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After more than two years — and nearly 100 episodes — as host of TechCrunch, he recently finished Podcast foundI learned a lot about how founders approach building their startups.
I’ve heard stories about how founders know when the time is right to expand from their core product, how startups approach recruiting, what makes entrepreneurs take the leap in the first place, and everything in between.
Although I’m not a founder, some teachings and advice I heard on the show stood out more than others. I’ve put together a short and sweet list of the top five pieces of advice I’ve heard on the show for founders that are both practical and philosophical.
Founders should lean on what they are not good at
While many of the founders talked about finding co-founders or early hires that helped fill gaps in experience or knowledge, Rippling’s co-founder and CEO Parker Conrad believes that the founders should do the opposite.
Conrad called the practice of hiring people to fill roles the founder isn’t good at or doesn’t want to work in bullshit.
“You should find the things you hate within the company, you should run to them and embrace them and just embrace them and focus on those things, because those are the things that will probably kill you,” Conrad said. “These are things you probably avoid because you’re uncomfortable focusing on them. I definitely saw that in myself, and the things you really hate, like, that’s where you should spend all your time.”
VCs are not always right
While the right venture capitalist can provide invaluable insight and guidance to a startup, good VCs are hard to find, and even the best VCs don’t always have the best advice for every startup.
When Ashley Tyrner, founder and CEO FarmboxRxa direct-to-consumer box company that was supposed to help solve the food problem told VCs to pivot into a meal-packaged company, which was the hot trend at the time. She’s glad she ignored the advice and got to work instead.
“Every vice president we talked to, any of them who were even remotely nice to us at the time, wanted us to become a meal package,” Tyrner said. “That’s not what we focused on. We didn’t want to jump into a series of meal packages. Looking back now, I’m really glad we never raised any equity and we still haven’t to this day. Most ration packages have, you know, slowly died.”
Instead, just a few years later, FarmboxRx was able to connect with insurance companies and start sending its boxes of products as part of patients’ prescriptions, a revenue stream that Tyner said has been really lucrative for the company.
It pays not to be the first
If you read a lot of PR pitches, as I do most days, a common theme is that many companies want to advertise that they were “first” in a technological innovation or new market. But is being first always the best thing?
Jordan Nathan, founder and CEO of the non-toxic housewares company Kimwould not necessarily agree. Nathan told TechCrunch that when he was preparing to launch Caraway’s first set of non-toxic cookware, he wasn’t initially thrilled that it looked like it would be the last to launch in an increasingly crowded category, but it worked. Nathan said the latest launch allowed the company to find gaps in the market that remained open compared to what had already been released, and allowed Caraway to speak directly to that audience.
“It’s helped us change our color palette, it’s helped us change our price point, what pieces we put in the set,” Nathan said. “And while many other brands have done many things right, we have managed to design our own space within the kitchen [direct-to-consumer] a world where others have not played.”
Companies should try to get to market now, regardless of their long-term goals
While some startups build software that can start acquiring customers and making money within a week, the same cannot be said for startups looking to introduce innovative deep technology or moonlighting companies. But that doesn’t mean these deep tech companies have to wait years to make a profit.
Joe Wolfel, co-founder and CEO of the company Terradetha company that wants to build autonomous drones to map the ocean floor, told Found that Terradepth has been very intentional about setting up its revenue streams. While there’s still a long way to go before its autonomous drones start roaming the ocean floor, the company wants to provide the same services to commercial and government users in the meantime, manually and via a dashboard, because companies need information about the ocean floor now.
“One thing you learn pretty quickly in combat is that you can’t control something that doesn’t move,” Wolfel said. “There’s no substitute for learning in the field, right? We eat our own dog food every day.”
We heard a different approach to the same concept from Paul Hedrickfounder of the western clothing company Tecovas. Hedrick told Found that he knew he wanted Tecovas to be a direct-to-consumer brand, but he didn’t want to just set up a website and wait for sales to begin. That’s why he started selling his boots out of the back of his car at farmer’s markets right away so he could get customer feedback and sales right from the start.
Remember to build a company around your product
When a startup is just getting started, the founders are focused on building the product and getting it to market – as they probably should be. But founders should make sure they don’t forget to think about building an actual company around the product.
Gavin Ubertico-founder and CEO of chip maker Etched, told Found that one early mishap the company had was that they didn’t think about instituting employee benefits until it was too late. Uberti said the company only realized it had waited too long when one of its employees broke his leg before the company set up health insurance — not a quick process to fix.
Uberti’s story was a good reminder that when founders are trying to go fast and break things, it’s important to also take care of all the other elements needed to build a lasting company that cares about its employees.
