00:40:00 · David Senra
[00:40:00] S0: all the stuff they did. Okay. That makes perfect sense. I found one of my all time favorite quotes when I was reading the book Zero to One. The quote says, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. That is exactly what Applovin has done with their advertising platform. Applovin connects you with over a billion potential new customers in mobile games. AppLovin allows you to capture undivided attention. AppLovin ads are full screen videos that are watched for an average of thirty five seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. And you can launch on AppLovin in minutes. You set the goal and Applovin achieves it. No complex setup, no expertise needed. And Applovin scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results scale to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increase their revenue by millions. So you wanna get started quickly before all of your competitors are on Applovin. And you can do that by going to applovin.com. That's applovin.com. You've said some very interesting things about investors that I want to talk to you about because it's really important. This show, the whole idea was just like, I think entrepreneurs are the most important people in the world. The idea that, you know, somebody has an idea and it doesn't exist and they through determination, agency, aggression, make something that didn't exist that started in their mind real. And in your case, you're in 40 countries or whatever the case is, thousands of employees, how many customers, tens of millions, like from an idea that you had, when you were what, in your late twenties? Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. Think that's a miracle to me. And yet a lot of the discussion that takes place that what founders say about investors in private, they do not say in public. And so we were talking earlier because I saw this clip of you where you compared investors to football cheerleaders. Can you explain why you made that comparison?
00:42:05 · Nik Storonsky, David Senra
[00:42:05] S1: Well, gave this history before. So when I started the company was twelve, thirteen years ago. Back then in Europe and in The UK, was extremely difficult environment to raise money. Simply, there were not that many VCs around, and then there were all more like private equity guys, like extremely aggressive, extremely legalistic. So to raise money, you had to sign a lot of bad conditions in your shareholder agreement, liquidation preferences, both seats, like, you know, reducing your voting rights as a founder and so on. So these people basically think that because of them, the company was kind of created because they gave money and that they are entitled to Lash part of its success. So that's the mentality of... Know, a quite a few investors that invested very early on, like in in my company, for example. I think it's kind of largely wrong, this mentality, because getting money from LPs is extremely easy. Also... [00:43:12] S0: Getting money,
00:43:13 · Nik Storonsky
[00:43:13] S1: you said? Getting money from... Because their business is very simple. Right? Okay. They they have LPs. They collect money from them and then they invest in startups. And then they have a business model of two twenty. Right? So, it's so much easier compared to building a real operational business from scratch. Because they never receive their own money. Right? They don't really need to work hard. I mean, there is competition, but competition is just, you know, for getting deals. So I think their job is so so much easier. That's number one. And then number two is... Back then there was, you know, almost no competition compared to what it is now in in VC circles. And back then there was basically this opinion that we, as VC, will help you run the company. The company will be successful because we'll give you advice, you know, how how to run a company. Rality, almost none of them, they ever build any company. Right? So they just raise money from LPs. They invested their money in many companies. And sometimes they have boss seats, sometimes they don't. But having a boss seat doesn't teach you how to run a company at all. Right? You are just observer. As a result, you have all these people with a lot of power. Right? Because they give you money, they put certain conditions in shareholder agreement. And then they also have this mentality that they can tell you what to do as a founder. Right? And that's, in my experience, very dangerous. And I had many cases in the past when seven VCs... I mean, the advice was simply wrong for the company. So I think, you know, my advice to entrepreneurs would be, even if you raise money from VC's, try to pay a lot of attention to shareholder agreement. Right? And then to ensure that they're purely financial place, that they have no right, no voting right, no seat at the table, decision making. Super important. Because if something goes wrong, right, you effectively have cheerleaders, you know, who look at the match. And then they try to play this match, you know, instead of professional players. And that's, you know, always disaster.
00:45:23 · David Senra
[00:45:23] S0: Why did you say some of the advice they gave you was dangerous?
00:45:26 · Nik Storonsky
[00:45:26] S1: I mean, one of the advices was, okay, you know what? You need to hire an experienced executive. You know what? Now it doesn't work. When I started first five years, I had probably 50 plus experienced executives, or I kept only two, right, within one year. It just doesn't work. Why is that? Why experienced executives, you know, almost never works... Or work out? It's the same as football players. Right? They they have their prime. Like, reality, I mean, there is a prime age. And, like, it doesn't mean they became less good. I think they they changed their priorities. Right? Plus, probably they became less good. Plus, things changed. Times changed. Competition changed. So people who were good before or had, you know, past track record of being good before, they might not be good in your company for the future. That's number one. Extremely naive to think so. And then number two, the results are negative for selection bias. Right? If you think of people who are extremely good, like, for example, how I hire people. I look at their track record of achievement, And then they need to be top 1% of... Compared to their peers in terms of their career progression. And then I try to pick up them when they are 25, 30 years old. So they continue on the same trajectory in Revolut. Whenever you're hiring experienced executive, relative there is a negative selection bias because people who are extremely good already made it. Right? I don't know. They either probably running their own businesses or they're retired or something else. And then people who ever had this extreme career progression, who you hire as experienced executive, they just seem not very definitional as good compared to people with extremely fast career progression who are already not in the market.
00:47:10 · David Senra, Nik Storonsky
[00:47:10] S0: Okay. So you found basically the advice they gave you to be completely the opposite of what you should have been doing based on what you just said? [00:47:16] S1: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Then our... Yeah. A lot of advice around, you know, the thing that certain people in the company are good because they experienced. Well, I think completely opposite. And then one of them... He's actually quite quite a good investor. He he was forcing me to fire my best person because he was too hardcore. So a lot of Who who really wins? Yeah. Lot This [00:47:43] S0: guy needs to work nine to five. Okay? So how did this... Like, tell me more about this. Like, you obviously fought back. The guy didn't get fired. What happened? [00:47:50] S1: I mean, of course of course, I didn't fire him. Said no. That's it. [00:47:54] S0: Okay. But that's it? The guy didn't take [00:47:56] S1: it to leave. Yeah. Have him. And then went to fight him. [00:47:58] S0: Did you have a fight with the investor? Like, what happened? Yeah. And so how did you settle it? You had all the power? Like, what happened? [00:48:04] S1: I fight it with him and then... Yeah. Even though they they they had the collision of, you know, many investors, but, you know, they they they stepped back. [00:48:13] S0: Okay. So how did you get him to step back?