00:09:17 · Snow Lee
[00:09:17] S5: Hi, hi Hannah. Thank you for the great introduction. Thank you for having me and I will try my best to share the interesting story with you. So let me jump in. Many people equate founders with leaders. Meanwhile not all founders are necessarily good leaders and vice versa. Although founders and leaders share many similarities and have complementary concepts but they differ as much as they converge. Today I will share my experiences as both a founder and a leader. I'm Snow, the CEO of Runbear. Before founding Runbear, I co founded two startups. One was acquired by Buzzvil, was acquired by Kakao, one of the top companies in Korea, and another one was acquired by Buzzvil, a startup but valued at $100,000,000. After joining Buzzvil, I led teams as chief architect and cpo for over four years. I founded Runbear with my third time co founder, Lian. In less than a year, we have experienced a lot of struggles. Last December, we launched Plugbear and it is growing fast. You can think of Plugbear as a zapier for LLM apps. While creating LLM apps or custom GPTs is becoming easier, integrating them into everyday work tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or HubSpot remains challenging. Plugbear enables customers to easily connect their custom LLM apps to their everyday work tools, improving work performance with AI. Within three months, over 1,200 companies have signed up to use Plugbear and the number of paying customers is rapidly increasing. Okay so let's get back to the topic. The roles expected of leaders and founders overlap significantly but there are crucial differences. Let me start with the mistakes I made. My first startup in 2011 had seven seven co founders including myself. We all committed to equal shares and responsibilities which initially propelled us forward quickly. Everyone was CEO. We worked day and night every day. As the team grew and I formally became the CEO, I believed that it was my mission not to break the existing culture. I consistently communicated to my colleagues that my position as CEO was nominal, roles were meaningless, and that we have all equal powers and responsibilities. I believed, I truly believed, that this structure was the best way to motivate all the team members. However, the lack of clear role definitions eventually hindered our growth, leading to prolonged discussions and indecision.
00:12:32 · Snow Lee, S0
Especially when we needed to pivot, we had to spend days and weeks for endless arguments. At that time, I think we had many good founders but no good leaders. This led me to contemplate leadership. So to compare leaders and founders, let's quickly check leadership and entrepreneurship. It's a shame that I didn't truly learn about leadership until after selling my businesses and joining a larger organization. The first significant insight I had about leadership was that leadership can be learned and improved over time. How can we define leadership? Strong charisma, capabilities, charms or power. People think that leaders are born not made. I strongly disagree with them. As you can see, leadership is defined as an activity. Activities can always be learned and improved. Personally, I'm a fan of coaching leadership style. While leading several team leaders at Buzzvil, one of them asked for my advice. Buzzvil, as an ad tech company, really had several customer cohorts advertisers, publishers, and end users. She was struggling with defining priorities between the cohorts. At the time, I was reading the book Coaching for Performance although I had some ideas to suggest, I tried applying coaching techniques. Ad[00:14:14] S0: This episode is brought to
00:14:14 · S0, S1
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00:14:43 · Snow Lee
[00:14:43] S5: And the result was remarkable. She defined a clearer target customer than I had in mind and gaining more insights through customer interviews. Yes, right, it took more time to make outcomes at first but the long term output was way way better. Without learning this leadership style, I would have stagnated. This approach allowed me to lead up to seven product teams at Buzzvil simultaneously, contributing to a threefold increase in annual revenue. Entrepreneurship can be also learned and improved over time definitely. It's not just about creative idea, courage, experience, or funding capabilities. See, right? Entrepreneurship is also defined as an activity. Runbear is my third startup, but it feels like my first because it is mission driven unlike my previous opportunity driven startups. My first startup was founded simply for the joy of creating services, while my second focused on growing Indian market. While discovering a good business opportunity is important, but focusing solely on opportunities can lead to losing direction during tough times such as pivoting. You know, some lessons can only be learned through experiences. Thanks to my experiences, I deeply emphasized and learned from famous books like Zero to One, Traction, and Effectuation. Runbear has already pivoted several times in its first year. We have launched more than seven products including lending MVPs. But this time, the pivots were not as painful as before. These were all driven by a larger mission making us feel that we were progressing through learning. Yep. Finally, let's compare founders and leaders. I have a two year old boy who amazes me every day with his growth, learning things like how to eat spaghetti. While I wish, I really wish to nurture him for life, I understand that the ultimate goal of parenting is independence. Similarly, the ultimate goal of leaders and founders is independence of those they lead. However, leaders nurture team members. Leaders want their team members to grow, be promoted, and finally act independently. While founders nurture the businesses, although we love our businesses, we still prepare exit plans. This distinction has led me to make different decisions at critical moments as a leader and as a founder. A leader's performance is evaluated by their team's success.
00:17:46 · Snow Lee
Various leadership styles have evolved, especially in Silicon Valley over the last decade, focusing on mentoring, coaching to enable team members to grow independently. Generally, leaders are encouraged to create an environment that where team members can achieve success as players rather than taking the direct actions themselves. While this approach requires time for team members to learn, it's believed as a way to achieve more. When I took the CPU position at Buzzvil, I needed to redefine customer problems. As I introduced earlier, there were many types of customers including advertisers, publishers, ad consumers, and further subdivisions. Although I really enjoy meeting customers, it's clear that I cannot meet them all. Most importantly, I understand that the insights gained by team members through interviews are much more beneficial than the lessons I can provide. This led to various activities including one on ones, nudging, and selling OKRs and more, which took time but weren't necessary. On the other hand, founders are evaluated by their business success. They even often don't have a chance to be evaluated by others. Founders must be players on the field, especially when seeking product market fit in a rapid changing market. Now as a co founder of Runbear, I initially considered dividing customer engagement between team members and myself. You know, now we have five people but I quickly abandoned the idea every single customer story is crucial to me. I needed to unlearn what I learned as a leader. While I do appreciate mentoring and coaching leadership, sitting on the bench is not an option for me as a founder, at least for now. Let's talk about the delegation. Delegation is usually categorized into five to seven letters. For example, level one, do as I say. Level two, research and report. Three, investigate and recommend. Four, decide and inform. And finally, five, Act independently. The delegation level should be used differently for different situations. You cannot expect a baby to learn how to run by themselves when the baby cannot even walk yet. As a leader, I strive to maintain levels three to five as much as possible. Of course, no one can start as an expert from the beginning.
00:20:44 · S0, S1, S7
Ad[00:20:44] S0: This episode is brought to Ad[00:20:45] S1: you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. Ad[00:20:55] S7: It boosts your job post to help Ad[00:20:56] S1: it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.