Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:06:04 · Kevin Ryan, Alexa von Tobel
[00:06:04] S0: Well, look, some of it's luck. I mean, I joined a media company in 1994 and was CFO and COO of this 150 person division. And I read about the Internet, and I launched an Internet site. I just thought it could be super helpful for us. Very interesting. And, you know, the one great or lucky revelation I had by the beginning of '96 was that the Internet was going to change the world. It was gonna be the most fundamental trend in my lifetime, and that I wanted to go leave my relatively cushy successful corporate job and go start a company or join an early stage company. And so by doing that, and that became DoubleClick, And, you know, DoubleClick was a rocket ship, so I joined a company that had 10 people. Four years later, we had 2,000 employees in 25 countries. So crazy growth. We went public twenty four months after we started, which is just unthinkable today. And you have to, you know, get all the logistics in place, the accounting, everything. Goldman Sachs took us public. [00:07:08] S2: That is actually really wild, Kevin. Just... I mean, even like as we sit here and look at AI companies that are scaling from 0 to 200,000,000 of revenue in the same year to actually go public. I mean, that's crazy.
00:07:08 · Alexa von Tobel, Kevin Ryan
[00:07:08] S2: That is actually really wild, Kevin. Just... I mean, even like as we sit here and look at AI companies that are scaling from 0 to 200,000,000 of revenue in the same year to actually go public. I mean, that's crazy. [00:07:18] S0: Yeah. During those four years, we made at least 12 acquisitions. So, you know, just... So that... The success of that company trained me a lot. I had to adjust very quickly to that fast growth, making good decisions going forward, not having fear, and realizing that, you know, the reason today, double... DoubleClick, even though it's part of Google, is the most successful ad tech company or division in the world, which is now thirty years later, is because we won the first four years. Our competitors were in six countries. They weren't as big. They didn't expand as fast. They weren't as aggressive. They didn't take those chances. And in this case, it really worked. And so by being the best, by having the most engineers, by creating the best product, all the biggest customers wanted to work with us. And actually, we've never lost that position ever since. And that helped me be a mentor and founder of other companies, because one, had the credibility. People wanted to work with me because things I had done in the past. And I had managed a lot of people. I had fired a lot of people. I had seen so much during those nine years. I felt like I had forty years of of business compressed into those nine years.
00:07:18 · Kevin Ryan, Alexa von Tobel
[00:07:18] S0: Yeah. During those four years, we made at least 12 acquisitions. So, you know, just... So that... The success of that company trained me a lot. I had to adjust very quickly to that fast growth, making good decisions going forward, not having fear, and realizing that, you know, the reason today, double... DoubleClick, even though it's part of Google, is the most successful ad tech company or division in the world, which is now thirty years later, is because we won the first four years. Our competitors were in six countries. They weren't as big. They didn't expand as fast. They weren't as aggressive. They didn't take those chances. And in this case, it really worked. And so by being the best, by having the most engineers, by creating the best product, all the biggest customers wanted to work with us. And actually, we've never lost that position ever since. And that helped me be a mentor and founder of other companies, because one, had the credibility. People wanted to work with me because things I had done in the past. And I had managed a lot of people. I had fired a lot of people. I had seen so much during those nine years. I felt like I had forty years of of business compressed into those nine years. [00:08:30] S2: You said something that I think applies to the world that we're in right now, Kevin, which is that speed really mattered. [00:08:35] S0: Mhmm. [00:08:36] S2: You got bigger. You were more aggressive. You were faster. And I think as we fast forward to 2025, that's that same concept is still true. Mhmm. In a really important and powerful way.
00:08:36 · Alexa von Tobel, Alexa von Tobel
[00:08:36] S2: You got bigger. You were more aggressive. You were faster. And I think as we fast forward to 2025, that's that same concept is still true. Mhmm. In a really important and powerful way. [00:08:53] S1: What do you... What have [00:08:54] S2: you learned about doing speed properly? Because speed can also be chaotic. Any quick insights there?
00:09:03 · Kevin Ryan
[00:09:03] S0: Well, first of all, it's it's all about investing capital, and it's not always the right thing to do. So there are probably many companies right now that are spending way too much money, and they don't have a big enough market. They're not gonna win. It's not a good use of capital. So it's not categorically true that everyone should do well. You know, if you are expanding, it's because you're using capital effectively. You're hiring a salesperson who makes 200,000 because he's gonna... He or she's gonna produce 800,000 in sales. If you're doing that, it's a good idea. Know, there are also moments where they don't pay off, and you're wasting money. So, you know, each... I have companies today in the portfolio that I don't think should expand very, very, very quickly because the product market fit is not good enough. That capital would not be well used. And I have others that need to go faster. They need to grab that moment right now. I have one company that probably cost them $50,000 to sign up a big customer, but it will cost them in the long term, 200,000 to switch a customer off a competitor. It's just so much more difficult. When the market is new, it's much easier to get in. I want them to go very, very quickly. But then a lot of it is execution and making decisions on the fly, having the resources, investing in recruiting, knowing you can move quickly, because you have to get good people. You can't... Anyone can hire people. It's hard to get good people. And so you've gotta strike that balance. You're basically a race car driver that needs to go very, very fast, but not too fast. If you go too fast, you explode, and you you don't make the turn. If you go too slowly, there are five cars ahead of you, you're in trouble. It's a very careful balance.
00:10:44 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:10:44] S2: Kevin, as someone who has... And you just said something which is you gotta know it when you see it. Like, product market fit is there. As someone who's cofounded, you know, successfully, at least half a dozen, but really more of, like, a dozen companies and across so many different categories. Gilt Group was ecommerce shopping. Zola is a registry site. MongoDB is a data giant and cloud giant and a digital media company and business, etcetera. And you've context shifted a lot. Mhmm. What is the moment? What do you look for when you're like? This is a great idea. I'm gonna do it. Like, just give us the sense of what that looks like because I feel like I've witnessed some of it by knowing you so well. But how would you articulate the, like, the the the... What what data, what feeling, what is it that all of sudden you're like, I will build this. Let's go build this.