Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:21:53 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:21:53] S1: If this all sounds like a huge drag and a lot of work and really annoying, I'd say go back an hour when we talked a lot about just what is it you were trying to avoid and the pain.
01:22:02 · Eric Ries
[01:22:02] S0: Yes. That's the thing. It's like, you know what's really a drag? I'll tell you a story. A friend of mine got ousted by his investors. Okay? And I was going to this party to celebrate him. And it was like people had flown in from all over the country to celebrate, including employees he laid off came to this party. It must have been a thousand people there. It was amazing. And I was describing to a new founder like, "I'm sorry, I can't help you with your company right now. I got to go to this party." And he was like, "Okay." I'm describing to him and he was just like, "Wow, what respect. That founder sounds invested. Just the kind of company I want to create." I'm like, "Dude, you have not been listening to anything I'm saying. He doesn't work there anymore." He's like, "Sol Price. This is not a party. This is awake." And he was like, "What? Did he die?" "No, man, he didn't die." "Did the company go bankrupt?" "No, the company's fine. That's not the problem. The new..." And he was like, "Is the new CEO an asshole or something?" I was like, "No, I like the new CEO. He's a friend of mine also. Perfectly fine. The problem is..." He's like, "What's the problem?" "The problem is if a company can be decapitated at any time, you can no longer trust it. All the promises that this company had made over its 15-year life, nobody believes them anymore." The new CEO is going out and making new promises, but we're like, "An activist investor owning 0.5% of the company can oust you at any time. Why should I believe anything you say?" And then we're like, "Why is trust collapsing in our institutions across the board?" We are teaching a leadership philosophy that is antitrust, anti-trustworthy. So yeah, if it sounds like this sounds like a bummer to have to worry about this stuff, you know what's really a bummer? Come to that party with me. That sucks. And that's a founder who made literally billions of dollars for his investors, but it wasn't enough. It's never enough.
01:23:54 · Lenny Rachitsky, Eric Ries
[01:23:54] S1: And hearing these from you is important and powerful because you see so many founders. There's few people in the world that see the number of founders, meet with the number of founders, work with as many startups as you. And this is not an easy place you're in, trying to convince people to do these very annoying things. [01:24:11] S0: It's very annoying. I know. I do agree. Yeah. [01:24:13] S1: And so it just says a lot that you're putting yourself out there this much. For you guys, pay attention. Even though it feels weird now, the idea is should not. This should be-
01:24:13 · Lenny Rachitsky, Eric Ries
[01:24:13] S1: And so it just says a lot that you're putting yourself out there this much. For you guys, pay attention. Even though it feels weird now, the idea is should not. This should be- [01:24:22] S0: Be Our grandkids will think this is the most obvious thing they've ever heard about. So yeah. You can get ahead of it now. When I first started talking about Lean Startup, people thought it was so weird. As weird as you think this is, people thought Lean Startup was a lot weirder. So I've been through this before. And when I write, I don't write very many books. Okay> I'm not like an influencer. I don't tweet every 30 minutes. I'm not that kind of person. It takes me years to put these things together. And I only do it when I have figured something out that I have personally lived myself and found useful in my own work and I've helped lots of other people do it. So it takes me a long time because it takes a lot of experimentation, a lot of testing. This is the work of hundreds and hundreds of companies who I have worked, had the chance to work with and seen what works and what doesn't work. So the pain that I'm describing to you is like, this is not some hypothetical thing. I'm not trying to trick you into something. I have nothing to sell you. This is just what the data shows can prevent this epidemic of value destruction that we're seeing all over our economy.
01:24:22 · Eric Ries, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:24:22] S0: Be Our grandkids will think this is the most obvious thing they've ever heard about. So yeah. You can get ahead of it now. When I first started talking about Lean Startup, people thought it was so weird. As weird as you think this is, people thought Lean Startup was a lot weirder. So I've been through this before. And when I write, I don't write very many books. Okay> I'm not like an influencer. I don't tweet every 30 minutes. I'm not that kind of person. It takes me years to put these things together. And I only do it when I have figured something out that I have personally lived myself and found useful in my own work and I've helped lots of other people do it. So it takes me a long time because it takes a lot of experimentation, a lot of testing. This is the work of hundreds and hundreds of companies who I have worked, had the chance to work with and seen what works and what doesn't work. So the pain that I'm describing to you is like, this is not some hypothetical thing. I'm not trying to trick you into something. I have nothing to sell you. This is just what the data shows can prevent this epidemic of value destruction that we're seeing all over our economy. [01:25:25] S1: So maybe it's just a final tactic. Say an early stage founders listening to this, they're like, "Oh, shit I got to really do something here." What are say three things they should do in the next week or two?
01:25:35 · Eric Ries
[01:25:35] S0: Okay, here, let's just do the really easiest things. First of all, if you haven't raised money yet or you've only raised money on safes. Okay? You can do absolutely whatever you want. So do not waste this moment. Everyone's in such a rush to get big, such a rush for the next thing, but you have a precious, precious moment here. The founders who have already raised their series A or they're in pre-IPU, the founders that you envy that are ahead of you, it's more of a pain for them. They got to go get investors on board. They got to go... They need to do it. Okay. I told you the next best time to plant a tree is today. So they still have to do it, but you have an incredible privilege. Just please, please, please do it. Because here are the basic things I think are really easy to do that are super low cost. Be a public benefit corps, do the file. But that's so easy. And write a mission there that is something you really will feel good about. And the way the test for if you wrote the right thing is try to brainstorm with your co-founder. You don't need to spend like 10 weeks on this, spend an hour and just adversarial prompting. Okay? Can you think of any way you could make money while violating this statement? And if you can, would you be happy or sad in that scenario? If you'd be sad, write it into the thing. Don't ever be a situation where you're rich and miserable. Write it down. Okay. Easy. Second thing that's super easy, we didn't get a chance to talk about, I call it the director's oath. This came up obviously because there's this big fight going on between Anthropic and Figma and a reporter I text just got reported, reported on the idea. Because it was like, "What are our responsibilities in these weird situations?" It's actually really tricky. Every company's calling me being like, "Are you saying I can't have an AI person on my board? Because having an AI person on my board seems really dangerous." But I'm just like, "You know what's really dangerous? Not having an AI person on your board." So yeah, everyone's kind of stuck. What do we do? It's impossible situation. We need to have, just like we have doctors that have a Hippocratic oath, first do no harm. Why don't we have that for directors? It's insane to me. Directors control, make far more consequential decisions than nurses.