The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:14:24 · Jason Lemkin
[00:14:24] S2: No. I just don't think most CROs, if they were just an adviser, not not a... I mean, he's not a full time employee. He's an adviser. He's not even on the board. A board observer. That's important, right? But there is a distinction between a board observer for a little while and a board member. A CRO, not a CTO, not a founder, not a CEO. Yet maybe somewhat retired as far as I understand it. You know, made a lot of money at Snowflake. That's fine. Nothing wrong for many for retiring. Gets what seems to be the greatest job offer. It's going to happen. And then says to the other CEO, I got this offer. I'm going to take it. It'd be nice if there was a little more temporal separation. But I just think most CROs that find the job of a lifetime that are just an adviser to another, they wouldn't even see a conflict. The way the way we think about conflicts as founders, I think a lot of CROs think of it as a game. Like competitors are often really friends with each other CROs. They see it all. My job's to beat Mongo. My job at Mongo is to beat whomever. And anyhow, I just thought founder is shocking, but I don't know if the CRO is an advisor. This is seen as crossing some sort of line.
00:15:24 · Dev Ittycheria
[00:15:24] S1: So again, not knowing all the facts, what I will tell you is that different advisors have different roles. So you can call an advisor for a particular part of the business or a particular function and say, Hey, I want your advice on, Hey, I'm looking to hire someone in Europe. Can you vet this person or give me some ideas of who I should talk to? That's very different than someone who's inside the tent looking at your product plans, your board plans, your financial plans, and has real visibility in terms of where you're taking the business. I think if it's the former, then yes, there's no issue. Hey, this person was talking to you. It was kind of a, you know, a light relationship and they decided to move on to a competitor. Okay. It happens. You're not thrilled about it, but it happens. But if someone had real insight into the business, real insight in terms of what the product roadmap was like, real insight on how they're competing and winning and losing against the competition, and then they suddenly jump to a competitor, that would be very, very different to me.
00:16:14 · Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings
[00:16:14] S0: The interesting thing is, if you think about the employee relationship first and then the advisor relationship, at the employee level, you know, if I'm... If I have a COO working for me, right, at any point in time, it's entirely possible that he can... He or she can get a compelling offer from a direct competitor and go over there and really know know everything about what I was doing up until the minute he gave his notice. And, Debbie, you might think, oh, that sucks. That was a pretty shitty thing to do because you were all in for team a, and now you didn't go to another sport. You went to team b in the in the same damn league. But it happens. And the factory CEO would, you know, voice anger. But it's worth pointing out, if I was a full time employee, there's no way for me to tell CEO A, hey, I'm thinking of leaving until I got the job, and then I have to get my notice. There's no halfway measure. So to some extent, this is going to happen. If you have employees, they're going to know a lot about what you're doing. And at any point in time, they can go and do the same thing for a competitor. And at that point in time, it's going to suck and write a bullet on the minute before they sign that offer from your competitor, they had no audio plans. So in other words, something shit like this can happen. [00:17:19] S3: If or you could forward communicate, you could say, Matane, I've been approached by Scott, and I would like to actually pursue it. And so I wanted to let you know, and be upfront about that, because I'm aware I have a position of sensitivity.
00:17:19 · Harry Stebbings, Rory O'Driscoll
[00:17:19] S3: If or you could forward communicate, you could say, Matane, I've been approached by Scott, and I would like to actually pursue it. And so I wanted to let you know, and be upfront about that, because I'm aware I have a position of sensitivity. [00:17:32] S0: Okay, first of all, I'm dividing a full time employee, and then we'll talk about advisors, because I think one thing that was corrected, there was implicit, this is where you get explicit and implicit understanding, there was a there was probably some implicit understanding about the advisor that wasn't fully fleshed out on either side, and that's why I think Deb is actually correct. But going back to the full time employer, I don't think you can, Harry. If your number two said to you, come in and said, Hey, I got an offer from Excel. I'm thinking about it. I may go, I may not. If not, I still want you to love me as if I'd never kind of thought about leaving, but I may go. And I've done that. But it's generally in an operating role, it can it can at least be difficult, at least half the time [00:18:12] S3: people that's are not the case here, Rory.
00:18:12 · Harry Stebbings, Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin
[00:18:12] S3: people that's are not the case here, Rory. [00:18:14] S0: You're doing that on hypothetical. I know. But my point is merely people are saying, hey, you had a part time adviser who left and brought all this information. My point is you can lose a full time direct report reply who brings exactly the same information and even more. So it can happen. It happens quite a lot in business. It's not like it's unusual. The thing that's unfortunate here is, if the person's just doing kind of part time advising, you kind of ended up in a nod situation where you're disclosing everything, that person's not on the board so has no fiduciary obligations, is not employed by the company. There probably, to that point, was some implied statement that said, hey. You shouldn't do this, but it was never made concrete. How are you shaking your head? [00:18:53] S3: Think you're absolutely wrong. I think as an employee, you have very siloed information, and you don't have a lot of privileges that a board member would do with the oversight on strategic discussion across the whole company, across all the different functions. So it's completely different. [00:19:08] S0: How would you say... Okay. CFO? CRO? [00:19:10] S3: If you're the CFO who moves on, you have no real insight into the product roadmap and function. [00:19:16] S2: Do you [00:19:17] S0: think that an advice? Okay. So you would say it. Okay.
00:19:17 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin
[00:19:17] S0: think that an advice? Okay. So you would say it. Okay. [00:19:19] S2: But listen, I mean, how is it so different? Half of the Frontier Labs folks are rotating back and forth, right? They go in and out. They're taking tons of intellectual property and knowledge from each other. Dev can challenge me here and I wish this were not true, but I just think in the AI age, the definition of loyalty has changed. I think it's changed permanently. Think culturally it's changed. I see it with some of the top executives I've learned. With just one prong, I mean people move more quickly. The compensation is very different. And I think you just have to expect people will move from competitors. They will go from OpenAI to Anthropic to wherever. It's just that we've changed culturally and it can bother you, but the world changed. We to accept it.