00:21:19 · Chris Walti
[00:21:19] S8: Kind of my take on founder mode is effectively as companies get larger, the gist is do you still kind of maintain your level of awareness and involvement in the details of your company? Right? Very large company mode or manager mode, it's like, I fully rely on my team to do almost everything and I have this little function, maybe I'm just attending dinners and selling customers at a very high level. I think, you know, at a company like Mytra, you know, even though we're 74 people, Ahmad and I have no choice but to be in founder mode. There's just too much going on. There's too many aspects of the system. You know, every time a customer walks in, and we have one this afternoon, and between the two of us, we need to be fully versed in the technical stack. We need to be able to answer questions of like, why did you make this decision for this actuator or this design? What are the reliability issues? How do you plan to lower the cost? Like things like that. If you can't talk intelligently about that, you're not going to drive confidence in these very sophisticated potential buyers or partners. So for us, like, there's no choice but to be founder of Miller. But, you know, as I think about what I love about this job, you know, I love being in Design Reviews. So I love the product and the engineering aspects, and I know Ahmad does too, and that's that's something that, you know, as you get older, as you get... Company gets more mature and larger, there's natural pressure to say like, you need to decouple from that. You need to let your team do that. And I think there's there's a balance that can be achieved where founders are still in the details, not making all the decisions, but in the details enough to be aware. I mean, Tesla's a... I don't know if it's a good example. It's an example of where, you know, Elon had... You know, when he met with Tesla for his one or two days a week, it was like 12 meetings in a day and like every hour, some different technical team would come in and like walk through, here's what's going on, here's the challenges, what should we do, boss? Right? And he would be making calls on like, power electronic sourcing, and then we'd be making calls on like wind tunnel design optimization. They'd be making calls on on a whole bunch of different aspects of the business.
00:23:32 · Chris Walti, Ahmad Baitalmal, Ahmad Baitalmal
Not suggesting that's what every company should do and that is not what we're going to be doing, but I think it does show you that it's not like one or the other. You can exist as a large company in founder mode. You can exist in manager mode. For us, you know, we're much more towards fuzzier mode and probably will stay that way for as long as we need to really understand the technical details, which as far as I'm concerned doesn't end. [00:23:58] S6: Actually, the advice I would give to people trying to create their own company, [00:24:03] S7: really work in the field a little bit. Like, in the field. You think you have an idea for some new service or product, work in that field and get insight. That's something I got out of my Stanford experience. You maybe you have an idea of what's really valuable and useful as a product, but the best approach to creating value is first that you get insights into what the problem is. The reason Walti and I started working together is we met at the, the Model 3 production ramp, and we were customers of the systems that were there, manufacturing and logistics and material flow systems that were on the system, that were in production. We met there, and we experienced
00:24:03 · Ahmad Baitalmal, S0
[00:24:03] S7: really work in the field a little bit. Like, in the field. You think you have an idea for some new service or product, work in that field and get insight. That's something I got out of my Stanford experience. You maybe you have an idea of what's really valuable and useful as a product, but the best approach to creating value is first that you get insights into what the problem is. The reason Walti and I started working together is we met at the, the Model 3 production ramp, and we were customers of the systems that were there, manufacturing and logistics and material flow systems that were on the system, that were in production. We met there, and we experienced Ad[00:24:45] S0: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. They can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, availability varies 18 plus.
00:24:45 · S0, S1, S2
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00:26:11 · S2, S3, S9, S4, S5
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00:26:55 · Ahmad Baitalmal
[00:26:55] S7: Insight. We saw what the problem really is. People go, Hey, add more automation, add more technology here. Fine, okay. But the insight that we got that the fundamental problem that needed to be solved is moving the material Without you experiencing it firsthand, you'd miss it. You think, Oh, I'm going to work on warehouse robotics. You're going to build this nice articulated arm. It's going to look nice and neat and great. Are you really solving it? No. And the reason you're not solving it is because you lack the insight into what the fundamental problem is. For us, it was, Oh, the thing that would unlock manufacturing is to move the material efficiently without stopping in a very reliable, safe way. You move it in that way, figure out a way to do it, and it would unlock value for you in manufacturing. Without that insight, I think you would be on a long path. So my advice would be get immersed in the problem firsthand, and then try to come up with a solution. I'll give you another very practical example today. Everybody in the company today, everyone, almost no exception, has to work in the warehouse using our system, interacting with the warehouse operators at our customer site, everyone, even web developers, marketing, everybody has to do it. And the reason we did that is from my experience when I was at Tesla and building the software that I told you about, software for the GA-four 10. The way I built the software is I went to the line and I started working on the cars. I started putting bolts in and talking fasteners and the hood on the Model three, and I experienced what the operator was experiencing. What kind of software was needed? What did I need to finish my job properly? And then I built that software and that software infected everywhere that gets old. That is the insight that you need to get before you can say, oh, I'm going build a new manufacturing software. First, work as a user of that supposed system or product that you're trying to create. Get deep insight so you fundamentally understand what is the thing that you're trying to create, what is the value that you're trying to create. And then go, okay, I have enough insight that I know so much about this, I understand it at a basic fundamental level, now you can come up with the new value creation after that.