Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:40:41 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:40:41] S0: Yeah. A little backstory here. So I think the the moral of the story is don't get me having a grudge against you because, like, four years ago, I was, I I saw this deck firsthand when I worked at DoubleClick. I wasn't responsible for it, but I saw it. So I knew it existed, and I didn't have a copy. And four years ago, I was on Alex Kantrowitz's land of the giants podcast. He did an episode about Google and its dominance in advertising, and I was, like, the first guest on, and I and I gave him the whole story. There was a thing called YMAG. It's called Wimag because Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google were the only people big enough to buy DoubleClick. And there's a spreadsheet, and it's been lost to history, and it's really exciting and interesting. So that was my story. Immediately after me, they had my good friend, Neal Mohan, on. And Neal was my boss at DoubleClick, and he has had an amazing career. He's now the CEO of YouTube. And Neal gets on the podcast, and he's asked about why MAG by Alex. And he goes, I don't know about that. I don't think that's true. And he created the podcast. So he... I got... He fibbed online and made me look bad. And I love you, Neal. If you're listening, I really don't think he's listening. But if you are listening, I got your back here, man. We found it. So eat it, Neal. [00:41:49] S2: You didn't put that in your newsletter, to be clear. [00:41:51] S0: I did not.
00:41:51 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi, Tim Rowe
[00:41:51] S0: I did not. [00:41:52] S2: Alright. Excellent. So Marketecture listeners, you got the scoop directly from Ari on this one. That is awesome backstory. One one thing that is, like, non ad tech related but got ad tech x all fired up that I wanna close out with is founder mode. So there was a post by Y Combinator's Paul Graham talking about a new term that he invented called founder mode inspired by Airbnb's CEO speech. Everybody's mad about it or loves it. And effectively, this is about founders just working more directly on the company, in the company, not having professional managers making decisions and getting their hands dirty. Tim, start with you. Are you for founder mode or are you against founder mode and why? [00:42:41] S1: All for founder mode. If founder mode is being led by presumably some semblance of the founding team, I think it I think it creates the connective tissue to the original thesis. Why are we here? What do we stand for? I think that those things can get lost as, you know, as teams get big. I'm I'm a fan.
00:43:01 · Ari Paparo
[00:43:01] S0: Alright. I have complex thoughts here. It's definitely real. It's definitely real. The the founder knows more than anybody else, and they care more. And those are the two important things. And I wanna emphasize knows more because it's impossible to come in as a VP or a CXO at a company and know every little choice and mistake that was made over the x years beforehand. And when you're the founder, you literally know every single mistake, and you can see patterns that other people can't see and make decisions. I I actually found this the other side when I joined AppNexus as, their first head of product, and I had all kinds of thoughts that immediately, like, Brian and Mike Nolan were like, nope. Try it. Sorry. Like... And, you know, that's a little humbling, but it's true. The one thing I will say is that I think they, was Brian Chesky from Airbnb is the person who brought this up. He has sort of a history of saying inflammatory things that are, you know, typical Silicon Valley group think, like, MBAs are bad, product managers are bad, and, you know, those are really stupid thoughts to have. MBAs are great if you use them for what they're good for. So I I think that the danger of founder mode is it's an endorsement of micromanaging, which is a terrible mistake. What it is an endorsement of is caring and staying involved and very actively managing the people you bring in as professionals even in categories that you may not care about, like HR and finance and legal. As a founder, spend the time, dig deeper, do... I I love the idea of skip levels, but it is not an excuse to micromanage. It's not an excuse to say that the VPs I hire are not qualified or should not be given the power they need to do their jobs. And you really have to be subtly balancing those two things.
00:44:47 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:44:47] S2: Yeah. I think that was very well said. And, you know, I think one of the valid criticisms of, you know, if founder mode now becomes a thing and, you know, these hats are getting printed up, does it, you know, become now an excuse for bad behavior by bad founders? And that's not something that, you know, we we we ever wanna see. But I I think that's right. And just like even thinking back to my my own career, like, you know, hiring managers and, you know, abdicating everything to these managers, mistake. Like micromanaging these managers in areas where you have, you know, little subject matter expertise, mistake. But, you know, there... There's something there that I think is is very interesting. Speaking of founder mode, we dropped a, an interview that we recorded a couple weeks ago with Brian O'Kelly, former founder and CEO of AppNexus, he just mentioned on Open Market. It was really good. You should listen to it. And we've got a a founder's founder coming on today for an emergency pod on founder mode. So we're we're, like, trying to advance this a little bit. [00:45:47] S0: I haven't listened to that yet. Will. But I I will say that O'Kelly, when he was involved in technical decisions, was, he had written much much of the stack or designed it in any case. And even, you know, ten years later, that founder mode aspect mattered enormously because he he just knew how you could build stuff in a way that no engineering manager who was brought in later could ever do it. [00:46:09] S2: Yeah. Well said. Okay. I think we've done a lot here. Wanna take us home?
00:46:09 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo, Tim Rowe, S3
[00:46:09] S2: Yeah. Well said. Okay. I think we've done a lot here. Wanna take us home? [00:46:15] S0: Yeah. Sure. So this has been a great episode. We've learned a lot about digital out of home or out of home or oo do, whatever you wanna call it. So Tim Rowe from OOHInsider, thank you so much for being here. [00:46:27] S1: Eric, alright. Thank you both. [00:46:28] S2: This is awesome. Thank you very much. [00:46:30] S0: This was great. We'll see you next week. Take care, everybody. [00:46:34] S3: Thank you for subscribing to Marketecture. New interviews are added every week at marketecture.tv in your favorite podcasting app. Without LifeLock, fixing identity theft on your own sounds a lot like this. [00:46:55] S1: There are 77 callers ahead of you. [00:46:59] S3: That's why LifeLock has experts who make the endless calls if your identity is stolen so you won't have to, and restores your identity backed by up to $3,000,000 in coverage. [00:47:08] S1: There are 73 callers ahead of you. [00:47:11] S3: Don't leave your identity in limbo. Get LifeLock. Save up to 30% your first year at lifelock.com/podcast. Terms apply.