Dan Martell - August 13, 2020


Why Hiring a Business Coach Was a Game Changer with Elias @ Drift.com - Escape Velocity Show #34

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
David Cancel Bill Gates Bezos Marshall Goldsmith Steve Jobs Good Prophet Charles Koch Patrick Lencioni Hyper Growth Bob Simpson Chris Biss Lincioni Lookery Kildini Shopify Dalio Elias Dude Stud Josh Mike and 1 more
The Perfect Weekly SaaS Sales Meeting Agenda Biggest Mistakes I Made in My 20’s

Episode Stats


Length

54 minutes

Words per minute

196.01

Word count

10,644

Sentence count

830

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

16

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Not have an ability to sell, it's crucial.
00:00:03.260 Everybody sells.
00:00:04.380 So engineers need to understand that.
00:00:06.120 They need to sell their ideas.
00:00:07.900 They need to sell their projects.
00:00:09.620 Admission sequence start.
00:00:11.720 Three, two, one.
00:00:22.740 Elias, what's up, man?
00:00:24.360 Dude, I appreciate you coming on.
00:00:25.680 Thank you for having me.
00:00:26.540 So CTO, co-founder, Drift.
00:00:30.000 What's the scale of Drift today?
00:00:33.080 Like, where are you guys at?
00:00:34.480 We have grown very quickly, right?
00:00:36.740 I think, you know, David always likes,
00:00:38.620 my partner, David Cancel, obviously.
00:00:40.240 Dude, such a stud.
00:00:40.960 Stud, because of him, I'm here.
00:00:43.340 I think that we have grown, it was two of us.
00:00:46.580 Yep.
00:00:47.420 Then, like.
00:00:47.920 This is five, you just hit the five year.
00:00:49.380 We just hit five years on LinkedIn.
00:00:50.760 Yeah, it was, all of the sudden people are congratulating me
00:00:53.620 and I'm like, whoa, whoa, what happened?
00:00:55.580 Five years?
00:00:57.260 Time flies.
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. 0.76
00:01:15.040 Oh, crap. 0.94
00:01:16.220 You hired 150 people in a year. 1.00
00:01:18.740 In a year.
00:01:19.700 That's hyper growth.
00:01:21.960 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.
00:01:36.860 David, I know, invited me to speak.
00:01:38.120 I was lost.
00:01:38.800 They were trying to find me on the street.
00:01:40.060 I jumped out of my car.
00:01:40.860 Somebody parked my car.
00:01:42.420 I don't know.
00:01:42.780 It was like you guys ran a meetup back then.
00:01:44.620 It was right, I think it was while you guys were doing Performable.
00:01:47.320 Do you remember this?
00:01:48.360 Absolutely.
00:01:49.080 I wonder if it was a party too.
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.
00:01:57.640 So yeah, I definitely remember coming to town.
00:01:59.940 Yeah, this was like seven, eight years ago.
00:02:01.620 2009.
00:02:02.300 Yeah, it was 2009.
00:02:03.660 We go way back.
00:02:04.300 And, um, you know, I, I remember back then and you also did Lookery.
00:02:08.300 Was it Lookery was with him as well?
00:02:09.700 Absolutely.
00:02:10.380 So Lookery, Performable with Josh and then HubSpot and then Drift and always on the technical
00:02:18.280 side?
00:02:19.220 Yes.
00:02:19.780 Okay.
00:02:19.960 But I think, you know, I definitely can flex.
00:02:24.180 I can do a lot of operations as well.
00:02:26.460 So I spend a lot of time.
00:02:28.180 You know, David is outside, external face.
00:02:30.560 He's better looking.
00:02:32.020 And I'm inside.
00:02:33.160 I don't know, man.
00:02:33.800 And so I definitely, we...
00:02:36.360 We're going to do a look-off.
00:02:37.880 I think you do OK with that, man.
00:02:39.340 A look-off, a lookery.
00:02:40.360 And so we, you know, definitely I get to spend a lot of time.
00:02:43.620 He's on marketing.
00:02:44.940 He's on finance, on, you know, fundraising.
00:02:48.360 Product.
00:02:48.860 I mean, the visionary, right?
00:02:49.940 Yeah, such a visionary.
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.
00:02:56.920 OK.
00:02:57.280 So I spend a good amount of time in sales and recruiting.
00:02:59.440 OK.
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.
00:03:08.400 He's an incredible learner.
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.
00:03:17.600 They get David, who leads product.
00:03:19.260 They get you, that leads engineering.
00:03:20.560 I mean, that was, I think, an incredible acquisition
00:03:22.840 for them and for you guys, right?
00:03:25.060 And you did five years there?
00:03:26.560 Three.
00:03:27.060 Three.
00:03:27.560 And then built out the Dublin office.
00:03:31.260 I know you spent time.
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.
00:03:49.440 Absolutely.
00:03:49.940 Yeah, and have product owners and whatnot.
00:03:51.540 Product owners.
00:03:52.120 And we believe that when you open offices,
00:03:55.660 we believe in geographical distribution.
00:03:58.380 But we like to have the office own a single product.
00:04:01.480 OK.
00:04:01.940 And so we wanted them to own something
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.
00:04:10.140 That way, it's not like this is the place
00:04:12.320 where these type of people like, yeah.
00:04:13.700 Exactly.
00:04:14.280 Like I even, I was discussing with a friend recently
00:04:16.320 and the whole idea of like a labs area.
00:04:18.600 It's kind of weird because it's like the people that
00:04:20.140 work on labs are the cool kids.
00:04:22.320 And then there's the bug, people are fixing bugs and stuff.
00:04:24.420 It just doesn't create a great culture.
00:04:26.040 Absolutely.
00:04:26.540 And that's what I want to, I mean,
00:04:27.820 I find fascinating about what you guys have done.
00:04:30.520 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.
00:04:38.540 So how do you think about building,
00:04:40.620 especially on the technical side, right?
00:04:42.240 A lot of founders are, in my world,
00:04:44.640 predominantly like marketing or business focus.
00:04:47.380 When you look at building an engineering culture,
00:04:51.680 what are some of the core tenets that you look at
00:04:54.920 to make sure that that's the strong?
00:04:57.280 I think it's really about momentum.
00:04:59.560 It really has to be about speed because what happens
00:05:04.960 is that we have this natural tendency
00:05:06.940 to just be more careful, be more thoughtful, plan,
00:05:11.200 and prepare worry of whether this is right,
00:05:15.380 whether it's done correctly, whether it's architected,
00:05:17.960 whether it's going to scale.
00:05:19.040 Because you guys get the call if the thing goes down.
00:05:20.620 Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:05:22.420 But I think, in general, humanity just likes to be careful,
00:05:28.220 not risk-takers.
00:05:31.820 And so I think that that's really the essence of Drift.
00:05:34.640 It's about speed.
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.
00:05:56.780 And so it's just, you know, up and down.
00:05:59.780 Has that been true for each company?
00:06:01.080 You've always started with the code?
00:06:02.280 Absolutely.
00:06:02.660 Like you wrote the code?
00:06:03.160 Yeah.
00:06:03.620 Cool.
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.
00:06:16.820 Like a sales engineer.
00:06:18.360 Exactly, in every way.
00:06:20.340 And then you just can't code because you're like booked solid all day long.
00:06:25.620 And so the same is with HubSpot.
00:06:27.740 Built a lot of the code initially.
00:06:29.960 I think I focused on the email, CMS product.
00:06:33.180 Those things were the first thing we needed to rebuild
00:06:34.980 because we didn't have that part of the product,
00:06:38.980 that marketing automation,
00:06:40.640 be able to send the email stuff
00:06:42.200 that we had started at Performable.
00:06:44.260 And, you know, at the end,
00:06:46.600 about 150 in the organization,
00:06:48.760 just in the product organization when we left.
00:06:52.380 And then I couldn't code anymore.
00:06:54.720 So I remember writing a blog post
00:06:56.160 when I first started realizing that pattern.
00:06:58.580 And I said, why I don't code anymore?
00:07:01.540 And when we went to start Drift,
00:07:04.520 Guess what?
00:07:05.360 It started coding.
00:07:06.020 It started coding again.
00:07:06.980 And so if you look at my GitHub, I'm proud of it
00:07:09.840 as an engineer, like when people say.
00:07:11.320 I mean, dude, it's pretty rare that the fact
00:07:13.840 that you're saying you also sold.
00:07:15.240 Because to have a co-founder that can code,
00:07:17.960 that was involved in the product, talk to the customer,
00:07:19.880 be able to give perspective on, is this easy?
00:07:22.860 Is this hard?
00:07:23.560 Like, I mean, it's a.
00:07:25.260 I think that everybody should be a learner
00:07:27.200 and should push themselves.
00:07:28.660 Not have an ability to sell, it's crucial.
00:07:31.680 Everybody sells.
00:07:32.840 So engineers need to understand that.
00:07:34.520 They need to sell their ideas.
00:07:36.320 They need to sell their projects.
00:07:37.580 Especially for hiring.
00:07:38.420 Technology.
00:07:39.380 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.
00:07:43.400 Well, how do you look at selling?
00:07:45.980 I mean, just in general, what's your approach to selling?
00:07:48.420 What are the different parts to it?
00:07:50.180 Is this formal, or you've just learned intuition now?
00:07:54.020 It's both.
00:07:55.020 I mean, I think they're doing a lot more reading about it
00:07:57.700 and understanding.
00:08:00.080 you know, David is always pushing books on me.
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,
00:08:09.140 Never Split the Difference.
00:08:10.760 And so I love those types of books.
00:08:13.140 I think everything is selling, right?
00:08:14.960 If you want to write some code, if you want somebody,
00:08:16.940 if you want to convince your manager
00:08:18.380 to work on a specific project.
00:08:19.640 How do you do that?
00:08:20.260 Because that's one that people are wondering.
00:08:21.680 How do you sell internally?
00:08:23.000 I get when a customer has a pain,
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.
00:08:28.580 How does somebody sell internally?
00:08:30.500 Like how would you coach your new engineering hires
00:08:33.260 to sell up ideas?
00:08:36.200 It's like you do with everything, right?
00:08:37.540 It's like you have to present the pain.
00:08:40.080 You have to understand it.
00:08:41.540 You have to show people you care.
00:08:43.160 Do you want to help?
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
00:08:49.420 building, and you're not just abandoning them.
00:08:51.020 Giving them confidence.
00:08:51.820 Yeah, it's like, I'll take care of this.
00:08:54.260 Plus, I'm also going to deliver this.
00:08:56.840 So it's doing all the things you normally do
00:08:58.740 in a sales conversation.
00:08:59.840 Make sure that you've got that.
00:09:01.040 When you do present the idea, and at the end of the day,
00:09:05.140 what they're buying is that confidence
00:09:08.180 that it's the right decision, that you're not going to, 1.00
00:09:11.060 it's not going to make them look stupid. 1.00
00:09:12.600 Yes. 0.99
00:09:12.940 It's not going to cause unnecessary risk.
00:09:16.060 Why have that tension?
00:09:17.860 Yeah.
00:09:18.180 It needs to be just as subtle, as delicate,
00:09:22.100 as somebody trusting you and giving you their money, right?
00:09:25.920 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,
00:09:33.560 you have very few resources.
00:09:35.580 Nobody ever has the amount of resources.
00:09:37.100 It's the same thing.
00:09:37.360 It's money.
00:09:37.780 It's a resource.
00:09:38.480 Yeah.
00:09:38.680 It's everything.
00:09:39.140 It's the same.
00:09:39.880 And so the problem is if you're an engineer
00:09:41.920 and you just present it as, I need to do this, I'm right,
00:09:44.280 and this is the right thing.
00:09:45.220 Which is the, I feel like, I call it mad dog mentality
00:09:48.100 amongst technical leaders.
00:09:49.860 I had a CTO, and he was just cold, dude.
00:09:52.820 He was just like, ah.
00:09:53.860 And I was just like, man, add a little bit of compassion,
00:09:57.700 empathy, and you're going to get a lot more.
00:09:59.680 Exactly.
00:10:00.340 I love that that's something you encourage.
00:10:03.340 Like you said, role modeling.
00:10:04.960 How does your product or engineering,
00:10:06.620 well, let's just talk engineering.
00:10:07.840 How does the team structure today?
00:10:09.880 What's the different areas of the business
00:10:11.580 if somebody is trying to figure out where, at scale,
00:10:14.300 what does this look like?
00:10:15.640 Yes.
00:10:16.460 The way that it works is that we have these ratios.
00:10:22.300 They're lost.
00:10:23.080 You can't.
00:10:23.580 You can't violate them.
00:10:24.580 And everybody wants to change them all the time.
00:10:27.280 Such as?
00:10:29.920 Three-person teams.
00:10:32.120 And you can combine two three-person teams into a squad.
00:10:36.040 So three engineers.
00:10:37.660 All three have to be codings.
00:10:39.740 So you have a tech lead, two engineers that are kind of
00:10:43.480 reporting to that person.
00:10:45.160 Not full managerial responsibilities,
00:10:47.440 because that's overwhelming.
00:10:48.440 Yeah, yeah.
00:10:48.880 It's not going to talk about comps, their career stuff.
00:10:52.080 Career stuff, no.
00:10:53.060 But it's like that day-to-day.
00:10:54.440 Yeah.
00:10:54.720 And the person that leads and makes the decisions.
00:10:56.480 Prioritizing, backlog, all that stuff.
00:10:57.900 Yeah.
00:10:58.080 So you have two teams with three.
00:11:00.220 Product manager to six engineers.
00:11:02.260 OK.
00:11:02.780 But that product manager has to be fixed to those two,
00:11:05.220 three-person teams.
00:11:06.000 OK.
00:11:06.220 So that doesn't change.
00:11:07.160 That cannot change.
00:11:07.940 You cannot have a product manager.
00:11:10.940 Meaning, when I say it can't change, it's never perfect.
00:11:13.820 Yeah.
00:11:14.000 You know, we're always behind one product manager. 0.99
00:11:16.120 There's some cultural shit. 0.99
00:11:17.560 There's stuff like that. 0.99
00:11:19.040 But we never be like, OK, let's have this product manager
00:11:22.060 that we agree will have 12 engineers.
00:11:25.220 No.
00:11:25.640 Too many.
00:11:26.040 Too many, right?
00:11:26.960 And so because of the pace at which we produce.
00:11:29.320 Yeah.
00:11:29.660 Maybe in a different organization.
00:11:30.820 Is this like the pizza concept?
00:11:32.480 Yeah, it's similar.
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
00:11:37.760 to those six engineers.
00:11:39.040 That's another one to six.
00:11:40.340 OK.
00:11:40.700 One to six product designer, one to six product management.
00:11:43.620 And then we attach a support person.
00:11:48.140 So from the support organization.
00:11:49.260 For research and post-appointing.
00:11:50.440 It's the voice of the customer, right?
00:11:52.900 And so what happens is we have this structure
00:11:55.060 that every two weeks, biweekly, the team presents to the VP
00:11:58.840 of engineering.
00:11:59.820 It used to be to me, but now it's
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.
00:12:08.220 And there's a slide that says top three issues
00:12:11.460 that that team owns from the support perspective
00:12:14.740 that that person has to voice.
00:12:15.440 Like that they're going to resolve?
00:12:17.060 Yeah, they have to resolve.
00:12:18.160 OK.
00:12:18.700 So I get to see it.
00:12:19.440 So there's never like a misalignment.
00:12:21.300 Oh, no.
00:12:21.820 But it's like people from sales or from other places
00:12:24.240 or success.
00:12:24.860 Oh, they're not listening to us.
00:12:26.240 Yeah.
00:12:26.540 No, no, no.
00:12:27.240 It's like, what do you mean?
00:12:28.060 It's like, we know what the customers are saying.
00:12:30.420 These are the tickets.
00:12:31.320 These are the tickets.
00:12:32.020 These are the top three issues, not just the tickets.
00:12:34.300 We track that as well.
00:12:35.800 But these are the issues that a support person is
00:12:38.920 empowered to say to us.
00:12:41.040 This, to me, is you guys are not just keep surfacing over and over.
00:12:45.060 Most people would assume the product manager
00:12:46.880 would own the voice of the customer.
00:12:48.320 but you're saying it's important to have somebody that's
00:12:50.820 Complimented.
00:12:51.560 Yeah, to give them the information,
00:12:53.480 to go looking at stuff, to give them the specific nuance
00:12:56.240 in the language.
00:12:56.740 Owning is different than all kinds of sources.
00:12:59.560 Yeah, the input, the interface.
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.
00:13:06.540 Yes.
00:13:07.000 Yeah, so do they stay on a specific area of the product?
00:13:11.960 Like, are they part of?
00:13:12.860 Yes.
00:13:13.240 OK, so in the grand scheme, if you have like,
00:13:16.880 How do you guys break it down today for Drift?
00:13:18.680 You have like messaging and core infrastructure.
00:13:20.660 Exactly.
00:13:21.160 So you have infrastructures.
00:13:23.600 Core and infrastructure is a dirty word.
00:13:26.120 We don't like it, David especially.
00:13:28.640 We have this aversion.
00:13:29.420 I love that.
00:13:29.960 So you don't like core infrastructure.
00:13:31.460 I just don't hate it.
00:13:33.020 Why is that?
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.
00:13:42.380 And nothing is focused around the customer
00:13:45.140 because it's infrastructure.
00:13:46.860 And so I battle that all the time with engineers.
00:13:51.460 I love it.
00:13:52.320 Yeah.
00:13:53.420 And I'm like, David is in the complete extreme.
00:13:55.180 Because really, everything's a product.
00:13:56.680 Everything has to be.
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?
00:14:05.080 And so if you're building core infrastructure,
00:14:07.740 then they start saying, well, my customers
00:14:09.380 are the developers in the team.
00:14:11.500 And I'm like, no, no, no.
00:14:12.720 We're here to serve our customer, Drift's customer.
00:14:16.220 And so how are you doing that?
00:14:19.040 And so I just like, yeah, I even, yeah,
00:14:23.360 we have like three DevOps people in the whole organization,
00:14:26.360 100 people in product.
00:14:28.280 And it's a-
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.
00:14:45.580 I did all the deployment infrastructure,
00:14:47.620 did all the Terraform.
00:14:48.520 It's just part of becoming higher throughput
00:14:50.920 for the customer.
00:14:51.840 Exactly.
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.
00:15:00.520 Yeah.
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.
00:15:06.160 It's so crazy.
00:15:06.740 I remember reading the Facebook engineering blogger.
00:15:10.180 It's like on Facebook, it's their blog.
00:15:11.980 And they're pushing to production all the time.
00:15:16.240 And just incredible release cycles,
00:15:18.740 which is anybody that's been doing this for a long time.
00:15:20.740 But my understanding is that Facebook
00:15:22.600 is 90% infrastructure.
00:15:24.460 Oh, and that's it.
00:15:25.300 And they have a lot of those dev ops
00:15:28.320 and building dev tools and all that stuff.
00:15:30.760 So I'm not sure how they think of it.
00:15:32.500 But I like the concept of saying there's no core things
00:15:35.020 because it's all product.
00:15:36.140 It's all.
00:15:37.360 Facebook is my opposite.
00:15:38.820 I do think that they are.
00:15:40.300 And it fascinates me.
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.
00:16:01.700 It's worth not trying to optimize,
00:16:03.640 is this running on the processor?
00:16:06.580 Because they have 15,000 servers or whatever,
00:16:08.740 and there's real benefit.
00:16:10.380 There's real benefit, real money.
00:16:11.680 But in your stage, for most companies,
00:16:13.560 it's really just about how fast can we add value
00:16:15.240 to the customer.
00:16:15.740 Exactly.
00:16:16.500 And just doing the right amount of work
00:16:18.300 to get the most value instead of overdoing it.
00:16:20.820 So now we have three, because it's like you have security,
00:16:25.200 you have some projects, and so it's
00:16:27.480 getting to a point where I'm OK with that, right?
00:16:30.480 But the key thing that I say to them
00:16:32.440 is they have to have their own clear work.
00:16:34.400 If they're protecting the systems for our customers,
00:16:37.140 then that's fine, right?
00:16:38.020 if they're SOC 2 compliance and things like that.
00:16:41.440 Somebody has to own that 100% of the time,
00:16:44.740 not really be in the middle of deployment.
00:16:47.520 And then how do you think of, like when you said the demos,
00:16:52.960 I believe, and I heard this from Dharmesh,
00:16:55.700 and I think David brought this from Performable.
00:16:58.600 You guys do a carnival, or what was it called?
00:17:02.620 Science Fair.
00:17:03.200 Science Fair.
00:17:03.820 So do you guys still have that concept at Drift?
00:17:06.100 Yeah, so it's slightly different.
00:17:08.040 I'm thinking maybe bringing that back.
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.
00:17:16.760 It was maybe once a month.
00:17:18.100 Yes.
00:17:18.520 And that way, nobody could just demo something
00:17:21.500 that wasn't well-baked or whatever.
00:17:23.600 That was exactly.
00:17:24.860 It might have morphed, obviously.
00:17:25.560 It morphed.
00:17:26.300 We kept adding rules to that.
00:17:28.680 And yeah, this is interesting.
00:17:29.960 So it used to be, I think if I remember correctly,
00:17:33.020 but it used to be literally like a fair.
00:17:37.500 Yeah.
00:17:37.780 And like, you know, posters and like show what you did.
00:17:40.060 Really?
00:17:40.480 Yeah, so tables.
00:17:41.460 And people could walk around and I think I-
00:17:43.360 A science fair.
00:17:43.660 Yeah, like a science fair.
00:17:44.620 Wow.
00:17:44.940 It was called science fair.
00:17:45.720 Yeah.
00:17:46.060 But then we kind of changed that and we were like, do presentations.
00:17:50.120 Yeah.
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.
00:17:58.720 Yeah.
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
00:18:08.940 that comes from local host.
00:18:11.040 Everything has to be demoed from app.drift.com.
00:18:15.100 OK, app.
00:18:15.880 Wow, in production.
00:18:16.740 Because we have gating systems.
00:18:18.780 So it's like, if it's not there, get it for us,
00:18:21.180 and don't show it.
00:18:22.440 And so force everybody to know what, you know,
00:18:25.440 learning what done means is very important.
00:18:27.660 Yeah, the definition of done.
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.
00:18:35.360 You know, I read a book.
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.
00:18:49.400 It was very efficient.
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.
00:18:55.680 Right.
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.
00:19:03.060 This is nice, but you're at 20%.
00:19:05.480 There's 80% that needs to be done.
00:19:07.160 It's such a great forcing function
00:19:08.600 to get your team crystallized on.
00:19:14.120 Because it pulls them, right?
00:19:16.620 Is that the benefit?
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
00:19:27.440 structures that pulls or incentivize people,
00:19:30.180 motivates them to do the thing you would want as a founder,
00:19:32.740 which is drive this as fast as you can, right?
00:19:36.700 I think, yeah, let's try to organize this a little bit.
00:19:41.300 My thoughts, usually I'm an external thinker.
00:19:43.180 But yes, the original question, how do you infuse culture?
00:19:47.680 And so I started with the role modeling.
00:19:49.600 And it had to be about me showing them
00:19:53.560 that it is true what I'm saying, which is,
00:19:56.620 you can ship something quickly.
00:19:58.380 You can ship an MVP.
00:20:00.240 You can get it in front of the customers.
00:20:02.880 What does done means?
00:20:04.420 And so I coded for like two years straight, you know?
00:20:11.620 And that is what set the tone for people
00:20:14.200 to know that I wasn't just this like VP of engineer talking,
00:20:17.520 just like, this is what I wanted to be.
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
00:20:47.320 It's called Show & Tell, where we used to sit,
00:20:50.340 and everybody would project and say,
00:20:52.100 this is what I worked on this week.
00:20:54.220 In those days, you could show.
00:20:55.980 Is that like an all-hand?
00:20:56.920 It was, but we were like 10 people,
00:20:59.220 and it was like, this is what I worked on.
00:21:00.440 And you just say something, share it with the team,
00:21:02.120 and we just wrap up the week.
00:21:03.780 Now, it's not an all-hands, it's Show & Tell.
00:21:07.200 And so teams present.
00:21:08.500 Every department will volunteer someone to go tell a story,
00:21:12.060 and there's a competition and a bake-off.
00:21:13.660 That's cool.
00:21:14.160 Of like who wins the gold in Mike based on strict stuff.
00:21:17.860 Storytelling.
00:21:18.720 So we're teaching the whole company how to be storytellers, right?
00:21:22.780 You have to be on time.
00:21:24.080 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?
00:21:38.500 No.
00:21:38.860 Okay, so it has to be still-
00:21:39.680 It's the same thing, right?
00:21:40.700 So we're carrying the same principles.
00:21:42.320 So it has to be done.
00:21:43.700 and it has to be in production, it has to be real, do that.
00:21:46.800 Then you have-
00:21:47.900 It's neat because it brings an element of, I think,
00:21:49.960 Bezos talks about writing the press release.
00:21:51.860 Exactly.
00:21:52.680 If you can't tell a story-
00:21:54.460 Explain it.
00:21:55.020 Yeah.
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-
00:21:59.580 Nobody cares.
00:22:00.000 Why do we build this?
00:22:00.700 Yeah.
00:22:01.400 Cool.
00:22:02.600 And then you have this other thing that we developed.
00:22:04.940 It's called the bi-weeklies, right?
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?
00:22:18.160 And I interrupt a lot.
00:22:22.480 I talk a lot.
00:22:23.680 On the same way, yeah.
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.
00:22:36.660 At this meeting, it's only engineers.
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.
00:22:45.460 And so it has to be a recording.
00:22:47.380 But it has to be a recording because I didn't want to spend time.
00:22:49.600 We didn't have that much.
00:22:50.600 It's either 15 or 30 minutes with the team.
00:22:52.580 And I didn't have time to wait for an engineer to set up their local host.
00:22:55.780 Oh, this branch, let me switch.
00:22:57.020 Let me compile NPM, this Java, this stock.
00:23:00.680 Instead, record up to a five-minute video with the product manager.
00:23:04.940 So even time limits.
00:23:05.980 And so they would tell me anything they wanted, and I couldn't stop this video.
00:23:10.700 And it was product manager.
00:23:12.000 Product manager, but sometimes engineers would do it.
00:23:15.380 And so the first five minutes was that.
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
00:23:31.780 dedicated to it.
00:23:33.080 And we've been evolving that.
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.
00:23:43.140 Yeah.
00:23:43.400 And to ask, are we on the right track?
00:23:45.500 Let them drive the conversation more.
00:23:46.400 Let them drive it.
00:23:47.160 So you're totally right is that we have to switch it.
00:23:49.740 And so when you have that, it's their meeting.
00:23:52.920 You have to use it wisely.
00:23:54.220 They have to get the things they want to resolve that day.
00:23:56.120 Is it 30 minutes per team?
00:23:57.100 It's 30 minutes per team.
00:23:58.800 Five minutes on the video.
00:23:59.960 Absolutely.
00:24:00.480 And then 25 minutes for discussion.
00:24:02.020 Yeah.
00:24:02.460 So come prepare with questions.
00:24:03.540 Come prepare.
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
00:25:05.060 No, they're in charge.
00:25:07.220 They get to drive, and they get to set what they want to accomplish.
00:25:09.420 So you get to author versus editor.
00:25:11.260 So you get to edit, but they author, and that way they feel ownership around it.
00:25:14.980 Absolutely.
00:25:15.700 And then you mentioned coaching, that you got better at this through coaching.
00:25:19.080 Are you talking about, like, you have a coach?
00:25:21.080 Yes.
00:25:21.560 Okay, and how does that help you as a technical leader, you know, or just as an individual, I guess?
00:25:27.480 Like, what does your coaching look like?
00:25:28.840 What kind of things have you worked on?
00:25:30.260 What's the ROI for you?
00:25:32.840 It's two things.
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
00:25:59.380 And I'm like, coaches, what is this?
00:26:01.360 How would it work?
00:26:02.360 What is this new thing?
00:26:03.060 It's a fad.
00:26:03.660 Everybody has to have a coach.
00:26:05.180 And he made this point that only musicians and athletes have coaches.
00:26:11.420 Nobody else has them.
00:26:12.760 And how do we expect to get better?
00:26:15.080 He goes, I'm a surgeon.
00:26:16.480 And who says that I'm a surgeon and I can just get better by myself?
00:26:21.340 I have lives in my hands.
00:26:23.500 It's serious.
00:26:24.280 It's serious stuff.
00:26:25.660 And then so he hired a coach.
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.
00:26:40.940 Yeah.
00:26:41.200 And then he would be operating in darkness.
00:26:44.000 Perspective, yeah.
00:26:44.620 And so he was like, wow.
00:26:46.900 And so he would tell him all this stuff.
00:26:49.140 So that left me thinking I made it a goal.
00:26:51.120 I was like, I'm going to go find a coach.
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.
00:27:01.740 All the people out there.
00:27:03.420 Psychologists and that kind of, you know, like, go lay down on a couch.
00:27:07.300 I'm going to coach you.
00:27:08.380 And I tried that.
00:27:09.700 I tried talking to them, and I just didn't feel comfortable.
00:27:12.880 Yeah.
00:27:13.100 I felt too, like.
00:27:14.380 Yeah.
00:27:14.760 And they were outside the industry.
00:27:16.040 Outside the industry.
00:27:17.100 And they're like.
00:27:17.820 They didn't have the domain expertise.
00:27:19.140 Domain expertise.
00:27:19.700 The context, yeah.
00:27:20.520 And I met this VP of engineering, and he, you know, I was going through that scale, right?
00:27:28.520 And it's like, oh, my God, so many teams.
00:27:30.240 And it's like, oh, I can't.
00:27:32.200 Hypergrowth.
00:27:32.800 Hypergrowth.
00:27:33.380 And he goes, yeah, you need to stop telling them.
00:27:39.480 You need to start asking them.
00:27:42.160 So I just like what he said to me during that interview.
00:27:45.160 And at the beginning, I went and met them.
00:27:46.360 It's interesting.
00:27:47.000 So you were looking to hire.
00:27:48.740 Yes.
00:27:49.140 And you were impressed with just his approach.
00:27:51.280 I didn't think he was going to be a fit.
00:27:53.880 I don't know.
00:27:54.240 I had these doubts on my mind.
00:27:55.860 I had this, like, you know, my first, probably second impression.
00:27:57.800 I was like, oh, no.
00:27:58.680 But I stayed there, and I had coffee with him.
00:28:01.560 And then he said that we were in the parking lot,
00:28:04.600 and we just totally hit it off, right?
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,
00:29:09.220 and it's like, I'm in the meeting,
00:29:11.500 and I would be like, you know, a tornado.
00:29:14.840 And then he would go meet with them after, then come back.
00:29:18.700 This is what they said.
00:29:19.680 And my team did not hold back.
00:29:21.340 So invaluable.
00:29:22.460 Talk about what?
00:29:23.680 I don't know if you, the book, What Got You Here?
00:29:25.900 Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.
00:29:27.500 I read that book when I was 28 and thought,
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.
00:29:36.500 Like, first company I didn't want.
00:29:37.600 I had two failed companies.
00:29:38.660 I was like, I got to change something,
00:29:39.760 or I'm going to keep doing this.
00:29:41.680 And to this day, it blows my mind.
00:29:44.900 He replied to my email schedule, because assistant schedule.
00:29:47.080 Marshall Goldsmith coaches Fortune 50 CEOs.
00:29:49.800 I was nobody.
00:29:51.160 Canadian, blah. 0.98
00:29:52.180 Anyways, he gets on the call with me.
00:29:54.160 Yeah, I was just like, you know, small town.
00:29:55.740 You never heard of it.
00:29:56.480 I like that chip on the shoulder.
00:29:57.920 Yeah, and he was so kind.
00:30:02.260 but the big thing I took away is what you said
00:30:03.800 was the 360 interviews.
00:30:05.460 Like he said, you know, the way I coach is like this.
00:30:08.000 One of the big things I do is I get feedback
00:30:09.500 from the whole team because I want perspective.
00:30:11.620 So like, even though he was so kind,
00:30:14.320 he invited me to a workshop he did.
00:30:16.780 You know, I was asking him his fees.
00:30:18.240 He laughed.
00:30:18.720 He goes, the way I work is I get results.
00:30:20.220 And then people write me a check
00:30:21.300 for what value they think that's worth.
00:30:22.620 I was like, we're in a different, I'm sorry.
00:30:25.460 Like, I can't deal with that kind of pressure.
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
00:30:55.500 my team did not hold back with me. 0.96
00:30:57.160 Because I'm very direct, I say it.
00:30:59.520 Do you think it would have worked differently
00:31:00.840 if they were doing survey 360s versus an individual
00:31:04.060 proactively asking them that was a buffer?
00:31:07.320 Yeah, I think people were like, there was a shortage.
00:31:09.180 Because there's a bunch of tools out there
00:31:10.440 that allow you to do this, right?
00:31:12.000 Yeah.
00:31:12.500 Well, no, I'm just, yeah.
00:31:13.620 We grew too fast, right?
00:31:15.900 And so I was spread thin, trying to lead a team of like 50,
00:31:21.600 with no other VP of engineering.
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.
00:31:28.460 It was rough, right?
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,
00:31:39.920 I think that they felt comfortable.
00:31:41.580 Yeah.
00:31:42.120 He understood them, right?
00:31:44.060 And he also was helping me,
00:31:45.900 was doing coaching at the same time helping them.
00:31:48.640 And so I think that I was able to get
00:31:49.960 like a lot of raw feedback, you know,
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.
00:32:46.640 On the right, what did you do this week?
00:32:48.980 On the bottom left, then it's like,
00:32:51.360 what are you going to do next week?
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.
00:32:59.300 Yeah.
00:32:59.800 Where it's not me.
00:33:00.300 But you've got alignment on, yeah.
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.
00:33:10.280 Sounds like you don't do well with that.
00:33:11.740 I'm the same way.
00:33:12.240 I want an agenda.
00:33:12.960 I want structure. 1.00
00:33:13.860 I mean, I can shoot the shit for a little. 0.99
00:33:15.860 But it's just like, you don't want, yeah. 0.99
00:33:17.520 Is it productive?
00:33:18.200 Is it productive?
00:33:18.800 And now it's like, what are your challenges?
00:33:21.180 And so that teaches my direct reports
00:33:23.280 to bring the challenges.
00:33:24.900 I want to talk to you about this.
00:33:26.580 When are we going to get this done?
00:33:28.060 Ladders, when we resolve this.
00:33:29.560 What about my career?
00:33:30.720 Where I am?
00:33:31.560 Are you happy with my performance?
00:33:33.260 And so be able to build that relationship.
00:33:35.640 So that's interesting.
00:33:36.420 So you will ask them.
00:33:37.500 When did you say, are you happy with my performance?
00:33:39.000 OK, but are they asking for your feedback
00:33:40.920 on their performance?
00:33:41.620 Yes.
00:33:42.320 Do you give them permission?
00:33:43.620 Do you ask them for, hey, what do you need most from me?
00:33:46.140 Or how am I showing up as a leader?
00:33:46.900 That's what this quadrant is.
00:33:47.980 OK, perfect.
00:33:48.540 This is what does my vice president need?
00:33:52.620 Wow.
00:33:53.240 This is like, what problem do you personally have that I can help you with?
00:33:57.600 It's a pull.
00:33:58.360 Wow.
00:33:58.780 Yeah.
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.
00:34:04.460 Yeah.
00:34:05.420 And so the beauty of working, you know, fully form adults is that you're like, this is the agreement.
00:34:10.220 Yeah.
00:34:10.400 I will dedicate this hour to you.
00:34:12.380 It's the SLA.
00:34:13.140 And so whatever you bring in there, my job,
00:34:16.180 instead of me rambling about anything,
00:34:19.760 we're going to talk about what's on your bullets.
00:34:22.000 And so I'm mechanical now.
00:34:23.880 Yeah.
00:34:24.220 Immediately go to the bottom right of the quadrant,
00:34:26.280 project it on the screen, on the 101,
00:34:28.120 or I look it up on my phone.
00:34:29.740 Let's talk about this one.
00:34:31.360 Let's talk about this one.
00:34:32.480 And when I have six items there,
00:34:34.780 it controls me how much we spend on each.
00:34:36.620 Yeah.
00:34:36.980 Because I want to go through all of them.
00:34:38.040 You can just do the math.
00:34:39.520 You can do the math.
00:34:40.000 And so you go, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
00:34:41.640 And so he changed that, right?
00:34:43.500 And so that's something that then I said to David,
00:34:48.040 David, you should try.
00:34:50.020 And so like, and now David tried it.
00:34:52.860 Yeah, I remember reading some stuff about one-on-ones
00:34:54.600 that he was talking about.
00:34:55.540 No, but I'm saying the coach too.
00:34:56.800 Oh, OK, cool.
00:34:57.860 And so now we've been using him and leveraging
00:35:00.660 with other executives in the company.
00:35:02.300 Yeah.
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,
00:35:07.400 like coaching team.
00:35:08.660 Exactly.
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,
00:35:50.060 right?
00:35:50.660 The operating system.
00:35:51.500 I call it that.
00:35:52.000 It's a great name.
00:35:52.500 Of how we run.
00:35:53.000 Yeah, we're both technical.
00:35:54.540 It's the machine that everything runs on.
00:35:57.260 And so we become, so Patrick Lencioni, right?
00:36:02.060 Incredible author.
00:36:02.840 Incredible, right?
00:36:03.680 And so like.
00:36:04.260 Dysfunctional as a team.
00:36:05.300 Dysfunctional as a team.
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?
00:36:36.420 And those happen on Mondays?
00:36:37.420 Happen on Mondays.
00:36:38.320 They used to happen.
00:36:39.300 Happen on Fridays?
00:36:40.280 Yeah.
00:36:40.520 They used to be on Fridays.
00:36:41.960 I always tell people to switch them back.
00:36:43.740 At 5 p.m.
00:36:45.360 Oh, jeez.
00:36:46.200 It was 4 to 5, we would do that.
00:36:48.460 It's early days.
00:36:49.460 You got to like, we don't have time any other time.
00:36:51.920 So we would do it.
00:36:53.080 And those were painful.
00:36:54.920 It was painful because we were not as good and organized.
00:36:57.940 And so.
00:36:58.980 They can go long.
00:36:59.580 And they go long.
00:37:00.020 And then trillion-dollar codes, and everybody was giving me feedback.
00:37:03.200 It's time.
00:37:03.940 It's time.
00:37:04.340 We're grown-ups.
00:37:05.220 Like, let's just go.
00:37:06.620 So it's a one on Mondays.
00:37:08.680 And you make the time.
00:37:10.240 Yep.
00:37:10.440 That's the beauty of it.
00:37:11.340 Yep.
00:37:11.660 Locking the big rocks.
00:37:12.680 Monday, 1 o'clock.
00:37:14.820 We have Monday metrics at 9.30 in the morning.
00:37:18.240 Mondays for the whole company, 15 minutes.
00:37:20.620 Just like a little, like, kickstart.
00:37:22.280 What's the plan?
00:37:23.060 4 o'clock.
00:37:23.940 We actually, for the summer, it was 3 o'clock, 3 to 4 on Fridays.
00:37:27.540 Show and tell for the whole company.
00:37:29.280 That's a nice way to bookend the week.
00:37:31.040 Bookend the week.
00:37:31.520 Done.
00:37:31.860 Beginning in it.
00:37:32.780 Then we do quarterly company meeting.
00:37:36.220 We used to have it monthly.
00:37:38.240 We just switched to quarterly.
00:37:39.360 Yeah, quarterly.
00:37:39.940 And a celebration after go.
00:37:42.300 With your executive leadership team?
00:37:43.880 No, with the whole company.
00:37:44.800 OK, but do you do the exec offsite and then present?
00:37:47.540 There's two offsites.
00:37:48.680 There's the ELT, just like a few of us.
00:37:52.620 Yeah, like seven, six, seven people.
00:37:54.220 Four, five people.
00:37:54.940 Yeah, exactly.
00:37:55.460 People, CFO, CRO, that kind of stuff.
00:37:58.200 And everybody comes with their plan every day.
00:38:00.960 Right, and we have an agenda for that one.
00:38:02.460 That's a quarterly offsite.
00:38:03.940 Yeah.
00:38:05.040 That is just a one day or two day?
00:38:06.580 One day, conference room.
00:38:07.620 We just go close to the office.
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.
00:38:15.660 It's worth investing.
00:38:16.600 Yeah, just get out of your office.
00:38:17.960 Different space, clear as a mind, yeah.
00:38:21.080 After that meeting is the SLT, which is about 18, 20 of us.
00:38:25.560 Senior leadership team.
00:38:26.240 Senior leadership team.
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,
00:38:33.520 leave in the afternoon, have dinner, hang out,
00:38:35.680 and then a whole day of session.
00:38:38.040 And so that's the quarterly.
00:38:39.920 So in the early days, you can just do the ELT type thing.
00:38:42.780 Exactly.
00:38:43.280 It used to be one.
00:38:44.420 But now we split.
00:38:45.260 Yeah, makes sense.
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,
00:38:56.280 and health alignment.
00:38:58.180 And so we do that.
00:39:00.000 And that in itself has different cadences, right?
00:39:04.740 Because that quarterly offsite will
00:39:06.860 be like this one that we're about to have
00:39:09.180 is preparation for 2020.
00:39:11.660 And the other ones have different.
00:39:13.360 And the first one is like how we kicked off the year.
00:39:15.460 And do you do like the yearly sets off Q1,
00:39:19.880 and then you do it.
00:39:20.560 So it's the bigger one at the end of 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,
00:39:50.220 when we were 10 people, did an offsite,
00:39:54.200 went to New Hampshire, and two days.
00:39:57.860 And that's where we pivoted into, not pivoted,
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.
00:40:19.740 I mean, that's one thing, just that when
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.
00:40:32.880 We did that.
00:40:33.580 We did like six or seven projects.
00:40:35.460 I've seen a lot of teams do that.
00:40:37.200 Most of them just keep iterating until they run out of time
00:40:39.460 and money, because they can't commit.
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.
00:40:47.820 And a lot of VCs would be telling us,
00:40:50.200 I'm so glad you did what you do, that you scrapped that idea
00:40:53.520 and you moved on.
00:40:54.240 Because I have so many people that are stubborn.
00:40:56.920 It's so hard as an entrepreneur.
00:40:58.920 How do you give up?
00:41:01.500 You think that you can't give up.
00:41:03.000 And so you stick with something, and everybody knows
00:41:05.580 that it's clearly the wrong thing.
00:41:07.060 So we did a lot of that.
00:41:08.280 But it was that off-site.
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,
00:41:15.540 and all that kind of stuff.
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.
00:41:23.620 And he flipped me.
00:41:26.900 I'm kind of like the stubborn, like the skeptic.
00:41:29.860 Classic engineer.
00:41:30.820 Yeah, skeptic.
00:41:31.160 I hate that. 1.00
00:41:31.560 This is stupid. 1.00
00:41:32.340 Yeah, by default. 1.00
00:41:32.940 Yeah, this is bad.
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,
00:41:46.760 three-year goals where we're like,
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.
00:42:02.140 Yeah, big hair in Asia.
00:42:03.080 You know, it's just all kinds of stuff.
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
00:42:34.820 It doesn't come true.
00:42:35.900 And so those offsides are for that.
00:42:37.820 So critical.
00:42:39.000 So I would do all those things again.
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.
00:42:46.960 Yeah.
00:42:48.420 So everything needs to be an engine adrift.
00:42:52.540 Yeah.
00:42:52.780 And we have a collection of processes that help you achieve an outcome repeatedly.
00:42:59.640 Yeah.
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
00:43:26.920 Systematic thinking, right?
00:43:27.900 Yeah, systematic.
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.
00:43:34.940 Wow.
00:43:35.480 And brought in, and she started a company on this, right?
00:43:38.780 So you hit me up, right?
00:43:40.040 Yeah.
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.
00:43:50.220 What could happen?
00:43:51.800 What should happen?
00:43:53.320 That's the list.
00:43:54.200 Yeah.
00:43:54.480 The process.
00:43:55.540 Yeah.
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
00:45:43.300 been going on, we need to help that individual
00:45:45.640 and uncover that, instead of just like it's the code
00:45:48.520 or something like that.
00:45:49.600 And does your whole team kind of map that down
00:45:52.360 into their direct reports in regards to one-on-ones?
00:45:56.380 That's the ongoing effort right now.
00:45:58.720 But it's like we're evolving that.
00:46:00.220 And I just did a video for the leadership team
00:46:04.300 where basically I want everything at Drift
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,
00:46:42.920 because success and product, right?
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.
00:46:49.920 And it rolls up.
00:46:50.540 Because I want everything.
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,
00:47:00.160 has the playbook for me.
00:47:02.540 Yeah.
00:47:03.060 Like the VP of sales is going to come in,
00:47:04.560 and he's going to deploy a whole outbound, whatever it is you're building.
00:47:07.020 Whatever it is.
00:47:07.680 But most people don't have that systems thinking.
00:47:10.440 And so what they're deploying is like,
00:47:14.280 how does it fit your organization?
00:47:16.080 Instead, what I want is just the ability to,
00:47:18.240 what problem do we have?
00:47:20.080 And let's go try the first version.
00:47:21.960 And what are your thoughts on the dashboards or metrics
00:47:24.180 that you guys like?
00:47:26.700 It's been hard.
00:47:27.900 Because it's going to evolve, right?
00:47:29.060 It evolves.
00:47:29.560 And we are learning different ratios, metrics.
00:47:31.300 You're trying to shorthand it.
00:47:33.100 There's different systems you got to pull in.
00:47:35.680 But like in regards to, you know, maybe on a weekly or monthly, like do you guys do?
00:47:39.960 Yes, we have.
00:47:40.540 We have tons of that stuff.
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?
00:48:03.600 And so like-
00:48:04.860 Especially if they're choosing the numbers.
00:48:06.240 If they're choosing the numbers, or like the inconsistency,
00:48:08.520 or every team presents.
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.
00:48:15.040 And usually there's like a number,
00:48:16.700 but the data is dirty, or this, and it doesn't include this.
00:48:19.820 And it's just like, ugh.
00:48:21.040 So hard.
00:48:21.740 So hard.
00:48:22.500 But that, to me, is the optics that, you know,
00:48:25.080 that's where you need that to be in the conversation.
00:48:27.420 You can't run blind.
00:48:28.600 I mean, it's so crazy how one of the theories,
00:48:31.560 the consensus I have is like, in that weekly meeting,
00:48:34.140 you should have essentially everybody
00:48:36.380 update the numbers for their area of the business
00:48:38.400 and be connected to the numbers.
00:48:39.680 Like I feel like automated dashboards sometimes
00:48:42.420 disconnects the owners from it.
00:48:44.380 So I like to manually go into the system, pull it out,
00:48:48.360 check it, right?
00:48:49.580 The owners check it.
00:48:51.640 I just met with someone that is in operations
00:48:53.900 for a small startup, right?
00:48:55.440 And she was asking me, like, what should I do?
00:48:58.000 And I went into this whole engines thing.
00:49:00.280 And she says, too early, OKRs and that kind of stuff.
00:49:02.620 And I said, not really.
00:49:04.640 Just do a light version of it.
00:49:05.940 There's a light version.
00:49:06.760 But it's like, if you're going to, you know,
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?
00:49:16.620 What am I accomplished?
00:49:17.380 How do I know this is working?
00:49:19.100 And not abandon it.
00:49:20.120 Like, you know, especially when you're doing, like,
00:49:21.720 user acquisition stuff or that.
00:49:23.600 You can't say, like, I have this landing page
00:49:25.480 and this microsite and not look at it.
00:49:27.860 Yeah, you have, like, checkbox, funnels done.
00:49:30.280 But then you never look at the performance of it.
00:49:32.020 You move on to the next project.
00:49:33.560 Why did you do that?
00:49:34.700 And so just that, the first question of the engine is what could happen is where, what are the challenges?
00:49:39.800 What happens if nothing changes?
00:49:41.480 What happens if it goes wrong?
00:49:42.700 What could go wrong?
00:49:44.000 What is the goal?
00:49:44.680 What is the number?
00:49:45.300 Can we measure it, right?
00:49:47.480 Does, just that, you know, slow down for a moment.
00:49:50.400 Just think.
00:49:51.400 Yeah.
00:49:52.100 Why are you doing this?
00:49:53.040 Instead of like, oh, that sounds like a great idea.
00:49:55.040 Yeah.
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?
00:50:14.020 I don't know.
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
00:51:40.520 what is in these books, right?
00:51:42.140 You can appreciate it.
00:51:42.840 I can appreciate what it's saying.
00:51:44.060 The student is ready.
00:51:45.380 Yeah.
00:51:45.780 And so it's like, so who am I becoming?
00:51:47.760 I don't know.
00:51:48.660 I don't have like one specific individual,
00:51:50.340 but I just love different things from different people.
00:51:52.440 Like I just watched Bill Gates, you know?
00:51:54.140 It's so good.
00:51:54.640 The Netflix stuff.
00:51:55.280 It's like Bill Gates, it's mine.
00:51:56.180 Oh, it's like.
00:51:56.940 Dude, those Thinking Weeks?
00:51:57.860 Thinking Weeks.
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.
00:52:04.580 But I'm like, the bag of books, you know?
00:52:07.940 And I'm like, so I was like, Thinking Weeks.
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.
00:52:43.300 What's the essence of that?
00:52:44.580 You know, with Coke is market-based management,
00:52:47.760 and he's talking about the systems and, like,
00:52:50.220 how he's obsessing about how people present.
00:52:54.240 And Coke is talking about, like, you will –
00:52:57.720 I don't even know how to say his name, Coke.
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.
00:53:09.480 It's just crumbling.
00:53:11.220 And so if you don't accept that and you don't move,
00:53:13.060 you will be alive by the next competitor.
00:53:16.920 And so that obsession, I'm like, yes.
00:53:19.460 And the systems, to make sure that that doesn't happen,
00:53:22.740 is really what I'm doing at Drift.
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
00:53:32.660 how we move quickly at Drift, right?
00:53:34.660 and it has to be encoded into our DNA forever
00:53:38.440 to build a long-lasting company.
00:53:40.980 How do people get a hold of you?
00:53:44.000 Twitter.
00:53:45.060 Yeah, and what's your handle?
00:53:46.320 L-E-S-T, E-L-I-A-S-T.
00:53:49.140 Check it out.
00:53:49.760 You had the girl from Bridgewater,
00:53:52.060 the woman you mentioned.
00:53:53.000 You can connect people if they're interested.
00:53:55.160 Go check out the books.
00:53:56.120 She's amazing.
00:53:56.400 Yeah, everybody, like,
00:53:57.580 I know we dropped a lot of quick terms,
00:53:59.380 you know, Lincioni, Cialdini.
00:54:01.520 There's just so many great authors.
00:54:02.900 It sounds like they've really inspired your thinking.
00:54:04.660 I really appreciate you man
00:54:05.960 it's been a great conversation
00:54:06.940 thanks man
00:54:07.880 thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity
00:54:11.300 be sure to like and subscribe
00:54:12.940 and leave a comment with your biggest insight
00:54:15.380 from our conversation
00:54:16.480 be sure to check out the next episode