and time frames yeah and they said said that and so the beginning
00:24:59.300
of the quarter this is our fourth quarter that we've done that and so they have that yeah so now
00:25:07.220
They get to drive, and they get to set what they want to accomplish.
00:25:11.260
So you get to edit, but they author, and that way they feel ownership around it.
00:25:15.700
And then you mentioned coaching, that you got better at this through coaching.
00:25:21.560
Okay, and how does that help you as a technical leader, you know, or just as an individual, I guess?
00:25:34.160
i've had two coaches now um i was at a sequoia capital event a tool yeah i'm gonna want and so
00:25:40.260
checklist manifesto and uh he um he gave a talk to a small group of portfolio uh founders and
00:25:48.320
he was talking about coaching and because i hear everybody about coaches you know i'm i'm like
00:25:53.780
i've had three coaches but i'm saying i hear like all the superstars like you're having coaches and
00:26:05.180
And he made this point that only musicians and athletes have coaches.
00:26:16.480
And who says that I'm a surgeon and I can just get better by myself?
00:26:27.140
And what I liked about what he said is that he hired a coach that would be in the OR with him and be watching him and noticing his hands, his movement.
00:26:37.260
He would bump with his head the light because he's so tall.
00:26:52.920
And during my interviews, I was hiring for a VP of engineering.
00:26:56.860
And in one of those, I interviewed some of the coaches, like.
00:27:03.420
Psychologists and that kind of, you know, like, go lay down on a couch.
00:27:09.700
I tried talking to them, and I just didn't feel comfortable.
00:27:20.520
And I met this VP of engineering, and he, you know, I was going through that scale, right?
00:27:33.380
And he goes, yeah, you need to stop telling them.
00:27:42.160
So I just like what he said to me during that interview.
00:27:55.860
I had this, like, you know, my first, probably second impression.
00:28:01.560
And then he said that we were in the parking lot,
00:28:06.780
We were just talking, but he's way more senior than me, experience.
00:28:10.120
And then he said, yes, you need to stop telling them.
00:28:14.680
You need to ask them for what do they think, how they're going to do it.
00:28:18.260
and that that moment it just hit me I can't just keep doing the same way that I've always done it
00:28:27.520
you know especially from a scale perspective exactly and I was like I asked him and then
00:28:32.480
he said he mentioned like oh I've been helping some companies you know some consulting I go
00:28:36.860
would you coach me and he goes this happened in the parking lot and I said and he goes absolutely
00:28:41.820
right perfect but i want you to come to the office you need to be with me at these meetings
00:28:47.820
it's uh i mean if you bill campbell billion dollar coach yeah everybody's got to read it trillion
00:28:52.940
trillion yeah sorry yeah come on uh it's it's fascinating it's fascinating i read that book
00:28:58.340
after yeah it's like i wish you know but he came and he was in the meetings with me and he started
00:29:04.840
surveying everybody, he would come into the room,
00:29:14.840
And then he would go meet with them after, then come back.
00:29:23.680
I don't know if you, the book, What Got You Here?
00:29:30.940
I'm going to hire this coach, because I had a coach,
00:29:32.620
Guy, Bob Simpson, who did E-Myth when I was 23.
00:29:44.900
He replied to my email schedule, because assistant schedule.
00:30:05.460
Like he said, you know, the way I coach is like this.
00:30:09.500
from the whole team because I want perspective.
00:30:28.060
um but dude just that concept of of proactively getting feedback from all over right 360 to get
00:30:36.320
that perspective for somebody needs to see the force from the truths how do you how do you think
00:30:40.380
that's impacted the way you've progressed as a leader i was very fortunate because i feel like
00:30:47.880
i feel like 360s are bullshit sometimes because people don't they hold back yeah i felt like my
00:31:00.840
if they were doing survey 360s versus an individual
00:31:07.320
Yeah, I think people were like, there was a shortage.
00:31:15.900
And so I was spread thin, trying to lead a team of like 50,
00:31:23.300
So VP of product and I just like sharing all this
00:31:25.520
and like short PM, short PM, short technical leads.
00:31:30.900
And I appreciated the team living through that.
00:31:33.700
And I think he came at the right time where they kind of,
00:31:37.260
and by seeing him as a CTO of VP of engineering,
00:31:45.900
was doing coaching at the same time helping them.
00:31:52.120
at least you're it's too much here it's too much here it's like too in the weeds we need the vision
00:31:57.100
help us with this you know let's not so you obviously grew in a shorter period what do you
00:32:01.160
think the how fast what was the fast tracking like if you think of like if i didn't have him
00:32:05.340
i would have learned these harder i mean did he compress oh yeah like i mean it's it's just like
00:32:11.660
three or four years yeah you may have never discovered some of this stuff and so like that
00:32:16.320
whole flip and that whole delegation and so to the point that you know just
00:32:22.020
learning to be comfortable of of trusting of listening we went to the
00:32:26.760
coaching habit together my one-on-ones he would attend my one-on-ones as well
00:32:30.480
he gave me this this quadrant where we have the objectives so the goals are now
00:32:35.160
like you know pervading the whole organization right and so like you have
00:32:39.380
a quadrant where is a slide in Google Sites and it has on the top left what
00:32:43.060
are your objectives with my one-on-ones, my direct reports.
00:32:53.000
And then on the bottom right is, what are your challenges?
00:32:56.320
And we really focus most of the one-on-one on the challenges.
00:33:02.700
Just making sure, what are you working on, what are you doing?
00:33:05.380
As opposed to like, what did you do, are you doing?
00:33:07.240
Yeah, just open, free-form question with no direction.
00:33:13.860
I mean, I can shoot the shit for a little.
0.99
00:33:37.500
When did you say, are you happy with my performance?
00:33:43.620
Do you ask them for, hey, what do you need most from me?
00:33:53.240
This is like, what problem do you personally have that I can help you with?
00:33:59.060
It's like, if they don't, oh, by the way, if they don't send me that the day before, we don't have a one-on-one.
00:34:05.420
And so the beauty of working, you know, fully form adults is that you're like, this is the agreement.
00:34:19.760
we're going to talk about what's on your bullets.
00:34:24.220
Immediately go to the bottom right of the quadrant,
00:34:43.500
And so that's something that then I said to David,
00:34:52.860
Yeah, I remember reading some stuff about one-on-ones
00:35:02.640
And so that's been, because we provide that for growth.
00:35:04.840
I know Shopify had a whole executive development,
00:35:08.980
to for all their and essentially star players got a coach they had a you know talent management team
00:35:14.060
and it was just part of the way they wanted to perform it's very valuable i mean it's like it's
00:35:18.300
you know when you focus on growing people you want to build a company like this right it's like
00:35:22.160
you got to help and given the resources because what are things that you're doing today that you
00:35:26.960
didn't do when you started that you think people need to consider and start let's call it a million
00:35:30.720
to five million in arr um is it the you know off-sites quarterly strategies one-on-ones like
00:35:36.380
What are some of the things that you would do earlier?
00:35:40.280
So this is what I spend most of my time, really.
00:35:44.600
I kind of, I don't know if this is a good name or not,
00:35:46.460
but from the beginning, we've been calling it the company OS,
00:36:05.960
organization right and so we're like advantage i was like we have to um uh you know david and i
00:36:15.140
kind of we agree disagree we always it's like it's people think it's so clear but david hates
00:36:19.820
meetings right but from patrick i'm like no we need meetings it's the only tool you have it's
00:36:26.800
the only tool we have and so we have to do get good at it good at meetings yeah and so we we are
00:36:31.000
So we have a weekly senior leadership meeting, right?
00:36:49.460
You got to like, we don't have time any other time.
00:36:54.920
It was painful because we were not as good and organized.
00:37:00.020
And then trillion-dollar codes, and everybody was giving me feedback.
00:37:23.940
We actually, for the summer, it was 3 o'clock, 3 to 4 on Fridays.
00:37:44.800
OK, but do you do the exec offsite and then present?
00:38:10.320
OK, but I think it's important to do outside of the office.
00:38:13.380
Yeah, we rent another, go to our lawyer's office.
00:38:21.080
After that meeting is the SLT, which is about 18, 20 of us.
00:38:27.200
And we go for an offsite actually out two days.
00:38:31.480
So what we usually do is we'll go in the afternoon,
00:38:39.920
So in the early days, you can just do the ELT type thing.
00:38:46.140
Because really, this is about us coming together and bonding.
00:38:50.160
Sometimes with 20 people, you cannot get that much work done.
00:38:53.600
But it's about alignment, communication, relationships,
00:39:00.000
And that in itself has different cadences, right?
00:39:13.360
And the first one is like how we kicked off the year.
00:39:22.260
planning for the year because it's a, you know, you look back the year, look forward. And then
00:39:27.120
in regards to like monthly or weekly cadences, again, one to 5 million. What are, what are like,
00:39:33.200
cause I really like your bi-monthly, um, product one. That sounds so like, I think everything that
00:39:39.720
we're doing, you should have. Yeah. It's just maybe a smaller, smaller version. You might not
00:39:44.480
need two offsides. Yeah. You do one. Yeah. Like we, David and I, one of our advisors,
00:40:01.240
but made the switch back to messaging to what Drift is today.
00:40:06.520
That was the result, the outcome of an offsite,
00:40:10.420
where we spent time, and I kind of hate some of that brainstorming
00:40:13.900
and stuff, but we were like, because we did a lot of exploration
00:40:17.360
at the beginning of Drift and looked at different.
00:40:21.500
I think of performable, you guys are really good at that.
00:40:24.800
David's really good at that, of just exploring a problem space
00:40:28.540
and iterating, MVP-ing, but then once it's, boom, go.
00:40:37.200
Most of them just keep iterating until they run out of time
00:40:41.280
But you guys are so good at finding it and then go.
00:40:43.680
Or you commit very early, and you're stubborn, and you're stuck.
00:40:50.200
I'm so glad you did what you do, that you scrapped that idea
00:40:54.240
Because I have so many people that are stubborn.
00:41:03.000
And so you stick with something, and everybody knows
00:41:10.180
And that really is what brought me around, too,
00:41:12.300
of that time, and the stickies, and the alignment,
00:41:16.580
And we came out of there, and it was an amazing event.
00:41:20.040
The three of us, and so he's one of our advisors, too.
00:41:26.900
I'm kind of like the stubborn, like the skeptic.
00:41:33.760
And this guy turned me around, and we did an exercise
00:41:40.400
where we said three years, I think it was something like that,
00:41:50.340
we want to be known for the best culture in Boston.
00:41:53.600
We want to be named as a competitor by a public company.
00:41:56.760
We want to have, I don't know if it was like 10 million or something, ARR.
00:42:04.360
We were like, we said all these things in there.
00:42:06.240
and product 100 drifters you know we it was like um viral product i forget it was like we had a
00:42:17.120
and we crushed all of those goals and we pulled out the google doc from that day and we showed
00:42:23.360
it at a company meeting it was like there was three of us in a room maybe eight in total in
00:42:29.460
the company and we wrote out those things and and then they came true if you don't write it you
00:42:41.040
And then there's one more thing that could be a whole other hour of conversation is what I'm calling engines.
00:42:52.780
And we have a collection of processes that help you achieve an outcome repeatedly.
00:42:59.780
right and so that whole thing that you said you know of like oh why is that not working what
00:43:06.140
happened that's not shipped this is you know all those questions that i would ask that would help
00:43:11.000
me uh unstuck a team i want every team to know how to unstuck themselves and so how do you the
00:43:18.380
process is four questions what could happen i want you to think about the goal what is what problem
00:43:23.500
you're solving the goal you're teaching them the way to think the way you thought yes it's
00:43:28.440
This is like Bridgewater, Ray Dalio, principal stuff, right?
00:43:31.520
And in fact, I hired someone from the work reported to Dalio.
00:43:35.480
And brought in, and she started a company on this, right?
00:43:40.520
And that is, so she, I incubated that company inside Drift to create these processes.
00:43:47.240
And we're like, we defined it as four simple questions.
00:43:55.580
what is happening so you have to show visibility of like what is the thing doing right and then
00:44:02.700
the last one's what did happen and so the difference between is is what is happening
00:44:08.060
is visibility show me it's kind of like you know an engine in the car like you see the gauges okay
00:44:11.980
we're moving speed oil temperature yeah it's working that's is what did happen is when you
00:44:16.920
get to your destination when you land your jet into the runway like okay let's talk about what
00:44:21.720
happened was that a good landing or a bad landing okay god is the system working did we do did we
00:44:26.480
follow the steps or no it was the outcome what we okay it was not okay so where was the breakdown
00:44:32.200
and then start doing the root cause analysis yeah and then you go back and try the whole thing again
00:44:37.580
right yeah well root cause is a little bit different uh the way dahlia does it right okay
0.99
00:44:41.640
dahlia is like it starts with the the five whys is like i i would hate five whys because engineers
00:44:48.520
would be like so why so why and and it was never uh a person liked five eyes either there's never
00:44:55.620
like a person it's always been like it's the code yeah it's the code it was no it needs to be
00:45:00.240
refactored it needs to be rewritten yeah and with dalia is like who yeah what was the thinking no
00:45:06.780
who who who was responsible for that okay and so it's in dalia is like it's always either a people
00:45:14.380
problem a process problem or a people in process problem and so then you go okay who did that yeah
00:45:22.740
why do you do why did that person do it yeah lack of training yeah uh lack of discipline you know
00:45:29.700
we have to get to the bottom because if we if we brush that aside yeah we're just focusing on the
00:45:34.560
process but not really solving the problem that's not solving the problem and so we need to help if
00:45:39.340
the person needed more training if the person has been working too hard if it's too many pages have
00:45:45.640
and uncover that, instead of just like it's the code
00:45:52.360
into their direct reports in regards to one-on-ones?
00:46:07.240
to be an engine, customer onboarding, lead SLA,
00:46:11.800
demos medic uh deployment goals we have an engine for goal setting yeah that says four weeks before
00:46:19.800
the beginning of the quarter strategy team does this then product leadership team does this then
00:46:24.200
the team does the goals then they get because once you have that then you can refine it if you don't
00:46:28.200
have that then there's no way to improve it exactly and so now you you know i'll show you later i have
00:46:33.080
a graph where like i have a slides where you can start seeing the the like the goal of the company
00:46:40.120
then four goals, you know, let's say revenue, marketing,
00:46:44.660
And then you're like, each one of those has engines.
00:46:47.040
And then each one of those has engines and engines and ways to report that.
00:46:51.480
It's like, you know what happens is that people, when they're growing,
00:46:54.560
they're always looking, the founders were like that,
00:46:56.680
oh, there's that guy I want to hire that did this amazing, you know,
00:47:04.560
and he's going to deploy a whole outbound, whatever it is you're building.
00:47:07.680
But most people don't have that systems thinking.
00:47:21.960
And what are your thoughts on the dashboards or metrics
00:47:35.680
But like in regards to, you know, maybe on a weekly or monthly, like do you guys do?
00:47:42.320
But it's like, I'll share a little bit of my new set of dashboards.
00:47:48.640
It's complicated because this is where like some of the senior leadership teams go wrong
00:47:52.600
in the meetings because it's like, we don't like the slides and we ask a million questions
00:47:57.220
and how do you present that and how do you give insights?
00:48:00.340
Is this a true visibility into how the engine is running?
00:48:06.240
If they're choosing the numbers, or like the inconsistency,
00:48:09.720
Yeah, even just agreeing on how the number gets created.
00:48:12.480
Gets created, what does it mean, don't change it.
00:48:16.700
but the data is dirty, or this, and it doesn't include this.
00:48:25.080
that's where you need that to be in the conversation.
00:48:31.560
the consensus I have is like, in that weekly meeting,
00:48:36.380
update the numbers for their area of the business
00:48:39.680
Like I feel like automated dashboards sometimes
00:48:44.380
So I like to manually go into the system, pull it out,
00:49:00.280
And she says, too early, OKRs and that kind of stuff.
00:49:08.560
you don't have resources, you're 10 people, 15 people.
00:49:10.860
And it's like, if you're going to do something,
00:49:14.140
better write it down, better say, what am I doing?
00:49:20.120
Like, you know, especially when you're doing, like,
00:49:30.280
But then you never look at the performance of it.
00:49:34.700
And so just that, the first question of the engine is what could happen is where, what are the challenges?
00:49:47.480
Does, just that, you know, slow down for a moment.
00:49:53.040
Instead of like, oh, that sounds like a great idea.
00:49:55.780
Elias, you've obviously grown quite a bit since I first met you,
00:50:00.460
you know, building these companies and leading these teams.
00:50:03.020
Looking back, who do you feel you needed to become
00:50:05.800
to be the person sitting here and leading this size of organization
00:50:08.940
and, you know, founding such an incredible company?
00:50:15.820
I just enjoy learning, and David has grown a lot too,
00:50:22.120
but he had a lot more startup experience than I had right when I was doing performable with him
00:50:28.880
as my first time co-founding something I was so stressed I was like that in the gutter I mean like
00:50:33.480
literally sick you know sometimes you have to fire someone you have to make a tough decision
00:50:38.500
you're dealing with a customer canceling um I remember you know just just feeling distraught
00:50:44.060
my hair was a mess I was just like I was destroyed started starting a company is hard
00:50:48.640
super and David was like so much more like you know polished and even killed and like you know
00:50:55.180
he just has it all together and so I kind of wanted I was like wow I need 10 years to be able
00:51:02.140
to be like that uh and so I would say him was one of them but now I joke around I was reading I'm
00:51:09.040
reading Good Prophet Charles Koch I don't know if you haven't read that oh my god it's good
00:51:12.620
insane insane yeah yeah and so it's like uh and i'm like over the weekend and i'm sending him
00:51:18.600
pictures now like book you know pages photos of pages like we just send back and forth
00:51:22.140
and i said this is amazing this is just keeps evolving me right and he goes i'm like i'm so
00:51:28.400
glad i'm so glad i'm reading so much more and he's like you were not ready before now you're ready
00:51:32.240
right and so i think that um now i'm reading and i'm just like being able to digest a lot more of
00:51:50.340
but I just love different things from different people.
00:51:58.640
I just told David, I texted him, like, let's just do Think Weeks.
00:52:01.080
Let me be together, you know, because I just talk a storm with him.
00:52:10.520
So Bill Gates, you know, Bezos, you know, so the system thinking of what he has, very few companies have systems like this at this size, right?
00:52:20.700
But every day, like, I've hired people from there, like, top technical leaders from Amazon, they work for me now.
00:52:26.820
And they're like, Elias, I would spend two to three days writing many versions of this PR, press releases, to go up the chain until, like, you know, it would take six months for Bezos to read one of my things.
00:52:37.720
And so, like, obviously that sounds to me like overkill, like crazy.
00:52:44.580
You know, with Coke is market-based management,
00:52:59.740
And so, like, he's talking about most companies die
00:53:04.560
because they don't innovate and they don't move fast
00:53:06.580
And they don't realize that the ground underneath them is shaking.
00:53:11.220
And so if you don't accept that and you don't move,
00:53:19.460
And the systems, to make sure that that doesn't happen,
00:53:24.900
It's like I would move fast and code it and show it.
00:53:29.500
How do we document this in a way that everybody understands
00:54:02.900
It sounds like they've really inspired your thinking.
00:54:07.880
thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity