The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:48:03 · John Willett
[00:48:03] S1: Yeah. Yeah. That's really nice. Yeah. I think when you're 20 years old and you picture managing, you picture like everyone's gonna be happy all the time and like you're just gonna be a good manager and there's not gonna be these like problems. And, yeah, that's never how it is. Even once the company's doing well, it it, you know, these things still come up. I think I've just like learned to be so transparent about what I do and don't know about what I'm working on, about what I need from folks with feedback. Like I'm just so open book on literally everything. And when we first started the company, like we were '23, '24, we had people who were like in their thirties reporting to us. And so there's a bit of a pretense of us being like, yeah, we know what we're gonna do. Like we have these clients lined up, like whatever. And you're trying to kind you know, show why you're the boss and and not them. And as you gain confidence over time, it's like, I I would never pretend I know something I don't. I would never purport to, like, be better at something if if someone else is. I'm like, hey. This story when I when I asked them to join the company is not like, hey. Come work with me as I solve these things. It's like, hey. Like, let's grind on this together. And, like, we are just on the same team. We're just gonna run at it. And that perspective I think allows you to have just a lot of bidirectional checks and balances throughout the day. People always kind of know where I'm at. People always know, you know, if I liked what they just did, if I didn't like what they just did. And when you give feedback constantly, it like de weights it. If there's an endless stream of feedback from me to everyone else, then no one takes it personally when they when they get something. People kind of know that they can... Hopefully that they can trust me and that I have their back because I'm so kind open. So that's probably been the biggest lesson is just being myself as much as possible and putting on as little of a a pretense as as I can.
00:49:50 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:49:50] S0: It's so interesting because this is probably the first time in tech where there's so many, like, founders, CEOs that are, like, in their late twenties [00:49:58] S1: Yeah. [00:49:58] S0: Right, running, like, multibillion dollar valuation companies. Well, like, again, back to Kevin Ryan, people like him were running those companies in their forties. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Five, ten years ago. Was now you've got, like, a whole group of you guys in your, like... Literally, like, in your late twenties and maybe somewhere in, early thirties. Yeah. I think that's, like, fascinating, like [00:50:15] S1: Yeah. [00:50:15] S0: How that plays out, and that probably just speaks to the, hopefully, the meritocracy nature of tech where [00:50:21] S1: And especially what's different, you know, is, like, where you had these people in their twenties before in, like, the two thousands and 20 tens running companies. They were typically, like, consumer companies, social media companies, Internet companies. And yet now it's, like, bank rates secure enterprise software companies, but that is a big change for sure. [00:50:39] S0: Yeah. I wanna move to Rapid Fire Spring, John. Before I do, is there anything I haven't asked that you wanna touch on? This has been fairly comprehensive. [00:50:45] S1: But No. This has been [00:50:46] S0: great. Alright. Rapid Fire, is there one non work investment? Ideally, you have time and energy. Is there a course or a hobby or a holiday you've really enjoyed?
00:50:46 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:50:46] S0: great. Alright. Rapid Fire, is there one non work investment? Ideally, you have time and energy. Is there a course or a hobby or a holiday you've really enjoyed? [00:50:56] S1: I love guitar. It's like my best way to just kind of unplug and kind of noodle around and not really think or do anything after work. [00:51:03] S0: Do you still do it? Do you still have time? [00:51:04] S1: Yeah. I do it. Probably like ten minutes a day. I haven't gotten any better in the last five years. I just plateaued at, you know, House Of The Rising Sun by the animals, but that's kind of where we are. [00:51:15] S0: Nice. Is there one thing you want to learn in the next six months? [00:51:19] S1: I think more about revenue organizations. I think I'm still... I don't really have an instinct how to think about territory planning as we're as we're just really building out a commercial engine. [00:51:29] S0: But but it's ironic, though, because because one would say a lot of the playbooks, a lot of these, like, senior CROs have used don't apply today. [00:51:36] S1: That's true too. Yeah. And I, I, I'm always believe... Like, think it's the best people are gonna be the people who have the playbooks and then know when and where to apply them as opposed to like, don't even have the playbook to begin with. So I would wanna... I think you... I wanna study at the altar of these, you know, John McMahon style CROs and then maybe throw out 50% of it, but but keep the good 50.
00:51:36 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:51:36] S1: That's true too. Yeah. And I, I, I'm always believe... Like, think it's the best people are gonna be the people who have the playbooks and then know when and where to apply them as opposed to like, don't even have the playbook to begin with. So I would wanna... I think you... I wanna study at the altar of these, you know, John McMahon style CROs and then maybe throw out 50% of it, but but keep the good 50. [00:51:57] S0: Yeah. Because that's something I always think about is like you could hire like a high flying CRO and Yeah. You know, this is what I did ten years ago. But it's like, dude, that doesn't work today. Right? [00:52:06] S1: Yeah. Yeah. No. You're totally right. [00:52:07] S0: Yeah. It'd be interesting how you make decisions on that in terms of your exec team. [00:52:11] S1: Yeah. [00:52:11] S0: Is there one interview question you love asking prospective candidates in a hiring process? [00:52:15] S1: I just love really digging into, like, if they're leaving their current job, like exactly why. And like I... We will spend like thirty minutes talking about like what is going wrong, where specific personalities at their current job, who they get along with, who they don't, what's been going well, what hasn't been. I found there's usually a lot more there than their first past answer of like, oh, I'm looking for more autonomy. I really dig in there.
00:52:15 · John Willett, Vidit Agarwal
[00:52:15] S1: I just love really digging into, like, if they're leaving their current job, like exactly why. And like I... We will spend like thirty minutes talking about like what is going wrong, where specific personalities at their current job, who they get along with, who they don't, what's been going well, what hasn't been. I found there's usually a lot more there than their first past answer of like, oh, I'm looking for more autonomy. I really dig in there. [00:52:38] S0: Actually, was gonna ask on that, have you learned anything about how to do good reference checks? Like this comes up quite a bit. At the moment, like back to talent, how are you getting beneath the surface of [00:52:49] S1: Yeah. I'm pretty like, I'm kind of quantitative. I'm always like, like if you're just like, oh, like is this person good? They'd be like, yeah. And I'm like, what percentile are they? Like what rank are they compared to other people you've worked with in this role? And then barring that, it's like, I literally, like, people probably hate me, but I... I'll be, hey. For the following, like, 10 traits, rate them out of 10. Like raw IQ, horsepower, intensity, ambition, like all these things, and just get literal like numbers on the board that I can use to that I can use to benchmark. Because when you don't have that, it gets kind of fluffy I found. [00:53:21] S0: Last two, one pet peeve.
00:53:21 · Vidit Agarwal, John Willett
[00:53:21] S0: Last two, one pet peeve. [00:53:24] S1: When you're waiting in line at like a coffee shop or something and the person in front of you leaves a lot of space between them and the person in front of them, and I'm like, dude, you're leaving the flank open, like we're in danger of someone else jumping in. That pisses me off. [00:53:38] S0: I like it. That is so specific. [00:53:40] S1: Like it. Yeah. I think about this a lot. [00:53:43] S0: And and last one, if you could recommend a question I should ask the next guest, you of course don't know the next guest, but anything I should include in my notes, particularly founders that are coming up. Yeah. Maybe maybe [00:53:52] S1: maybe, regret slash thing that they think they... If they had done differently, the company would be in a would be in a better spot. Because I think there's a temptation to be like, oh, well, it's all part of the journey. And it's like, no. There's definitely things that could have accelerated us and helped us move a lot [00:54:07] S0: faster. I mean, hindsight's hindsight's a beautiful thing. Right? Like, things you could always change things. I'm sure those first two years, you probably do them differently now [00:54:13] S1: Oh my gosh. [00:54:14] S0: With what you're doing. [00:54:15] S1: I hope so. [00:54:15] S0: But you wouldn't have known that if you didn't go through the two years in in some way. [00:54:19] S1: So... Our our our literal, like, frontal lobes were still developing.